Raising kids Jewishly in a 21st-century world
Author Sharon Duke Estroff says a simple practice such as celebrating
Shabbat together can ease the pressures of Jewish family life in the 21st century.
Photo courtesy Broadway Books
Excerpt: Confirming who they are
Sidebar: Festival of books brings noted authors to JCC
With all the distractions facing Jewish kids these days, where can parents go to find answers?
Can I Have a Cell Phone for Hanukkah? The Essential Scoop on Raising Modern Jewish Kids by Sharon Duke Estroff (Broadway Books) is a good starting point.
Estroff, a syndicated columnist whose work frequently appears on NJ Jewish News' Real Life page, specializes in just such issues. Drawing on her own experiences as the mother of four kids, ranging in age from five to 15, she addresses the challenges of keeping up to date while keeping it real.
"I try to write only about things that I've been through personally," the Atlanta resident told NJ Jewish News in a phone interview while waiting to pick up one of her kids from Jewish day school. "I write from the trenches."
Estroff taught in that environment for 10 years, which gave her an "extended family" of people supplying data. "In addition to being a Jewish mom, I've also met so many of them and I understand how they think and what they worry about. So if the material is not from my own anxieties, it's from the anxieties of those I've worked with."
Cell Phone addresses just about every problem and situation that could crop up in a kid's life between kindergarten and high school. Included are situations facing Jewish youth that can make them feel alienated from their non-Jewish friends, such as the sports team/holiday conflicts or "the Christmas dilemma" (see excerpt).
Balance is important in Estroff's world; blending secular and religious activities takes a lot of planning, skill, and diplomacy.
"People want psychologists and stress management and outsource everything with their kids but yet we have the answers right here. There are so many parts of our religion that offer a solution, if not an anchor or a port in the storm. Just doing Shabbat at your house is such a huge tool that is so much more powerful than all these other things that are out there."
Cell Phone could not have been written 20 years ago, said the author. "It wasn't like it is now. I really think this is for a new generation of Jewish parents. What I tried to do is point out that we have some unbelievably challenging things that we face as parents."
The Internet is an omnipresent source of concern. Between research for homework, instant messaging friends, downloading files, and spending time on social networking sites, "it has just exponentially complicated parenting, whether we realize that or not," said Estroff. "It's just such a huge factor." She devotes a chapter to coping with issues such as keeping kids safe in cyberspace and the "cyberbullying epidemic." Yet she maintains the Web is not the devil. "[I]t's an incredibly cool invention…. Lots of worthwhile things come with an inherent risk, and the Internet is no different," she writes in the book.
Estroff was about to embark on an extensive book tour but plans to return home as often as possible to check in on the home front. "It's going to be pretty intense, but I'm excited about it — and nervous." She said she has to deal with not only getting to the sites of her appearances, but making sure her kids get to where they need to be in her absence. "Fortunately I have a lot of support, so I think it will all work out."
Sharon Duke Estroff will appear at the annual Jewish Book Festival of the JCC of Central NJ in Scotch Plains on Monday, Nov. 26, at 7:30 p.m.
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