In homage to the fabulous Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series, we offer you a public service: a guide to negotiating those rocky few weeks between the return of your child from summer camp and the start of school. It’s wise to be prepared for the worst; apparently in a courtroom situation, judges do not consider ...

I’ve been thinking about shatnez recently. That’s the Torah’s inexplicable prohibition against wearing fabric containing a mixture of wool and linen. I say “inexplicable” because neither Leviticus nor Deuteronomy, the two books that mention this rule, explain why we’re supposed to follow it. That makes shatnez a chok, a law given without a reason (as ...

I’m a parent. My editor, Liel, isn’t. But he is an expert in new media. And we were recently chatting about online bullying, a phenomenon that interests us both, but found ourselves completely at odds.
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Hi, Liel, a person whose views are diametrically opposed to mine on everything and who has no child and therefore no ...

Sun-In! Sea Breeze! Dippity-Do! The comments on my last column, about Jewish summer camp in the 1980s, unleashed a torrent of memories. Forgotten images came rushing back so powerfully, it was just like the finale of Lost.
In seemingly but not actually unrelated news, I read Anthony Lane’s hilarious piece in the June 28 issue of ...

Josie, 8, is going to Jewish overnight camp for the first time this year. I’m fine. I’m ready. Don’t mind me, I’ll just sit here alone in the dark.
Her camp, like mine back in the day, offers t’filah (prayer), omanut (art), sports, chofesh (free time), swimming, weekly sending of Shabbat-o-grams and attendant social anxiety: How ...

Not long ago I saw I was included in a roundup of “top Jewish mommybloggers.” And what I felt, immediately and viscerally, was horror.
The very word “mommyblog” makes me cringe. When my children’s doctors called me “mommy” (as in “Mommy, give her this liquid Augmentin twice a day,” invariably without adding “don’t be surprised if ...

Congratulations, kindergarten class of 2010! I’m honored that you invited me to address you today. I look at all your shining faces—well, not yours, Nathan; wipe that jam off your forehead—and I am filled with pride as I imagine you striding purposefully into first grade.
Maxine, Akiba, Hannah, Koufax, Ezra, Mahershalalhashbaz, Nathan, Herzl, Manilow, Spinoza, Golda, ...

It’s like living with two tiny Shalom Auslanders. My children crack each other up by yelling “diarrhea!” at inopportune moments. They inform me, somberly, that “people think it’s gross, but it’s really great on toast,” before dissolving in a puddle (hmm, maybe that was an unfortunate metaphor) of giggles. They are madly in love with ...

So, my week was kinda crazy; how was yours?
I knew that my column last week about my ambivalence toward Israel would generate a lot of debate. I did not know I would be called a “vapid ignoramus,” a terrible mother, a “spoilt” consumerist, a “knucklehead,” and a “hypocrite” whose passivity helped cause the Holocaust. There ...

Many of you seem to have a lot to say concerning my little cri de coeur about reconciling my liberalism with Zionism, and my uneasy feeling that I’ve fallen down on the parenting job by not addressing my ambivalence head-on with my kids. I appreciate all the comments, positive and negative. (Well, maybe not so ...