How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household

by Blu Greenberg

  When punishment is needed, Jewish parents use verbal reprimand and withdrawal of privileges. Still, sometimes … I remember when David, then six or seven, had done something very naughty; I gave him a good going-over—threats, criticism, punishments, the works. After a few minutes of my harangue, he interrupted, and in all seriousness asked, “Do you think you could just spank me instead?”

  ADDITIONAL OBLIGATIONS

  If kibbud av v’em is the tone of the relationship and its mode of discipline, what is the special substance?

  The Talmud gives a very specific list of obligations of father to son: “to circumcise him, to redeem him, to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, to teach him a trade.” And some say: “to teach him to swim so that he may save his life” (KIDDUSHIN 29A). If we adapt that set of obligations to the contemporary scene and adjust it to include obligations to daughters as well, it holds up pretty well in defining and describing an Orthodox Jewish parent today.

  TO CIRCUMCISE HIM

  Broadly defined, it means that parents must bring their children into the Covenant and teach them to live according to the mitz-vot. They do this long before the age when children can voluntarily accept it for themselves. All that I have said earlier about Shabbat and kashrut and holidays is really about parents teaching children. What is the Passover seder if not a superb pedagogic device to make children feel that they are part of the great Jewish past?

  The obligatory age of observing mitzvot is twelve/thirteen. But Orthodox parents don’t wait till then. Just as we know that ethical values are communicated very early in life, so a Jewish parent teaches his/her child at an early age how to observe the rituals. Besides, it’s much easier to instill when a child is young.

  One scene I recall from long ago perfectly described the Tal-mudic dictum of teaching children mitzvot as soon as they begin to speak. I was walking through Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim section when I spotted a young mother pushing a stroller. In the stroller was a beautiful child, but I could not determine its sex. The face was cherubic; the blond curls that framed the face would have been the envy of any female. But the child was also wearing this: a yarmulke (skullcap) that was tied under the chin with blue velvet ribbons. Was it a boy whose blond locks would be shorn when he reached age three (a tradition among some Jews) or was it a little girl? This was a time when not being able to tell gender was disorienting, so, to satisfy my curiosity I reversed direction and followed the young mother down the street. When she reached the kiosk she bought a cookie and said, “Here, Moishe.” Obviously, it was a boy. Then, as she held the cookie out to him, she said, “Macht a brucheh,” and this child who could barely talk repeated the blessing after her, syllable by syllable. But why the velvet bow under his chin? Because she wanted the yarmulke to stay on his head. Even at the age of two, it was to be as much a part of his life as was making a b’racha before putting a piece of food into his mouth. I could not remember how I had first learned the blessings, but at that moment, as I watched this mother, barely out of her teens herself, I suddenly knew. More than that. In that very same instant, I understood how I would do it some day with my own children.

  TO REDEEM HIM

  In a general way, this reminds parents that while we don’t have to physically offer our firstborn up to be consecrated to the service of the Lord, we do raise them to love God, to worship, and to observe God’s laws. That is why, at an early age, children are taught to pray and to speak of God unselfconsciously. That is why, too, children always feel welcome in an Orthodox synagogue, even if at times all they do is laugh in its halls or drift in and out of the sanctuary like free birds. Not only the firstborn, but all of our children, have some sixth sense that their lives are to be consecrated to the lifelong service of God.

  TO TEACH HIM A TRADE

  The Talmud says, “Teach your child a craft, for not to do so is to teach him to be a thief.” At the heart of this parental obligation is a notion of self-sufficiency, that is, to help children make their own way in the world. The great Jewish emphasis on book learning, plus the multigenerational tradition of helping to establish one’s children, is expressed in a strong commitment to general education and to professional training. My in-laws saved every bit of string and every paper bag; they read by the light of forty-watt bulbs; and never in their lives did they take a cab. But they put four children through the finest graduate schools in this country!

  As the borscht circuit joke goes: What is a Jewish dropout? One without a Ph.D.

  No sacrifice is too great to prepare a child to succeed on his/her own.

  TO TEACH HIM TO SWIM

  Why teach him to swim? Answer: for his life may depend upon it. Self-protection and self-sufficiency are at the heart of this obligation, too. Some time ago, as the teenagers in our community walked home at 11:00 P.M. Friday from an Oneg Shabbat gathering, they were set upon by a group of neighborhood toughs whose anti-Semitic clocks were ticked off by the sight of the boys’ kipot. Some of the Jewish kids ran, scared, some got punched up, and the whole community was quite agitated. Next morning, in the synagogue, the rabbi did a most sensible thing: he urged all the parents to enroll their children—male and female—in the karate class given in the shul gym each week. This is the contemporary equivalent of teaching one’s child to swim—for his/her life may depend upon it.

  TO FIND HIM A WIFE

  “Taking a wife” for one’s children can mean anything from an arranged marriage to encouraging one’s children to marry. In between is a whole range of responses that indicate how serious Orthodox parents are about this obligation. For example, it is not all that uncommon for parents to support their children so they can marry in their early twenties, yet continue on with learning and/or professional studies, rather than waiting until they are able to support themselves. This is somewhat different from the European tradition where the most brilliant and promising yeshiva bocher would be chosen by the wealthiest householder for his daughter. The father-in-law would provide kest (support) so that his son-in-law could continue yeshiva studies while his daughter would begin to raise a family. Underlying both the American and the European response is the parental obligation to help their children marry.

  Arranged marriages exist today only among a small group of the most traditional Jews. Modern Orthodox Jews date and select their own mates, but parents often do their best to see that their marriageable-age children have all the opportunities to meet other young people, ideally from the same background. Most Orthodox Jews do marry other Orthodox Jews, and this is by no means accidental. Parents have a great deal invested in the choice of mate; for a child to break with tradition because of marriage is a painful loss to a parent who wants to keep the chain going.

  Some families with marriageable-age children go to the kosher hotels for Pesach or Sukkot for reasons over and above holiday celebration.... Likewise with choice of schools, vacation plans, and so forth. Before sending a college-age student off to an out-of-town college, parents will do a careful check of whether there is a supportive traditional community on campus or nearby.

  TO TEACH HIM TORAH

  The mitzvah of talmud Torah, daily study of Torah, is the most fundamental of all mitzvot—because it leads to all the others. For the habit of learning to take hold and last a lifetime, it must be inculcated early in life. Besides, if one is ever to master a significant part of the vast literature that awaits a Jewish mind, one had better start early. And persist.

  That is why of all the obligations of parents to children, the one that is most distinctive about the Orthodox community is that of teaching a child Torah. Almost without exception, Orthodox Jewish children attend yeshiva day schools and high schools—no matter what the strain on family budget. People often base their choice of domicile more on the quality of the local yeshiva than on that of the local shul. Families who don’t live in cities with Jewish schools will import a melamed (teacher, scholar) or send their children away at an early age. When my sisters and I and thirteen cousins grew up
in Seattle, Washington, there was no day school (there are now two). So after public school each day we went to the Talmud Torah school, in which our parents were all actively involved. We studied Jewish subjects two hours a day, four days a week, and four hours on Sunday morning. It wasn’t perfect, but it was quite enough to give us a solid background so that when my parents moved to New York we were able to enter our proper grade in yeshiva day school right off. All my male cousins, whose families stayed in Seattle, were sent East at the age of thirteen; and female cousins, for various reasons, including lack of dormitory space in the high-school years, came to New York at the age of seventeen, all in quest of a good yeshiva education.

  There has been a tremendous growth of yeshiva day schools during the last two decades. Most yeshivot now have early-childhood programs, so that starting at age three a child is put into a learning-and-play environment that reinforces the life-style of the home. Until a decade ago, these were quite adequate as a holding pattern. In the last few years, however, as more and more traditional young mothers work or go to school, a vacuum has grown in terms of Jewish day care.

  By kindergarten, most Orthodox children are established in day school where they follow a dual program of secular and Jewish studies, a double load that lasts all the way up through high school and beyond. At the same time as they begin to learn to read English, they begin to learn Hebrew. Reading the prayer book, learning the Hebrew language, studying Torah, first the text alone, then later with Rashi commentary; also Jewish history, literature, ethics, laws, and customs, Talmud, the prophets, the commentaries, the codes, Jewish philosophy—this is the general pattern of studies as the children go through the system.

  Finding good teachers is not easy because salaries are low; to some extent, however, this is not a totally negative selective factor because only someone who is very dedicated to Jewish education would choose the field in the first place.

  In most Orthodox-affiliated high schools, the emphasis in Jewish studies is on Gemara (Talmudic study), sometimes to the exclusion of more rounded Jewish education. (The secular curriculum follows state requirements.) But that is to prepare the student for entering into higher-level studies and ultimately rabbinic training, where the whole focus is Talmud and halacha.

  As is true of Orthodox homes, there are differences from one Orthodox school to another. Some schools teach matters of faith and history with some of their inherent complexities. Some schools group boys and girls in mixed classes, while others totally separate them at an early age. Some schools adopt a more modest dress code, such as long sleeves for the girls (at no school, however, even the most modern Orthodox, will you see girls wearing pants to school).

  How to choose a day school or high school? Here are some ways of going about it:

  1. Make a list of all the possible choices. It might be wider than you think.

  2. Visit the most likely choices for a day.

  3. Call parents whose judgment you trust. Make sure you don’t rely on the judgment of one parent. Call several people until you begin to feel a consensus forming re the quality of the school, teaching, and administration; its religious ambiance; its attitude toward parental involvement.

  4. Check out the first grade, fourth grade, and the eighth grade. What is being covered in those grades? What skills have the children mastered?

  5. Ask the school for a profile of the graduates of previous years. Unless some radical changes in administration have taken place, the character of the student body tends to be self-reinforcing.

  6. Ask about homework policy. Some schools load homework on from day one. This can have differential effects, depending on the particular child and the family situation. It can help the child to learn faster, or create tension in a young child, or put an extra burden on parents, particularly where both parents work.

  7. What is the daavening (praying) like?

  8. Do boys and girls study together or separately?

  9. What is the method of discipline?

  10. What is the method of instruction, for example, open classroom, or a very formal structure?

  11. Does the school have extracurricular activities?

  12. What is the transportation situation?

  13. Do older children mix with younger ones?

  14. What is the extent of contact between siblings in school?

  15. Does the school take telephone messages for students? Is there a public telephone for students to use?

  16. What is the tuition, and how can it be paid?

  17. What is the school’s financial aid policy?

  18. Is the school planning a move or an expansion in the near future?

  19. Does the vacation schedule coincide with that of other members of the family?

  20. How many undergraduates continue on with yeshiva education?

  21. What is the acceptance at the various high schools/universities?

  22. What is the relationship of the day school/high school to the local synagogues? Local rabbis?

  23. What is the teacher turnover like; what is the ratio of new blood to seasoned teachers?

  24. How are the subjects of the Holocaust and Israel taught? (You’d be surprised that some schools don’t teach about them at all.)

  25. To what extent is Jewish content integrated into the secular program? What portion of secular teachers also have a good Jewish background?

  26. To what extent does the school place emphasis on midot, character building?

  A trend among modern Orthodox parents is to send their children to high schools that are more traditional in practice and more to the right ideologically than they are, the theory being that a child generally picks up the values of the parents and will be more likely to relax or swing back from a more religiously intense environment than the other way around. Moreover, the negative social influences of modernity are less of a distraction in such schools. On the other hand, there always are a few youngsters who are more religiously sensitive and will take their values and practices from their rebbes rather than parents. The Talmud teaches that a parent may not inhibit a child on grounds of kibbud av v’em should the child become independently more religious than the parent.

  What we have found in choosing is that no one thing works for every family, nor even for all the children of one family, particularly in high school. On the one hand, a Jewish parent is lucky to have choices. When I was of high-school age, there was only one yeshiva high school for girls serving three of the city’s five boroughs, so I had to travel one and three quarter hours each way every day. On the other hand, choosing a yeshiva high school can be one of the toughest decisions a parent can make. Many factors come into play, not just the quality of teaching or the religious atmosphere, or the proximity to home. More than elementary school and more than college, the high-school peer group has a formative influence. The friendships one makes in high school are often active throughout one’s adult life.

  We chose one particular high school for our children. It had the right religious values, a student body who came from similar backgrounds, and a dean we respected and admired. Also, it was a five-minute walk from home and was not too large a school. But it didn’t work for all five children. Two of them went through the school quite happily, and did well. One went through very unhappily, but received a superb education. Another went partway through, but somehow got turned off after the second year. His rebellion took the form of not learning, so midway we switched him to another yeshiva high school, coed and reputedly less “frum” (religious). There he blossomed, became more religious in his practices and beliefs, and did very well in his studies. The fifth balked at our choice of high school for her, and chose her brother’s coed yeshiva high school—and an hour trip each way. Since it was a high quality, well established school, headed by an exceptionally fine dean, we allowed her her choice. However, Yitz and I were of two minds regarding the principle of whether a child should be allowed to make the choice of high school, even within the acceptable range. After
all the returns are in, ten or twenty years down the road, perhaps we’ll know which were the right choices.

  One difference between modern and right-wing Orthodox Jews is the emphasis on secular education. Right-wingers frown upon college, and their young adults spend the post-high-school years in yeshivot only, with no secular studies. Not so the modern Orthodox. In addition to the choice of a yeshiva college, such as Yeshiva University which is characterized by a dual track, many Orthodox college students attend universities that three decades ago would not at all have been considered. A kosher kitchen and Shabbat services at Oberlin or at Duke; next thing you know, they’ll be having Yom Kippur services at Notre Dame! It’s all part of the rising ethnicity in America, and the new unselfconsciousness of traditional Jews in this country.

  In 1972, Yitz was instrumental in getting community support for a kosher eating house at Princeton, a project that was spurred on by the presence of several yeshiva boys in the hallowed halls of that WASPish school. But going to Princeton did not mean only a kosher kitchen. Little by little, first on the students’ own initiative and later through the formal channels of the Hillel Foundation and the Princeton establishment, new Jewish learning opportunities were offered. Today, teaching a child Torah means a parent can pay a Harvard tuition and expect that institution and its quasi-affiliates to continue the Jewish education of his/her child.