The Lilith Blog

December 17, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

Searching

I’ve spent the past month searching for a new nanny. Albina, our beloved babysitter, who had lived three doors away, moved. She doesn’t drive, and now lives just far enough away to have rendered me mad with searching for a chauffeur for our nanny, and then distraught that I am not an upper-class lady in Victorian England, able to afford a nurse, nanny, governess, maid, gardener, cook, butler, footmen, and chauffeur, all of whom, I have convinced myself in the course of this upheaval, I need.

One night while lying in bed, after two weeks of conducting interviews, subjecting my daughters to new faces every day, staying home from work, sending friends to spy in the park, and coming up empty, I burst into tears. My husband bolted up in bed and asked what was wrong. “I miss Albina,” I sobbed. We had finally found our groove together, she and I. My children loved her. She took care of our plants. She cooked us home-made blintzes and French fries, baked apples and squash, and a pea soup that my picky daughters would eat when they would eat nothing else. She spontaneously cleaned things – our porch, the garage, the floors. And she was the best newborn care nurse I’d ever met, bathing the children in strange Russian herbs, and swaddling them so that they had no choice but to sleep for hours. My husband tried to reassure me. He had never really connected with Albina; he couldn’t communicate with her in Russian, and found her aloof and reserved. “We’ll find someone else, and the children will learn to love her too. Don’t worry.” And he gave me a kiss, rolled over, and immediately fell back asleep, oblivious to my tortured state, my unappeasable angst.

Last week, I finally hired someone. The kids are delighted. Our new babysitter is Portuguese, but speaks fluent English. I am mourning the loss of a beloved second language in our home, but my older daughter, whose Russian I admit has deteriorated with her preschool attendance, is delighted to have someone she can understand. Our new babysitter brings her toddler daughter on the days she works for us. My need to hire someone, and the fact that she comes so highly recommended from a friend, and that she drives, and can help with carpool, has outweighed this detail. This, for me, was a distressing decision, but my little one asks every day for her new little friend; she loves spending those days with a buddy, someone with whom to play in the park, eat lunch, and color.

Why is it that the transition has been harder for me than for anyone else in my family? Who is our nanny really for?

I work part-time – a decision I made for emotional, intellectual, financial, and sanity reasons. But, despite what I thought before I birthed my children, I can’t help but feel that the primary responsibility to care for their daily needs is on my shoulders. What I’ve realized over the course of the past month, in searching for a replacement for Albina, is that I am, in some strange way, searching for a replacement of myself. I am looking both to replicate myself for my children, and to bring someone into my home who makes me feel cared for. Someone to seamlessly take my place when I rush out of the house at seven-thirty in the morning, and quietly relinquish it when I return in the darkness of suppertime. And more. I want someone who will cook for me when I’m tired and hungry. I want another mother in my home, a mother who fills in my gaps, who has a green thumb and can darn socks, but who doesn’t threaten to replace me. This is a delicate, intricate, trembling balance of power, of identities. It has taken me years to establish. And now, bereft, I am the one in mourning, having lost a piece of myself.

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

December 15, 2009 by Amy Stone

'Tis the Season

My doctor goes into a shockingly racist rant about the government’s being incapable of managing health care as proved by H1N1 vaccine just going to “pickaninnies in the ghetto.”

A truck turning into Broadway completely crushes the passenger side of a car stopped at a light. The driver leans on his horn.

My fellow tenants are resorting to primal screams at the handyman to express their displeasure with the endless months of construction.

We are in holiday meltdown.

As someone who is Jewish and married, I am not under Christmas pressure or anxiety over a dateless New Year’s Eve. But what is it about the end of the year that drives people to insanity?

We’re told the suicide rate is highest over the Christmas-New Year’s season-–people who can’t go on in their loneliness and unhappiness as all the rest of the world appears coupled and happy. And we assimilated Jews could well be among those numbers.

I will spare you my enumeration of the sadness of New Year’s Eve dates grimly in search of joy. Better to be alone than to experience existential loneliness in the company of others desperately seeking holiday happiness. But I will confess the loneliness of one New Year’s Eve many decades past. Home alone in my six-floor walkup, weeping on my red velvet
mermaid couch.

The phone rings. I pick it up. Not prince charming but my best friend since high school calling to wish me a happy new year. She can tell I’m in tears and counsels me: “If you’re crying you shouldn’t answer the phone.”

And so we go into another year.

Actually, there’s a lot to be said for the Jewish new year spent in soul searching and reflection. No pressure to have a date.

In fact, the shofar’s call is not so far removed from the blowing of horns welcoming in the goyishe new year. We hark back to the ancients who banged on anything at hand to scare off evil spirits as humankind passed through the liminal space between the old year and the new.

Personally, this time around I’m planning to cook, eat and drink my way into the next Gregorian decade. 2010 has a nice ring to it and I’m going to welcome it with one husband, one friend and two dogs.

There’s a lot to be said for a low-key approach to the end of one year and the start of another.

–Amy Stone

The Lilith Blog

December 14, 2009 by admin

Chanukkah in the Diaspora

Every year, I look forward to my Channukah care package, when my mom and sister round up Channukah treats, toys, and decorations and send them to me. Here in Pocatello, Idaho, Channukah has to be imported in, or it basically doesn’t exist. Over the years, I’ve found the few local retailers who carry the precious treasures of dreidels (small, plastic, single-colored) and nonspecific chocolate coins, and I’ve built up my supply of Channukah candles in case there’s a year I can’t find any in town. And sometimes, for fun, I will walk in to the local stores, past the poinsettias and Christmas tree ornaments and ask where the Channukah section is, just to see the confused looks of the sales associates.

Friday, December 18th is Temple Emanuel’s Channukah party. We have menorahs, we have a latke buffet, we have games of dreidel, and as always, we have wine. The one thing Temple Emanuel does not have at the moment, as membership ebbs and flows in this rural community, are any children congregants. So we try and import those in for our Channukah celebration as well, drawing from friends and associates in the Pocatello community.

There are a few categories of non-Jewish people in this community who orbit the Jewish population during our major holidays. There are the non-Jews such as I remember growing up in the Chicago area—happy to be Christian (or Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or…), and progressive, intellectual, and curious enough to want to expand their knowledge of other faiths and cultures for what they are.

However, it seems in this area there are a disproportionate number of non-Jews who claim an affiliation and connection with the Jewish faith, such as Messianic Jews and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons, or LDS as the more politically-correct term).

Christianity is a mystery to me sometimes; especially knowing about such historic realities as the first Council of Nicaea and the Burning Times. And it’s a little unsettling to know how many local non-Jews want to claim some Judaism for their very own, in a town where the 10 commandments are on display on the courthouse lawn and the hot debate between “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” clogs up the local news outlets.

But, this is how December in the Diaspora works. This is one of the times of year I find there is a lot of explaining to do. Explaining why I don’t celebrate Christmas, and explaining why it’s not OK to assume everyone does. Sometimes I feel like a novelty act; sometimes I feel like an amused religious historian. And I do enjoy the opportunity to talk to other people about Channukah and other Jewish traditions. Even if I have to break out “The Jewish Book of Why,” or contact my sister Sara, a Jewish educator, to make sure I have everything straight.

So on December 18, I hope Temple Emanuel can once again gather a crowd, and give some local kids and adults the fun chance to light a menorah, play dreidel, and eat some latkes made from potatoes that have made this state famous. And I will be proudly wearing my mom’s handmade Channukah stocking cap, brand new from this year’s care package.

–Nancy Goodman

The Lilith Blog

December 10, 2009 by admin

Responding to Absurdity

In the aftermath of Nofrat Frenkel’s arrest at the Western Wall (her crime? wearing a tallit), Lilith has heard from a lot from all of you, asking what you can do. So when this letter from Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson (of the Women’s Rabbinic Network) arrived, it was clear it needed to be passed on. This is a great way to take a stand.

Dear Friends,
The arrest of Nofrat Frenkel for wearing a tallit at the kotel on Rosh Hodesh Kislev compels us to raise our voices and engage our communities in joint action. We invite you to join in a community-wide Day of Solidarity and Support for Women of the Wall (WOW), to take place on Rosh Hodesh Tevet, Thursday December 17th, the sixth day of Chanukah. With this national grassroots initiative, we will express our support for the rights of the Women of the Wall to assemble at the Kotel and to pray there with dignity, in safety and in shared community.

As with many other women’s grass roots efforts, each community, organization and institution shall develop its own program of prayer or study and shall reach out as widely as possible to its constituencies. For some groups, this day of solidarity and support will be in the manner of WOW, including tefillah and the reading of the Torah. For others, the program may be a “lunch and learn” text study session; or a women’s Chanukah observance. For yet others, it might be a gathering of three or more friends in a living room or office who will dedicate their joint prayer and/or study to the Women of the Wall. Some communities may want to add to their programs a screening of Yael Katzir’s film, Praying in Her Own Voice. We ask that you convene a program that shows your support for this initiative.

Please share your plans and document your activities by sending an email to jackie.ellenson@gmail.com. We also ask that you send a photo of your gathering to Judith Sherman Asher, judithrafaela@mac.com, who is a member of Women of the Wall in Israel. Please caption the photo with the names of the participants, the date, location of, and information about your program. Feel free to add a short message of support for Women of the Wall. This will greatly strengthen the morale of our sisters in Israel.

We hope you will join in a groundswell of support of American women for the Women of the Wall. We encourage you to send this letter to any other women’s groups who might want to participate. As Rosh Hodesh Tevet takes place during the week of Chanukah, the holiday of religious freedom, what better time to affirm the right of women to raise their voices in prayer at the Wall!

Sincerely yours,

Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson
Director, Women’s Rabbinic Network
Jackie.ellenson@gmail.com
Rivka Haut
Women’s Tefillah Network
rivkahaut@yahoo.com

The Lilith Blog

December 8, 2009 by admin

"Malka in the Promised Land"-The Lilith Fiction Podcast Series

The next installment of the Lilith Fiction Podcast series is here!

In “Malka in the Promised Land,” a young yeshiva girl breaks loose. The story, which first ran in the Winter 2002 issue of Lilith, was written by (now Rabbi) Danya Ruttenberg. “Malka in the Promised Land,” is read by Meredith Steinberg.

[display_podcast]

Plus, don’t forget: the Lilith podcasts are available through iTunes (just click here to launch it), where you can sign up to receive each new podcast automatically! If you’re playing this on your browser window, don’t worry if it takes a few moments to load.

The Lilith Blog

December 8, 2009 by admin

Introducing Jewdaho

Within two hours of telling my parents that I was moving to Pocatello, Idaho, my dad found the local synagogue on-line and contacted the religious leader on my behalf. There would be no escape.

Not that I wanted an escape from Judaism; no. I am of good immigrant Jewish stock; I had a Bat Mitzvah, I went to OSRUI in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin for summer camp—one of the many who attended on scholarship. Yet since my early 20s, I’ve been drawn, led to the eclectic caravans roaming the far perimeter of the Diaspora—where Jews mix primarily with non-Jews and talk about weird things like feminist spirituality, Buddhism, and pre-Judeo and pre-Christian paganism. Not to mention neo-psychedelia, neo-Jungism, and neo-feminism, terms I made up myself to catalog the thoughts that dance around in my head—sometimes to Death Metal.

So on a bright August morning in 1998, we removed the last of my residual belongings from mom and dad’s house in Skokie, Illinois, and headed west. It was comforting to have the contact information for Temple Emanuel in Pocatello, although the information I also had about the First National Bar in Pocatello proved to be more socially fruitful those first few years.

My original plan, moving to a town I had never heard of in a state everyone kept confusing with Iowa, was to live in Pocatello for a year, get some post-graduate professional experience, and then flee out to the real world. Because Southeastern Idaho is no place for a nice, single, Jewish girl who doesn’t want to die alone.

That was over 11 years ago, and I’m still here. In what seemed like a divine reward, I met my husband at age 35 after finally surrendering to my unshakeable feelings of sacred place, holy land in Pocatello and committing to stay, spinsterhood be damned. Five seconds after I got engaged I lost my job—again. Life has scuffed me up as much here as it would anywhere else, I suspect, and I’d rather have life run me though the thrasher in historic Old Town Pocatello than anywhere else on the planet.

I’m grateful for the opportunity from Lilith to sift through this past decade to see how, in this high desert, my experience of being Jewish has developed. Here in Pocatello, Idaho, where the dusty summer earth beneath my feet feels oddly familiar. It is hot. It doesn’t rain. Bushes catch on fire–often. And at night during a new moon, the triangle of sky behind my house explodes with stars.

Given my spiritual nature, living in a small town has perhaps created a stronger Jewish identity than if I lived with a kosher deli on every corner. So much to explain to non-Jewish friends and paramours, such a sense of protective cultural solidarity. And being Jewish in Pocatello is like being in a college class with only nine students—every voice counts, and it’s hard to hide in the back.

There are Jews in Pocatello—sometimes a lot, and sometimes not so many. There is a free-standing paid-for synagogue on a generous lot. Temple Emanuel is the only Jewish act in town, and lay rabbi and philosophy professor Dr. Carl Levenson skillfully navigates the come-as-you-are congregation in a sea of on-lookers, many who like to call us Gentiles.

The Jewish population in Southeastern Idaho is as colorful and surprising as the region itself. We work in the desert, we work in the mountains, we work on the farms. We have a matriarch we share with half the Pocatello community. There are those with children in Israel, and those with a dozen chickens in their backyard.

So now that you know a bit about me, let me also show you how wild west Judaism is done.

–Nancy Goodman

The Lilith Blog

December 2, 2009 by Susan Weidman Schneider

Feminist Family Values

In our current state of economic crisis and rampant anxiety about how women’s issues are faring (not well) in the debates over health care, it seems to us useful to look again at what to expect in a feminist-friendly universe. Some of the optimism in this piece, which first appeared in Summer 2008 now sounds, alas, premature (for example, about same-sex-marriage legislation). But the rest of it–a call to understand what feminist family values are all about–rings very true in light of today’s legislative and social justice battles.

(A version of the following appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Lilith Magazine, and on the NCJW Website, as part of their online journal.)

One of our first responsibilities to ourselves, to our daughters, and to our future in this election season is to turn on our internal GPS when we hear the word “family” bandied about by politicians of every stripe. Generic rhetoric about “families” — as in “Rising food prices will cause families to suffer” — obliterates individuals, a disservice to each of the persons affected as well as to our communities.

Seeing “family values” through a feminist lens means valuing both the many different kinds of families and the individuals within them. Genuine family values are indistinguishable from the vision we have, as feminists and as Jews, for a better world. Feminism is all about choices and improving the world. Feminism is a family value.

The “classic” nuclear family — two parents, male and female, and their biological offspring — represents only a small fraction of today’s households. When we speak of families, including Jewish families, we’ve got to see in our mind’s eye the myriad ways family identity is now forged. Today, we may live in households that are single-parent, gay, lesbian, interfaith, international, interracial, intergenerational, and even — increasingly — single-person, not to mention families of long-term companions, adopted children, or half-siblings. We don’t have to look far to see that real people form real families of almost every imaginable configuration. Our feminist family values acknowledge and welcome this diversity.

And then there’s marriage. A whole spate of research shows that the happiest marriages are those in which there is greatest parity between the partners. Makes perfect sense. When the spouses are earning at par and have fairly equal educations, there’s less strife over which partner has the greater value, whose time is worth more, which one can “afford” to take time off work to accompany a child to a game or an elderly relative to the doctor. Yet feminist gains and feminist family values can be undone by our own outdated language. Don’t you still sometimes hear a parent mention that a father was “babysitting” his own children? Yikes! Do we say a mother is babysitting? Fascinatingly, several recent studies have found that gay unions have more relationship satisfaction, because some of the inequality in opposite-sex relationships is missing.

Feminist family values have to take into account the microeconomics of marriage. In many heterosexual couples, the man is still earning more, despite decades of women’s-movement work on pay equity issues, so it’s urgent that we recognize the value of unpaid work. Some women, if they take time out of the paid labor force to raise children, make sure that the family budget includes a mechanism for keeping up her 401(k) payments and other perks of paid employment that will ease her re-entry into the workforce down the line. Other couples find other ways to recognize and reward the huge contributions — and often sacrifices — of the stay-at-home parent.

Economic protection in our homes is only one part of acting on our values. Without physical and emotional safety, no family is secure. Too obvious to state this? Obvious maybe, but child abuse and violence against women persist — sowing the seeds for similar behavior through the generations. Children who are victims of sexual or physical abuse — or who witness such abuse — are far more likely than others to grow up to be abusers, and even if they’re spared this fate, new studies show that they’re at great risk for a range of debilitating psychological disorders in adulthood. When lawmakers and clergy take action against abusers, they’re also expressing those feminist family values.

It’s a feminist value to take responsibility for shaping the next generation and honoring our elders. It’s time to acknowledge the often unpaid work of caregiving in families, whether for children or parents. Acting on this value, we need to press for legislation that acknowledges the work of people taking care of family members. Other countries — like Canada — provide up to a year’s parental leave, at nearly full pay, for a father or mother of a new child, biological or adopted. Other kinds of family leave include time off to care for elderly or ill relatives. While US legislation catches up with our values, we ought to be pressing Jewish institutions to be models for such compassionate and family-friendly policies. Women and men working in Jewish organizations, for example, are surprised and delighted when they find out that paid parental leave is part of their benefits package. Unfortunately, the surprise is too often in the other direction — even at agencies that tout the importance of Jewish continuity and family life.

In many two-parent households, income from both adults is needed to keep the family afloat. Ask around, and you’ll see how vigorously we still have to lobby employers to offer flex-time, or job-sharing, or fewer evening meetings, so that people can be both workers and parents without shredding themselves to pieces. There’s good news from workplaces that demonstrate that they value families and the parent-employees who support them: lactation rooms and on-premises nurseries, for example. Such office perks, unfortunately, are available only to the privileged few. For many millions of others, what would help the most is legislation to raise the poverty level, so that people -— yes, families — teetering on the brink of poverty can take advantage of the kinds of government benefits that help children escape a cycle of poverty and help their families survive.

Family-friendly employee benefits don’t stop at the office. Employers who hire household help can be part of the solution, not the problem. Feminist values — like human values — mean ensuring that nannies, housekeepers, and other household workers are remunerated and treated fairly. After all, paid caregivers have families to support, too. Fair wages, delineated hours and responsibilities, paid sick days, vacation time, and Social Security payments are all part of being a responsible employer. Those who cast aside these fair practices help sustain what Katha Pollitt has called “patriarchy lite.”

What goes on under our own roofs is what women talk about most when we speak frankly among ourselves. But we don’t shape our lives in a vacuum. Public policy plays a role in family happiness; just look at the number of long-term gay and lesbian partners who can now be legally married, thanks to state legislation like that enacted in California this June. Other legislation, like equal pay for work of comparable value, an early feminist goal, still presents challenges. Despite the passage of anti-discrimination legislation, educated women in traditionally female fields (the usual: teaching, social work, nursing) are not valued as much as their counterparts in other professions. Ensuring that this urgent and under-remunerated work is rewarded with benefits and higher wages is yet another important way that we can express our feminist values.

Let this be the season when feminist family values prevail, in homes and in the workplace, in the courts and in our language, in our lives and on the ballot.

–Susan Weidman Schneider

The Lilith Blog

December 1, 2009 by admin

"Pri Chadash"–The Lilith Fiction Podcast Series

The next installment of the Lilith Fiction Podcast series is here!

In “Pri Chadash,” a young woman marks a year through food. The story, which first ran in the Summer 2007 issue of Lilith, was written by Darya Mattes. “Pri Chadash” is read by Melanie Weiss.

[display_podcast]

Plus, don’t forget: the Lilith podcasts are available through iTunes (just click here to launch it), where you can sign up to receive each new podcast automatically! If you’re playing this on your browser window, don’t worry if it takes a few moments to load.

The Lilith Blog

December 1, 2009 by admin

Am Israel (Cross-Post)

This post is cross-posted from the Israel Religious Action Center blog.

By Beth (Elisheva Hannah) Frank-Backman

Several years ago when I used to join WOW for Rosh Hodesh prayers, my fellow liberal Jews used to ask me, but “why pray at the wall? I don’t see the point of praying there. Let them have their wall if it means so much. We know better that God is not restricted to a place.”

I never had an answer to that question then, but after the recent tallit arrest, I think I do. Divided though we may be in practice and even sometimes belief, we are still Am Israel – one people. Just as God is One despite all appearances to the contrary, so we too are one.

What saddens me most about the arrest is the way some of our fellow Jews try to explain away the fact that the women at that prayer service, were, of all things, praying. In our tradition the gates of heaven are always open to heartfelt prayers: “Since the time of the destruction, all the gates of heaven are closed except the gate of tears” (Berachot 32b). The model of prayer taught to both men and women alike is a woman – Hannah. There is no getting around the profound connection between woman and prayer within Judaism.

So in order to justify their behavior those who support the arrest and prohibitions against women praying with tallit must tell themselves and others that the Women of the Wall were not really praying. Reading through the comments to the Jerusalem Post article, I see many such excuses: they were being political; they wear tallitot as a fashion statement; they are ignorant; they can’t really mean it. But it isn’t just the rabble that gather around the comments of on line news that say this. Even the esteemed Ovadiah Yosef, discounts the sincerity of the women’s prayers at the wall: “These are deviants who serve equality, not Heaven. They must be condemned and warned of.”

Doubting the sincerity of a woman’s prayers is nothing new. Eli himself had similar things to say about Hannah, accusing her of being drunk, when in fact she was pouring out her heart to God. But Eli merely rebuked Hannah. When she explained herself he listened with compassion and told her “Go in peace and may the God of Israel grant your petition”.

The same cannot be said of the guardians of the Wall or Ovadiah Yosef. They do not listen with compassion. Nor do they have halakhah on their side. There is no universally accepted issur against women wearing tallit to aid their prayer, or for that matter, reading Torah. The inability to listen with compassion therefore must come from something deeper and far more concerning: a hardening of the heart of one Jew against another.

A hardening of the heart. The Temple fell because of baseless hatred. The Temple fell because we hardened our hearts against one another and failed to hear each others prayers.

Each Yom Kippur we are told that “prayer, teshuvah, and tzedakah” will avert the decree. There is no more appropriate place for women to pray, tallit and all, than at the Wall. There, of all places, is the battle ground of baseless hatred, the mark of what divided and nearly destroyed us as a people. It is there we need to heal the breach. It is there we need to come to acceptance that there are many ways to pray and serve God, Torah, and Israel. It is there, we need to pray until those who scoff like Eli, can hear the prayer of all women, however strange, as prayer. Like the prayers of Hannah, the prayers of the Women of the Wall are the longing of women to take their part in an act of creation and healing, hand in hand with God. Even if Eli isn’t listening, God is.

Beth (Elisheva Hannah) Frank-Backman has lived in Jerusalem since 1996.

The Lilith Blog

November 25, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

House of Straw

While spending time at my parent’s house with my daughters recently, I reacquainted myself with some of my favorite childhood books. My parents have a stash that weren’t subject to today’s politically correct sensors. My older daughter delighted in Maurice Sendak’s The Night Kitchen, which tells the story of a little boy who has a dream, who stay up all night mixing “milk in the batter, milk in the batter.” It goes without saying that the boy is naked in his dream, and that the illustrations are anatomically correct. Some books I didn’t let her read, like another Sendak book that still terrifies me, Outside Over There, about goblins who kidnap a baby while the big sister is in charge.

Then there were those books that I decided were worth the read, but that needed some on-the-spot, parental re-writing. My parents’ library’s version of the Three Little Pigs fell into that category. Did you know that the original mother pig sent away her children because she didn’t have the means to care for them? That it was a maudlin and traumatic farewell? And that each little pig set out on his own, and the first two, who built houses of straw and sticks respectively, were actually eaten by the Big Bad Wolf? Contrary to my memory, they didn’t escape to their older brother’s House of Bricks? And that the third little pig, after outsmarting the wolf in the apple orchard and the county fair, captured the wolf and ate him? Ate him? Need I remind you what the wolf had recently eaten?

Luckily, I thought, my four-year-old will not notice if I revise the story slightly. After all, I am quite experienced in such editing. The older brother in Tiki Tiki Tembo? Well, it’s not that he was never quite the same again after he spent too long in the well; he merely had to rest in bed for a few days, and learn to be a better listener. The family members in The Carrot Seed? They’re pretty harsh, so I soften their language a bit – “I’m not sure it will grow,” they say, instead of the definitive “it won’t come up.” I was confident I could appropriately re-work Three Little Pigs. Little did I know that my daughter’s grandparents had been reading her the book surreptitiously, word for word. When I attempted to deviate from the text, she carefully corrected me: No, the wolf eats the piggy, Mama. Then she wanted me to read the book again, the right way this time.

So much from shielding her from the winds that blow down Houses of Straw. And why is it that I was the one trembling after each reading, while she, resilient, asked for more?

You would think that I would have learned by now that, as parents, we are defenseless against the raging winds when they choose to blow. We painstakingly build our houses, confident they are made of bricks, and when the wolf shows up, unannounced and uninvited, he huffs and he puffs and he blows that house down. Maybe our children should be exposed to these stories from an early age. Will this help prepare them? Will this help them learn that the challenge actually lies in how we respond to those raging winds, how we choose to continue our stories, and build anew, once the illusion of solid structure has crumbled around us?

–Maya Bernstein