Nonsensical stories

When I was growing up, my parents had a number of remarkable strengths and talents.  One was a seeming encyclopedic knowledge of card games, which they taught and played with us.  Another was a love of unusual food preservation techniques, like drying food (either with the food dryer my father built himself or on the [...]

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Ima’s pity party

I hate the phone.  I’m fine talking to people in person, and I love writing emails and letters.  But keep me away from the phone unless it’s absolutely necessary.  I don’t love it in English, and like most people struggling with a language that is not their own, I HATE it in Hebrew.  When the [...]

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Lag B’Omer 5771

I received the following message about Lag B’Omer via email from my rav in the US, Rabbi Benjamin Samuels: This Sunday marks the 33rd day of the Omer, Lag Ba’Omer, the day on which the plague that took the lives of Rabbi Akiva’s students subsided so many years ago.  Lag Ba’Omer is treated as a [...]

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Peach interprets “Joseph”

Seven-year-old Peach’s new favorite CD is the Cap’n’s recording of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”  From my perspective, it’s not the most brilliant or textured collaboration of Lloyd-Webber and Rice, but it has some clever lyrics and does some great stuff musically (like have Reuben tell Jacob about Joseph’s “death” in a country-western song, [...]

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Pesach prep (in detail)

Some of you have probably seen the video below in previous years around Pesach time: In an earlier post, I stressed the importance of not combining spring cleaning with Pesach cleaning, and this illustrates it well, i.e. bathtub rings are NOT chametz. Having said that, there is enough to keep one busy for up to [...]

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Banana’s Purim coloring page

Ever since Adar I began, thoughts and plans for Purim have been occupying the Crunches.  The kids are deciding on costumes (and getting corrected constantly for saying, “dress up into”), I’m beginning to think about mishloach manot packages, and my parents will be visiting us, so I plan to enlist my mother’s help in making [...]

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Self service

One of the many roles I fill in the Crunch household is that of Tyrant of Order.  (This is in opposition to the Cap’n and the children, who are the Demons of Chaos.)  Everyone dirties their clothes; I wash them.  Everyone leaves their stuff all over the house; I tidy it up (or yell at [...]

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Embarrassment

At the end of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s father says, “For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”  Many will join me in observing that sometimes our “neighbors” are also our own family members.  What teenager doesn’t find himself embarrassed by his parents’ [...]

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Do less?

A friend of mine just posted to Facebook that many of the blogs she’s been reading with New Year’s resolutions for 2011 have as a goal to “do less.” I’m as puzzled as she is.  Where her friends have agreed that choosing projects wisely and prioritizing one’s activities should be the real goals, and not [...]

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Gobsmacked

Banana came home the other day and announced that her rav at mechina (preparatory kindergarten) had told the girls that in the home, the husband makes the decisions and the wife obeys the husband. I’ll give you a minute. Okay?  Good. Once the Cap’n and I had picked our jaws up off the floor, I [...]

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Babymanners

Bill is turning out to be a charming boy.  At 21 months he is smallish and skinny, but with hazel eyes, a winning smile, and an irresistible giggle, he has also begun cultivating the social graces the Cap’n and I hold so dear.  (Read about ‘em here, here, and here.)  When I sneeze, he says, [...]

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No hate zone

I drive to the Yellow Hill near Alon Shvut in Gush Etzion a few times a week, taking the kids to swim lessons or gymnastics.  Our route there frequently passes Arab shepherds herding goats or sheep, speeding Arab taxis ferrying passengers between Hebron and Bethlehem, Arabs on horseback or driving donkey-drawn carts. Somehow, these sights [...]

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I love my children, BUT…

While the Cap’n put the girls to bed tonight, Bill subjected me to one of our countless games of parental Marco Polo. “Mama.” “Yes, B.” Pause. “Mama.” “Yes, B.” Pause. “Mama.” “Yes, B.” Pause. “Mama.” “Yes, B.” Pause. “Mama.” “Yes, B.” Pause. “Mama.” “What?” Pause. “Mama.” “Yes, B.” Pause. “Mama.” “WHAT?” “Knee,” pointing to own [...]

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Back to work

Nine years ago I made the complicated, difficult decision to leave my cushy teaching job in order to stay home with my newborn (first) child.  There were so many factors that figured into that decision: economics (it was cheaper than working and having all my salary—and then some—go to childcare), my desire to be with [...]

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Memory

One thing I’ve learned about the Jewish world (especially in Israel) is the power of memory.  Jews aren’t supposed to forget things: the exodus from Egypt, that we were once strangers in a strange land, the widow and the orphan.  And we keep days in the calendar on which we remember events such as the [...]

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Talboshet achida

Amid the filling out of forms, organizing notebooks, sharpening pencils, and other such school prep trivia, I have also been buying Beans and Peach uniform shirts (talboshet achida).  It seems Education Minister Gideon Saar has issued a proclamation that all kids in elementary and middle schools must wear uniform shirts: solid color t-shirts with the [...]

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Granola

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a recipe.  With the kids home, though, I’ve been thinking of things they can make with me that involve simple chopping, measuring, and mixing.  I’ve also been teaching them that many of the things we tend to buy in stores ready-made can be made more wholesomely, deliciously, and [...]

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Summer of do-nothing

My presence in the blogosphere has been pretty sparse lately.  Some of it is due to the near-blackout I’ve had since Bezeq (the phone company and our internet provider) “upgraded” the service in my area.  It’s also been because I have been weighing my options returning to the world of work.  But more than anything [...]

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Baby in the hoosegow

Soon after Bill was born, I blogged about co-sleeping with him (as I had my other children).  He’s been a fantastic mattress buddy: quiet, cuddly but not clingy, and rolls away after nursing to allow me the space to get comfortable and go back to sleep.  (The girls all insisted I hold them all night.  [...]

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Skirts and sports

A couple of years ago, there were a few posts on Jameel’s blog about Bat-El Gaterer, a young religious Israeli woman who competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Tae Kwon Do.  Many of the writers in the comments section wrote to praise her hard work and pride in representing Israel at the Olympics. But [...]

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