Health & Fitness
Toddlers and the Torah: How a Frazzled Mom's Search for Serenity Led Her to the Synagogue
As Hanukkah and Christmas have arrived, overwhelmed parents of all religions could learn about serenity and faith from a mom who decided that laundry on Saturdays was "against her religion."
Two decades ago, Susan Goldstein (not her real name) was your typical frazzled suburban mom of two toddlers. The East Coast native stayed home full time in suburban Seattle, using her Ivy League engineering degree for her “household engineer” position: changing diapers, cleaning bottles, stacking up blocks, picking up toys and folding endless loads of laundry.
“My husband was working overseas for a tech firm, coming home every three or four weeks,” Goldstein recalls. “I was home alone, without any family around, and my only social interaction was a Mommy-Baby class once a week.”
Exhausted and stressed, Goldstein realized something needed to give, so she decided to take a break from laundry just one day each week. “I just got sick of it, so I started saying, ‘I’m not doing laundry on Saturdays, because it’s against my religion.’ “
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Ironically, before long, it truly was.
Raised in a non-practicing, “reformed” Jewish family, Goldstein completed her Bat Mitzvah but, she says, “I was not serious about religion. As an adult, I would do the major holidays with my family, schlepping the kids out east, but it wasn’t until my daughter started preschool that I really started thinking about Judaism.”
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At two years old, Goldstein’s oldest daughter began preschool at the Jewish Community Center, where on Thursdays, during the weekly Shabbat observance, parents were invited in for candle-lighting and challah.
Intrigued, Goldstein started reading children’s books about Judaism, and soon moved on to the Torah and Rabbi Kornfeld’s Monday-night lectures.
Soon, she became engrossed in learning about and observing Judaism.
“In the Torah, there’s a whole section on Jewish law, explaining the 39 categories of work [that are forbidden] on the Sabbath,” Goldstein explains. “The list includes writing, making a fire, creating or destroying, planting or fixing. I didn’t want to take on the whole thing at first, so I focused on [not doing] any chores on Saturdays, including cleaning, laundry and shopping.”
She felt renewed, both in finding her religion and in lightening her load.
For more on Susan's journey, read the complete blog post at http://permissionslips.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/frazzled-mom-gives-up-laundry-gains-religion/. My colleague and I update our blog weekly.