Kveller.com

I am away at a Jewish educators conference this week, and just stumbled upon a wonderful Jewish parenting resource - Kveller.com.  Aimed at new parents with babies through preschoolers, it looks to be a fantastic site with articles, activities, recipes, and so on.  Please check it out and play around - really great stuff to be found here.

Parshat Yitro

This Shabbat, we read Parshat Yitro, which includes the first iteration of the Ten Commandments in the Torah.  Check out a synopsis and dicussion questions for your family's Shabbat table.

Talking Trees

This Thursday we celebrate the holiday of Tu Bishvat.  
For more information and ideas on Tu Bisvhat, check out this post.

How did Tu B'Shevat get its name?

Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet also stands for a number. For example, alef is one, bet is 2, gimmel, 3.Tu b’shvat falls on the 15th day of Sh’vat. The letters tet (9) and vav (6) put together add up to 15 and make the sound Tu. That is how the holiday got its name.

Here are some ways you can celebrate the holiday with crafts:

• Create collages using seeds and nuts
• Make food for birds by rolling pine cones in peanut butter and bird seed. Hang the feeder in a tree.
• Make actual or virtual Tu b’shvat scrapbooks using pictures (or web-based images) of trees, farm life, animals, and anything else that can be linked to nature or farm life in Israel.
• Plant parsley to harvest for Pesach

Thanks to Behrman House Publishing for the ideas and information above.

Parshat B'Shallach

This week's Torah portion, B'shallach, continues the story of the Israelites journey out of the land of Egypt.  It contains one of the most interesting sections of the Torah - the Song of the Sea.  Check out the synopsis of this week's portion, find some questions to use with your family, check out the g-dcast video, and see a picture of what the Song of the Sea looks like in the Torah!

In Flows Shevat

The following is an interesting read about the Jewish month that starts today - Shevat.  The original is found on the Jewish Treats blog, where you can find articles like this on a wide variety of Jewish topics.  Enjoy!


In Flows Shevat
Despite what one might expect, Jewish tradition does not dismiss the signs of the zodiac (Click here for a Treat on Jewish Months and the Zodiac). In fact, it is quite interesting to see how the astrological symbolsrelate to the actual months to which they are assigned.

The month of Shevat is represented by the water-bearer (known generally as Aquarius). Water is life, and indeed, it makes sense that the water-bearer represents the month of Shevat. The one Jewish holidaythat is celebrated this month is Tu Bish’vat, the 15th of Shevat, which is traditionally the New Year of the trees. This usually strikes people as odd, since Tu Bish’vat generally occurs during the coldest days of winter. But, deep beneath the surface, the root system has been drawing water from the earth, and the sap begins to move upward into the trees. Life begins again its process of renewal.

Water, one of the four elements of nature, is often seen as a symbol of Jewish learning. The Torah itself is referred to as “mayim chaim,” living waters. The reference is that, similar to flowing (living) waters, the Torah constantly brings new life to people. The Torah tells us (Deuteronomy 1:5), that on the first of Shevat, "on the other side of the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses began to explain this Torah... " 

Parshat Bo

Take a look at this week's portion, Bo - you might recognize the story of a favorite Jewish holiday!

The Jew and the Carrot

One of my favorite blogs is The Jew and the Carrot, a project of Hazon.  Hazon, Hebrew for "vision," is America's largest Jewish environmental group and, among other topics of interest, does much work in the area of food.  The following is a post from their blog about cooking with your children and the inherent Jewish values involved.  The original article can be found here.

Teaching the Next Generation To Cook

By Rachel Kahn-Troster

My 3-year-old daughter clambers into the car at the end of a long day, asks me what’s for dinner. When I tell her turkey burgers, her voice gets hopeful. “We cook it?” No, I made it the night before. But, she reminds me that we bought the ingredients together in the store. As I begin to worry about a child-sized guilt trip, she is happily chatting away about something else.

Liora loves to be in the kitchen with me. No matter how beloved the play date, if she sees me head for the cutting board, she is dragging her stool next to me to be able to watch what is being chopped on the counter. She mixes scrambled eggs, rolls out (and mushes) cookie dough, and gets her hands sticky with ricotta gnocchi. One of her favorite bedtime stories is a book from PJ Library about baking challah, “It’s Challah Time”; and I am trying to muster the courage to actually try out the cupcake decorating set she got for Hanukkah.

With my big girl as my sous chef, I often reflect on the passage in the Talmud that outlines the responsibilities of parents to their children: teaching them Torah, providing them with a trade and getting them married (some also say: teaching them to swim). To my ear, this sounds like parents are required to provide their kids with the skills to live productive, independent lives, and so teaching my kids to cook falls naturally for me into this mitzvah. I don’t need to raise a gourmet cook, but I think basic life skills include knowing how to scramble an egg and make tomato sauce from scratch. So much of Jewish tradition, particularly among women, has been passed down through cooking and eating together. What happens in the kitchen is an ongoing collective memory, and it is my responsibility to adapt and pass that along as much as I pass along the importance of Shabbat or tzedakah.

With childhood obesity rates rising, how and what kids eat is heavily scrutinized. We are told that kids are more likely to eat food that they have helped buy and prepare themselves, but I know from personal experience (and my kids are not picky eaters) that there is not always a straight line between helping cook something and actually eating it. Given how competitive contemporary parenting can be, I worry that saying that I cook with Liora will be seen as bragging about raising a precocious sustainable Jewish foodie, rather than a simple description of what my daughter and I do during our time together. My kid cooks for the same reason other kids watch football or play dress up: to imitate and spend time with their parents. There is no agenda here, just life in motion.

But isn’t the kitchen dangerous? A friend of mine with a child Liora’s age recently asked me how I taught her not to touch the pan, given how well 3 year olds follow instructions. While I have reminded her many times that the stove and the oven are hot, and that not following Mummy’s instructions means no cooking, what has convinced her not to touch the pan is having accidentally touched it. Not enough to hurt herself, but enough to now be the one warning me “Stand back, very hot, no touch it.”

Cooking with your kids requires letting go, and trust. After all, they can’t learn to swim if you never let them out of your arms.

Teaching the next generation to cook has to be part of a Jewish food mindfulness and an essential part of independence, not a niche skill for those who have the time. It is not enough that the ingredients be sustainable but that we nurture the understanding of how that food got into our mouths, not just the farmers who grow the food but the people who prepare it. If our kids cook with us, we ensure that they know that not all food comes from a package at the store, and that they can be part of the creative process of food. Indeed, they will see that food is creative, an art form like painting or music. By cooking with their parents, they will learn family stories and write new ones. It becomes part of their personal Torah, the heritage they leave to the next generation.

Cookbook Recommendations for Kids:

• Mollie Katzen, of Moosewood fame, has written two cookbooks for younger kids that simple have illustrated instructions alongside the recipe. All of her recipes are vegetarian, though not vegan: “Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes,” and “Salad People and More Real Recipes,” by Molly Katzen

• There are several Sesame Street cookbooks but this one goes beyond cookies and other snack food: “‘C’ is for Cooking,” by Susan McQuillan and the Sesame Workshop

• Another good kids cookbook: “Kosher by Design Kids in the Kitchen,” by Susie Fishbein

• This is not a kids’ cookbook, but it inspired me to first take up knife and skillet when I was in high school, and older kids will find it funny: “In the Kitchen with Miss Piggy,” by Moi

Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster is Director of Education and Outreach for Rabbis for Human Rights-North America. She serves on the board of Hazon.

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/134441/#ixzz1ABzqpcLJ