Caring for the Earth With Our Children

Sunday, April 22nd is Earth Day, an international day to raise awareness around and take action connected to the many ecological challenges that face our world. But in our Jewish tradition, we have numerous opportunities in our day to day lives to teach our children to treat the natural world with respect and care. While "living green" may seem trendy, thousands of years of Jewish ritual and values can steer the way we contemporary parents teach our children to be partners in making the world a healthier place for people, animals, our lakes and oceans, plants and trees.

I remember sitting in science class when I was in sixth grade, watching a filmstrip (yes, it was the early eighties) about landfills and garbage. It was devastating to sit and watch what happened to all of the trash that I had previously tossed out with no thought. I asked my teacher afterwards what could be changed and he looked at me sadly and said, "There's nothing we can do."

That sense of environmental inertia surrounded my middle and high school years, but by college, I connected with other like-minded people who were finding ways to take action around their eco-friendly values. Later in my twenties, when I went through a period of re-discovering and engaging with being Jewish after largely leaving behind formal connection to Jewish community  when I left home for college, I discovered within the Jewish world a number of organizations and groups of people dedicated to living in an ecologically sound way, inspired by Jewish tradition.

When I became a mom in my early 30s, I knew that I wanted to raise my children with a love for the natural world, the knowledge that we are responsible as human beings to care for the earth and a reverence and respect for what they eat. These are some of the simple, hands-on ways that we bring these important Jewish values to life in our home, not just in April, but throughout the year:

• Loving Nature: For all of us busy parents who spend lots of time behind screens and in our cars, it can take an effort to make sure we're getting outside to spend quality time in nature with our children. Setting aside a weekend afternoon to explore one of our areas amazing parks is a wonderful way to make sure that you and your kids are getting to be in nature. When my kids were young, the ducks in Valley Green were a major draw and as they grew older, we moved deeper into the woods to find waterfalls and explore favorite paths. In Jewish tradition, there are blessings that we say when we see a rainbow, the first blooms in spring and other natural wonders. Using traditional words and/or inviting children to give thanks for what they love in nature deepens their connection to what they experience when you explore the outdoors.
• Recycle: There is something that we can do to deal better with our garbage and thank goodness that most of our communities have a recycling program. Get your little ones involved in helping you to sort paper and plastic. Show them the recycling symbol so that they can look for it with you in the grocery store. Helping to put out the recycling bin is a great way for young children to work on their gross motor skills. Recycling is a way of bringing the Jewish value ba'al taschit (do not waste) to life.
• Making Thoughtful Food Choices: Our Jewish tradition brings us kashrut, a practice that can help to make us conscious of our food choices and the way that we treat animals. There are so many ways that we can make food choices in our homes that help support a healthy world. For example, although we are not all vegetarian in my house, we always eat vegetarian on "Meatless Monday," an international effort to help the planet by eating less meat. You and your kids can shop locally at farmer's markets in your neighborhoods,buy Fair Trade products, and even start your own garden to learn first hand about where food comes from. 
• Lower Your Carbon Footprint: Rather than the doomed eco-education that so many of us grew up with, we parents  can now show our children how each one of us can lower our carbon footprint with simple changes in behavior. For example, you and your children may choose to select one day/week when you walk or ride bikes instead of drive or put your cellphones and other electronic devices away. Many Jewish families are rediscovering the importance of Shabbat as an eco-friendly day!
• Get Active!: The most important message that I try and give my kids is that we all can take action to make the world a better place for ourselves and for future generations. The idea of Tikkun Olam--taking care of/repairing the world--is the value that underlies our jkidphilly "Little Hands Make a Big Difference" programs. Please bring your children out and help us take action in a fun, child-friendly way. There are SO many ways to help take care of our earth and we on the jkidphilly team are happy to help you think through ideas that work best for your family.

Happy Earth Day! Please share the ways that you and your kids go green here or on our jkidphilly facebook page.
Gabby
Gabby Kaplan-Mayer is Jkidphilly Program Director in Center City.

Cooking With Your Kids For Passover

By Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer

Maybe even more so than for any other Jewish holiday, food is forefront to our celebrating of Passover. When we sit down together to re-tell the ancient tale of once being slaves in the land of Egypt, the food on the seder plate helps us recount our journey to freedom. From the tears represented in the salt water to the bitterness of the maror, the sweet and sometimes savory charoset mixture and the matzah that we eat throughout the holiday, the special foods of Passover have helped to carry the Exodus story from one generation to the next.

It’s not only the ceremonial foods that make Passover cuisine memorable—it’s also the sharing of favorite family recipes creatively concocted by home cooks figuring ways to feed their families without using leavening for eight days. From kugels to rolls to Passover desserts and dumplings, many of us pull out recipes during Passover that we only make at this specific time of year.

As parents, one of the most experiential ways that we can teach our children about Passover tradition is to bring them right into the kitchen with us. Whether you’re new to making your own seder and keeping Passover or have been cooking Passover recipes for years, here are some ideas for sharing the experience of preparing your families’ Passover food with your little chefs by your side:

• Shopping for Special Ingredients: In the weeks before Passover, many grocery stores (especially around metropolitan areas) begin stocking Kosher for Passover food.  Make a list of foods that you will need for Passover and plop your little ones into the shopping cart. You can make a point of showing them all of the different foods that the store is carrying for Passover.  Ask them to guess how many boxes of matzah that they see on the shelf! With older children, you can do a “scavenger hunt” and invite them to help you find the items that are on your grocery list. Add some different items to your list like fresh horseradish root and see if your kids know what to look for.
• Prep your cooking space: As a cooking instructor, I often remind parents that their prep before starting a recipe is essential to the success of the cooking experience. Clear a space where you and your kids can work together. Make sure that you have all of the ingredients and cooking tools that the recipes calls for before you begin. I always have an empty dishpan near where I'm cooking to easily collect dirty spoons, bowls, etc.
•  Choose some kid-friendly recipes: There are so many wonderful Passover recipes to choose from. Often when I’m teaching Passover cuisine, I’ll start with charoset and choose a few different recipes from around the world. There’s lots of chopping practice with the apples, and I use recipes that also feature bananas and oranges so that little hands can keep busy peeling and slicing with a plastic knife. Another fun approach to Passover cooking with your kids is to brainstorm all of the fun and different toppings that you could add to matzah. In my house, we start with a little tomato sauce on the matzah and have created some wild and wonderful matzah pizzas from there!

• Focus on Fruit/veggies: All of us, in every season, can only benefit from adding more fruits and vegetables to our diet. Passover is a great time to encourage children to explore new kinds of fruits and veggies. In my children’s cookbook, The Kitchen Classroom, I feature a “play with your food” recipe called ABC vegetable salad in which kids spell their names or any word they like using cut up carrots, celery, pepper, cucumber and avocado slices. This activity is also a great way to keep kids engaged at the seder table while they’re waiting to eat—you could invite them to make up Passover-related words. I’ve found that by inviting kids to play with their veggies, they are much more likely to eat them!

Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer is Jewish Learning Venture’s Program Director for Family Engagement in Center City and for Special Needs Resources. She blogs about cooking with kids at www.kitchenclassroom4kids.com.

Inclusion for Every Child and Family

When my son was diagnosed with autism at age three, I was plunged into an alternative universe in which his childhood became a therapeutic environment, in which my husband and I struggled to find the best professionals who could help him learn to communicate and modulate his heightened reactions to sensory input. Juggling speech, occupational and physical therapies with a cognitive-behavior system and special diet and supplement regimen, we became, as most parents do who are thrust into this role, experts and advocates, determining to help our child in every possible way.

My beautiful son just celebrated his tenth birthday and in the seven years since his diagnosis, I’ve learned more about compassion, love, grief, patience and joy than I could have imagined possible. I’ve also learned that the system that parents enter when a child is diagnosed with a disability is a very flawed system. Therapy for a child cannot work in isolation, when a child is part of an interdependent system that we call family, extended family, community. Parents, grandparents, siblings and cousins all need resources and supports to help them process the challenges of supporting a child with special needs.

When I was depressed or overwhelmed with my son’s challenges, I was not able to carry out his therapies. This is a secret shame that many parents who are asked to shoulder so much, are not able to acknowledge. But because I so much wanted my son to learn and grow, I pushed through my isolation and found resources to help me move through my difficult feelings and begin to embrace the road ahead for my family and me.

One important resource for us were two Jewish preschool programs for children with special needs—Bright Horizons at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El and then Sinai at Adath Jeshurun. In these programs, we discovered teachers who loved and understood my son and offered ongoing support to us as parents. I connected with other parents sharing my struggles, which was a very important step in moving out of my shock and despair.

As a Jewish educator, I decided to create a program called Celebrations!, a Shabbat program in which children of all abilities could experience a developmentally-appropriate worship service followed by learning with the child, parents and siblings together. Celebrations! became a way for my family to experience Jewish holidays, values and learning together and our program has since been replicated in three other local synagogues.

February is Jewish Disabilities Awareness Month, an opportunity for families, educators, clergy and everyone in our Jewish community to shine light on the unique challenges of our members who have different abilities and to affirm our traditions’ imperative to embrace all people and to see God’s image reflected in every human being, whether or not he/she has physical, cognitive or emotional challenges.

Since living with my son’s disability, my personal and professional life has transformed to focus on education about special needs and inclusion. How I wish that I had stretched to learn about the experience of people with different abilities before discovering that my child was such a person. When each of us learns about the experience of life with a disability—from a friend, community member or by watching documentaries or attending conferences—we begin to remove the unconscious fears around disability that so many of us carry and begin to see the dignified human lives that shine through the diagnosis.

In February, Jewish Learning Venture will host three important seminars for parents and educators on topics related to special needs in our “Whole Child” series and in April, we will host a full day “Openingthe Gates of Torah” inclusion conference. I hope that you will join us for these important events and share them with families you may know who could use some support and understanding from our community.