It’s been a year and a half since I reported on our family’s using a “chart” system, described in the column “Charting a New Course.” So, you might be wondering right, how did it go?

The short answer: well, there’s good news and bad news.

We had two goals when we set up our chart system. The first was practical: we wanted to get the kids to help out more with chores around the house and at the same time reduce the level of stress that resulted from never knowing who was “on” for a particular chore on any given day.

The second goal was more behavioral: we hoped that by instituting a clear system of rewards and consequences, over time we could create new patterns of interaction where the kids would pitch in without needing to be asked.

So far, we’ve succeeded nicely on the first…and failed miserably on the second.

The most important take-away lesson? If you’re going to try to enforce a chart, you’ve got to be willing to play the part of policeperson, at least when you’re getting going.

If it was up to my wife Jody, we’d probably be doing great. She loves laying down the law and handing out tickets for infractions. But it’s exactly someone like Jody you need to make this system work.

As I wrote in that previous column, for the first few days we had a lot of self-directed enthusiasm from the kids. Our youngest son, Aviv, was raring to do anything and everything asked of him for the simple pleasure of being able to check off the tasks on his personal worksheet. The two older kids were more motivated by the prospect of the reward at (it’s amazing what a little Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey can bring out in a child).

By the end of the second week, though, beds were no longer being made consistently nor were the dishes being cleared with the same gush of gusto we had in the initial rush of compliance.

Jody and I debated what to do next.

“They should lose their reward,” Jody said. “And receive a consequence.”

“So which is it,” I asked, “lose the reward or receive a consequence?”

“Both,” Jody replied.

“That’s not fair,” I sputtered, sounding more like my sixteen-year-old son Amir than a stern but loving father seeking to instill positive values in his children.

Before long, it was clear that the parents who had painstakingly set up the chart system didn’t see eye to eye themselves. And this was just one of a number of nuances that neither of us had quite thought through yet.

Such as: what do we do if the reward is a family activity? Do we not rent a movie for Saturday night? That punishes everyone. But how can we exclude one child from the evening’s fun just for failing to pick up a sock?

And: should we be checking the kids’ charts each day or use some sort of honor system? What happens if a kid does the tasks on his or her chart but doesn’t actually check them off?

And: should we hang the charts on the refrigerator for easy access and review? (“No way,” said fourteen-year-old Merav, fearing the public humiliation should any of her friends come to visit).

But the most critical question came down to this: should we give the kids a warning or grace period before coming down hard?

Jody took the maximalist approach. “They need to have something taken away if they’re going to learn,” she posited.

I went the opposite way. “What do we really want to accomplish here? We want the kids to do their chores, right? Does it matter so much how we get there?”

Jody wanted to say yes, but I could see she wasn’t entirely sure. That was enough for the old softie and dysfunctional disciplinarian that I am to win this round.

“Why don’t we try it my way,” I suggested. “If it doesn’t work, we can always get tough later.”

As if that was ever going to happen. Once we started down the slippery path of non-enforcement, there was no turning back to the purity of chart heaven. Rather than consulting their charts and proactively stepping up to the job, the kids waited for a parent to tell them who was on for clearing the dish rack tonight, or who was supposed to take the trash out.

If I saw that clothes hadn’t been picked up, I’d gently remind the culprit to make sure his or her room was straightened up by morning…or when school was out…or before bed the next night at the absolute latest, I’d warn, finger wagging unconvincingly.

Sounds like a great big flame out, doesn’t it? But you know what? It wasn’t. That’s the crazy thing. After a few weeks of our modified system, the floor was being swept and the kitchen counters were getting wiped down. Maybe not right away or without prompting. But they got done. And there were no disagreements over who was supposed to do a task – it was all written in the chart in black and white (Arial 12 point actually).

Sure, it wasn’t where we thought we’d end up when we started charting this new course. But it was as ship shore a start as this family’s likely to make, and reducing our family stress level is nothing to throw the whole system overboard for.

Stay tuned for more…when we finally drop anchor, I’ll be sure to let you know.

When I woke up on the second morning of the biggest snowstorm Jerusalem’s seen for 20 years this week, nine-year-old Aviv was sitting on the couch in his pajamas watching cartoons on the TV. Outside in the courtyard of our apartment complex I could hear the happy squeals of children throwing snowballs, building snowmen and generally frolicking in the white blanket that had temporarily obliterated the comforting Jerusalem stone that gives the city its unique character.

“Aviv,” I said cheerily. He looked up from his TV show. “Don’t you want to get dressed and go play in the snow like the other kids?”

Aviv shrugged a shoulder, that classic Israeli kid body language meaning go away.

“The snow is melting, Aviv,” I continued, noting that the sky was a brilliant blue. “It won’t last all day. You should go out now, take advantage of it while you can.”

Aviv continued to stare at the television, barely registering my entreaties. Which led me to wonder: How did I raise such a snowper-pooper?

Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the beauty of snow, I do. It’s very pleasant to look at…from a distance. But up close, it’s just so darn inconvenient. Especially in Jerusalem where everything shuts down. Completely.

In other locations around the world, a little snow means you might have to drive a little slower or put chains on your car tires. In Jerusalem, the city is paralyzed. Schools are closed. Supermarkets don’t receive deliveries. Bus service is canceled. Even the trendy new Waffle Bar in our neighborhood was shut tight. I mean, what more could you want than a hot caramel and whip cream covered waffle on a cold snowy night, but no…

For me, the effect of the snow was more immediate. I had been scheduled to participate in a 3 day seminar this week. I had been looking forward to it for some time, but when the news predicted snow, I began to get anxious. How would I get to the seminar if the roads were closed? If I could, where would I park? And would there be heat in the seminar room if the temperature outside dropped to sub-zero?

The seminar, needless to say, was postponed until the following week.

People don’t expect snow in Jerusalem. With its baking hot summers and close proximity to stunning desert moonscapes, it’s easy to forget the city is perched on the top of a mountain, at an elevation of 2500 feet. The weather can be bitterly cold in winter; this most recent snowstorm dumped 12 cm of the white stuff on the holy city.

My worst snow experience in Israel by far was several years ago. It was during the time I was working in Tel Aviv. I needed to get back home but as I set out from my office, the news was reporting that the main highway to Jerusalem was closed. The only alternative was Highway 443 which runs through the West Bank – it’s a road we tend to avoid at night as there have been a few well publicized terrorist shootings. But it was the only way home.

As I approached the summit near Givat Ze’ev, the snow became thicker and visibility dropped to just a few inches. Cars were skidding off the road (particularly dangerous because that stretch of 443 is essentially on the edge of a cliff). The sides of the road were lined with people who’d gotten out of their non-functional vehicles and were actually walking in the meter high snow drifts, where to I don’t know. There was a bus turned over on its side.

I got on the cell phone with Jody and she talked me through three hours of the most treacherous driving I’ve ever experienced. There were times when other drivers whose vehicles had already skidded into oblivion physically guided my car when I could neither see nor steer. I was so traumatized I didn’t go back to work for the rest of the week.

So if Aviv wants to spend the day vegetating in front of the boob tube rather than joining the snow patrol outside, how could I fault him? He’s only got his father to blame.

Aviv had been anxiously awaiting the big day for months now. On his eighth birthday, he knew, he would get to go out with his Imma and Abba for a private dinner where he’d hear about “the most wonderful, beautiful, miraculous thing in the world.”

“But what is it?” Aviv would ask my wife Jody or me at regular occasions in the months leading up to his birthday. His big brother and sister just smiled knowingly. They’d already been let in on the secret.

You see, in the Blum household, age eight is when we first talk to the kids about sex.

Many of you probably think eight is too young, but in our experience it is about the time when the other kids in school start talking about “it.”  In fact, it was just a few weeks after The Talk with Merav, then 12, that her friends started up with their own stories.

We wanted our kids to hear about sex from us first, in a positive loving context, not from some boy or girl in school who would inevitably spin the subject as “dirty” or “gross,” employing only partial and most probably incorrect information.

We also hoped that this approach would establish open communication about a subject that can so often be cloaked in discomfort and embarrassment.  So far, that has been the result with our older kids.

Picking where to take Aviv out to eat was perhaps the hardest part of the whole process. We wanted it to be nice – this was a special evening, after all -- but it also needed to allow us some privacy.  Aviv's choice, the now defunct Pizza Meter - a South American-style restaurant in our neighborhood that was painted entirely in burnt orange and played loud and lively Brazilian salsa music - wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for a quiet, serious discussion. But it was Aviv’s birthday. So Pizza Meter it was.

We started off by talking about how much we love Aviv and how proud we are of all his accomplishments – pretty generic stuff, but it set the tone. A 10 percent a week bump in his allowance helped put him in a good mood.

Then we turned to the juicy stuff.

“Now, you know that your parents love each other very much, right Aviv,” Jody began.

Aviv smiled innocently. He had absolutely no idea where this was leading.

“And also that we’re very attracted to each other.”

“What does ‘attracted’ mean?” he asked.

“It means I think your mother is very beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the world, and I like to be with her. I like to kiss her and stuff,” I said.

“And I think your father is the most handsome man in the world,” Jody said.

At this point, our pizza arrived and we took a short break to chow down. We had ordered a dish that sounded appropriate for the evening: the “Cha-Cha-Cha” pizza.

After we had filled our tummies a bit, we launched into what happens after kissing.  We then proceeded to tell him exactly how babies are made.

Aviv's face registered a priceless mix of shock and subtle satisfaction at suddenly being admitted to such an exclusive club of knowledge; at discovering that there was something new about his body that he had been clueless about just moments before.

I felt a similar mash-up of emotions: at once proud of our proactive stance, and at the same time more than a little bit sad that, however well thought out our intentions were, his precious innocence necessarily had to end here and now between slices of Cha-Cha- Cha.

As we continued our discussion, we talked about how sex should only be between two people who care deeply about and are committed to each other. We emphasized that sex is an expression of love and that, by the way, it feels really good.

“How good?” Aviv asked.

“Well, it’s like getting the best massage in the world," I ventured a stab.

Aviv looked skeptical. “You know I don’t like massages,” he said.

Now, if you’re expecting me to kiss and tell you all the technical details of how we explained the mechanics of sex, I’m sorry I’ll have to disappoint you. We’re still PG-rated around here.

Suffice it to say that Aviv’s ears perked up a few times more when he was presented with various new pieces of information that seemed illogical to his eight-year-old mind. We checked in with him regularly on whether he had any questions. In general, it looked like he’d absorbed it all. How well he’d gotten the message, only time would tell.

As we paid the bill and headed home, I was satisfied that things had gone well. But I also realized that we had gotten one thing wrong. There’s something else that’s really the most wonderful, beautiful, miraculous thing in the world.

Being a parent.

I’m generally not one to shy away from adventure. I’ll be the first to travel to exotic locations like India and Egypt. 20 years ago I jumped out of an airplane. But there was something about SCUBA diving that freaked me out. After all, human beings can’t naturally breathe under water. So the idea of submerging even just a paltry few meters with only a flimsy air tube separating me from imminent drowning led to great discomfort if not outright fear.

At the same time, I felt like SCUBA diving is something I ought to do. Many of my friends swear by it. An introductory dive, they reassured me, where an instructor accompanies you every step of the way, is not in any way dangerous.

So, on a recent trip to Eilat, I decided to take the plunge. The whole family, actually. It was a typically warm Eilati December day when we headed over to the Red Sea Sports Club to give it the old college try. The following is a primer for any other chicken littles deciding to go all the way.

The dive process actually can be divided into two parts: suiting up and the dive itself. Getting into our wet suits would prove to be the most difficult part of the entire experience.

I’d be generous in calling the wet suit a tight fit. The suit is so form fitting that the only way to get it on is to wiggle around in a hot shower while pouring buckets of liquid soap up and down your legs and arms as you struggle to pull the darn thing over surprisingly bulbous limbs.

The scene was vaguely tragic-comical as the entire Blum family tugged and grunted in the communal shower, standing, sitting and panting heavily. It took us 20 minutes, but we were ultimately successful. Then there was another surprise waiting for us to complete the getting dressed part of the dive: weights. Our instructors tied a belt with virtual barbells around our waists, strapped on a backpack with a heavy air tank and instructed us to walk across the road to the sea.

We must have been some sight – strutting like stiff penguins in our form fitting suits as if we were lugging a walrus across the heavily trafficked highway leading to the Egyptian border.

Eventually we got to the water and climbed in, holding on to the fence that leads to the Coral Beach diving area. We were given our masks, told to spit into and rinse them to keep them from steaming up (mine did anyway) and given last minute instructions on what to do if you accidentally smile while submerged (water gets into the mask which you can exhume by pressing the top of the mask and blowing out with your nose). We were reminded how to “pop” our ears as we descended and taught various hand signals that our instructors would use to guide our dives (up, down, spin like a top…OK I made the last one up).

We had now reached the point of no return. Still, I had a hard time shaking my apprehensions. What if I had a panic attack and couldn’t breathe? What if I opened my mouth too wide and I swallowed water instead of air? What if they’d neglected to fill my oxygen tank all the way and I found myself sucking on nothing (never mind the fact that the tank holds a full 2 hours of air, more than enough for our brief introduction).

But there was no time to contemplate further. My dive instructor nearly pushed me under and then there I was floating and breathing and being pulled down, deeper and deeper.

Well, not that deep. The introductory dive doesn’t go very far out or down – no more than about 5 meters. Still there was plenty to look at – brightly colored clown fish, some lovely striped lion fish, a couple of big blue parrot fish, multi-colored anemones plus plenty of yellow and orange coral waving in the still water with little white eels poking their heads out. It was all absolutely charming and enough to give a good impression of what a full-fledged dive is all about.

We stayed down about 25 minutes before returning to our starting point then trudging out to the shore and back across the road where we were faced with the equally laborious task of removing our wet suits. All told, the entire dive experience lasted just under two hours.

I’d like to be able to tell you that I felt like my friends under the water – free, weightless and at peace. Maybe that comes with time – and space. During the introductory dive, you’re never alone; your guide holds your hand – literally - pointing out interesting fish, and does most of the propulsion for you. Not that I’m complaining. For a first timer, a little help was greatly welcomed.

After the dive, I asked the family if they’d like to do another one. The kids answered with an immediate yes. I was less sure. I hadn’t shaken off my fears entirely. And then there was that wet suit to contend with. But I was certainly glad we’d tried. It was worthwhile experience if not entirely SCUBAduper.

After the fourth litter, we started to reconsider whether to continue our inadvertent role of playing birthing hospital to a family of incestuous rodents.

14-year-old Merav has had hamsters for a year and a half now. We started with just one, a male, but Merav felt he’d be lonely, so we got him a companion, a female. We thought it would be educational to have little hamster babies. And so it was the first time. Merav went positively ga-ga when Mazie the mother started squeezing out these tiny pink little peanut shaped critters. The babies, blind and unable to crawl, let alone walk, squirmed and nursed and were as adorable as little rodents can be.

When Mazie started to eat the runts, however, Merav had a different reaction. “How can she do that?” Merav implored, finding fur and bones in the cage one morning. But that too was an education in the vicissitudes of hamster life.

The surviving babies grew and ran on the wheel, climbed the monkey bars and kicked their food onto the rug in Merav’s room. The more hamsters there were, the more pungent the smell. But everything was still so educational

Then came the second litter. We’re not sure who mated with whom. Baby hamsters become sexually mature in only a few months. The result is a fact of life, but the thought of mother and child “doing it,” as Merav so diminutively put it, was nevertheless not a little bit “icky.”

Shortly thereafter, the mother died. It was undoubtedly from old age (hamsters only live a couple of years and she was fully grown when we’d bought her). Merav was nevertheless choked up and we gave the hamster mom a short funeral before burying her in a flower pot.

Regardless of mom’s departure, the hamster cage was getting full. Fortunately, our local pet store has a policy of buying back baby hamsters for a few shekels. Merav reluctantly parted with some of the older ones from the first litter but wasn’t able to tell which of the remaining babies were males and which were females.

Not surprisingly, a third litter followed. By this time, the incestuous predilections of hamsters were clear and it was all we could do to keep up with their unholy unions, and take more hamsters to the pet store. Our educational process was starting to resemble the Israeli school system: overcrowded and rife with discipline problems.

The more hamsters we had, the more aggressive they became. One day, Merav returned from school to find one of the smaller hamsters with an injured foot. He’d gotten in a tussle with one of his older siblings (or was it a parent?) and was now bleeding and limping around the cage. Merav insisted we call a veterinarian, but I protested: what could a vet do for a broken hamster paw – apply a little hamster cast perhaps?

The next day, the other hamsters had decapitated their injured peer and eaten most of his body.

That was the last straw for Merav. “A year and a half is enough,” she said. She would get rid of all of them.

Bad news was waiting for us: the pet store was all full up. Not only were they not paying, they weren’t taking any new hamsters at all. Merav was in a panic “What am I going to do?” she asked. “Another baby is going to get hurt.”

She called several pet stores until she found one on the other side of town that would take four – but only the young ones. The six-month-old adults were already too “elderly.” Merav brought in the hamsters to the store and we said a not particularly tearful goodbye.

But what would we do with the remaining three? “We could feed them to Bob’s snakes,” I suggested not entirely in jest. Bob already buys frozen mice to feed to his pets; a live hamster would be a real delicacy.

“Abba, that’s disgusting!” Merav replied curtly, visibly offended that I would even think of such a thing.

“Well, we could set them free,” I offered.

“No!” Merav shrieked. “They wouldn’t last an hour. They’d get eaten by cats.”

“We could let them go in the Jerusalem Forest. There are no cats there.” (Well, not many, I thought.)

Merav pondered about that for a while. We debated the pros and cons of freeing pets into the wild. While they probably wouldn’t survive long, they might really enjoy their brief moments of freedom beyond the cage.

The hamsters’ savior came in the form of a phone call from our friend Naomi. She would take them. She had little kids who would enjoy watching the hamsters play. But only the girl hamsters. Naomi wasn’t interested in opening her own breeding facility. Fortunately, the babies had grown up enough to be able to distinguish which sex was which.

That left Merav with one male who is now living a life of solitary confinement. We figure his days as one of the “old men” are numbered anyway. No need to shorten them with a trip to the great outdoors.

If you’re thinking of getting hamsters to entertain or educate your kids, just keep in mind it’s not for the squeamish. Birth, death, even murder – in our hamster education, we’ve seen it all.

I recently turned 47 and I’m feeling old. When I was growing up, 47 would have already been “middle aged.” I’m not sure that’s still the case but just the same things have been changing for me and my body.

First off there’s my gut. It’s not huge, but it’s definitely growing. I’m eating and exercising the same, so all I can blame it on is age. I feel it when I run. It’s harder to keep up, to maintain my stamina.

When I mention it to friends they pooh-pooh me and tell me I’m still the skinniest 47-year-old they know. But after eight years of wearing the same size, my pants no longer fit. If my waist has gone up, how can it all be in my head?
 
My wife Jody bought me a present for my birthday. A gift certificate for 2 free sessions with a personal trainer. Is she trying to send me a message?

My second complaint about getting older is my eyes. The problem is distance. Recently, when we were driving home from a trip out of the city, I realized I couldn’t make out the cars in front of me, couldn’t see the signs directing us back to Jerusalem until I was nearly on top of them. We wound up pulling over so I could let Jody drive.

My optometrist says I need two pairs of glasses. That’s right, I’m going to be one of those old farts who wears his spectacles around his neck on a chain. I’ll soon be looking to raise money for a new software company I’m starting later this month. Investors expect generation y twentysomethings. How’s it going to look when this old geezer with two pairs of glasses dangling from his neck walks into the room? Checkbooks out? I don’t think so…

But the biggest sign that I’m getting old is that my darling daughter Merav, suddenly, seemingly overnight, has turned into a teenager…and she knows it. She won’t share anything about her life, indeed she’ll barely talk to us.

“How was school?”

“That’s my business and not yours.”

“Are you still friends with Daniella?”

“Talk to the hand.”

“Where are you going tonight?”

“Ooh, you’re so controlling!”

What happened to the eight year old little girl who loved to cuddle and wouldn’t go to sleep without me reading her a book for bed? How did I get old enough to even have a 14-year-old daughter? A friend once said you want to eat them up when they’re little; when they become teenagers you wish you had.

“You’ll never understand,” Merav told me. “You were never a teenager.” Doesn’t she understand I just want to be there for her, to share some of the experience I’ve gained in hindsight. I’m convinced that my life was no less a rollercoaster than hers. But trying telling that to our little “screamager.”

But 47 could also be a year of incredible opportunity. This is the year when my aforementioned web business will launch and either take off or flop. This is also the year when I am sure I will find a cure to the chronic insomnia that has plagued me for so long.

And then there was last night. As Jody and I were climbing into bed and were about to turn out the lights, Jody turned to me and in a come hither voice said, “you know….I’ve never been with a 47-year-old before…” One thing led to another and, well…

Maybe 47 won’t be so bad after all!

Options for modern religious education for girls in Jerusalem just got a whole lot more interesting with the recent openings of two new schools this fall, both backed by immigrants from North America.

The modern Orthodox Shalom Hartman Institute, which trains rabbis, teachers and scholars from Israel and the Diaspora in a pluralistic environment and which has run a popular boys’ junior and senior high school since the mid-1990s, opened seventh, eighth and ninth grade classes in September.

Beverly Gribetz, an innovative educator who served as the popular principal of the Evelina de Rothschild girls school, also opened a new school this month, in this case for grades nine and ten.

The two announcements have put pressure on the existing girls high schools catering to modern Orthodox students in Jerusalem. Both Hartman and Tehilla, the name for Gribetz’s school, are decidedly liberal, offering girls opportunities to both study Talmud and lead prayer services. Other girls schools catering to a non-ultra Orthodox crowd in Jerusalem include the prestigious Pelech School, the Omaniyot Torah and Arts High School, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s Ohr Torah, and Gribetz’s former alma mater Evelina de Rothschild.

The Shalom Hartman Institute was founded by former Montreal pulpit Rabbi Professor David Hartman in 1976, and the new Hartman girls school is headed by his son Rabbi Professor Donniel Hartman, co-director of the Hartman Institute, and Dr. Chana Kehat, who founded the feminist religious organization Kolech (in Hebrew: “her voice”). The school will be based on the proven track record of the boys school with which it shares some facilities.

Kehat says the new school will be “Orthodox but open-minded,” and will employ a critical approach to the study of Jewish texts, along with the inclusion of volunteer work in the daily schedule, all elements that have made the boys school a top choice for modern religious families. A new program will bring a revolutionary sex education curriculum –one of the first ever for religious schools in Israel – to both the boys and girls.

Hartman is being careful not to call its new offering a “school,” but rather a “track.” The Israeli Education Ministry has a longstanding history of hostility towards new schools in Jerusalem. Donniel Hartman explained during an open house earlier this year that the educational authorities initially saw no need for new schools in the city, claiming there are enough seats in religious classrooms to accommodate all students. That seemed disproved by the turn out at the Hartman introductory evening: 120 chairs were set up; over 400 students and parents packed the house.

Ultimately, Hartman has been designated a savior of sorts for the Evelina school which has absorbed the biggest blow in enrollment following the opening of the new girls options in the city. Hartman has taken over some of Evelina’s facilities and faculty with the intention to eventually phase out the 148-year-old Jerusalem institution entirely within a few years.

Tehilla’s new principal, the American-born Gribetz, who headed up the junior high at Ramaz, a modern Orthodox high school in New York City, and who has taught at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and Pelech since immigrating to Israel in 1977, has seen her share of opposition from the Education Ministry as well. In September 2005 she opened a first incarnation of her Tehilla school...without formal approval from the Education Ministry.

“Opening a school without a license is not unusual,” one Tehilla parent commented and, generally, the Ministry turns a blind eye. Not in Gribetz’s case: Tehilla lasted less than two months before being shut down.

The closure order seemed less motivated by protocol and more by the Education Ministry’s apprehension towards Gribetz’s vocal attempts to shake up the religious girls education system and import what the Ministry feared would be “foreign” concepts to education in Israel. At Evelina, for example, Gribetz introduced a wide range of subjects into the curriculum including Arabic, drama and sport, raised a not insignificant amount of money overseas, and transformed the school’s declining reputation. The Education Ministry said in a statement that “Ms. Gribetz's views and ideas were not included in our considerations for rejecting her request.” Gribetz has since received a court ruling allowing the opening of her new school.

Tehilla will emphasize a creative approach to learning and Gribetz has talked about bringing in well-known rabbis and professors to teach the girls Talmud as well as professional musicians and artists to run those respective programs. Admission to Tehilla is not based on grades. That’s in part because Gribetz also wants an “integrated” school with students from a wide spectrum of religious and socio-economic backgrounds, an antidote to the avowedly elitist Pelech.

Tehilla’s integrationist approach, ironically, may lead to the school becoming less pluralistic than Gribetz herself might prefer. When asked whether the school will have girls Torah readings, Gribetz equivocated, saying it will be up to the community to decide and that the school will be sensitive to families from more traditional backgrounds.

That’s not the case at Hartman which has committed itself to prayer opportunities for girls and even accepted a girl who puts on tefillin – in strictly Orthodox circles a practice reserved only for bar mitzvah and older boys – and whose mother is a well-known Jerusalem-based Jewish Renewal Rabbi.

Any way you look at it, education for religious girls in Jerusalem may never be the same.

In the recent Pixar movie Over the Hedge, R.J., a wily raccoon, accidentally awakens Vince a hibernating and very grumpy Grizzly bear while trying to steal from the Grizzly's store of winter food. Vince immediately springs into classic Grizzly position, ready to impale and impair the unwelcome intruder. Bears, it seems, can go from 0-60 – from deep sleep to full alertness – nearly instantaneously.

Not so with nine-year-old boys, we recently discovered.

A few weeks ago, we were at a dinner party with friends who lived down the street from us. As the evening stretched on later than we expected, nine-year-old Aviv fell asleep on the couch. When it was time to go, we needed to wake him up, at least enough to walk the short distance home. He has long since grown too heavy to carry him over our shoulder like a baby.

Getting Aviv going proved harder than expected. Usually, we can rouse him to a groggy walking state fairly easily, but he must have been in a deeper state of REM sleep this time. We were unable to get any response from him at all. We raised an arm, it flopped to his side. We sat him up and he fell over.

And then all of a sudden, he started to scream at the top of his lungs. Was he in pain? Was he angry? We couldn't tell.

"Does something hurt you, Aviv?" my wife Jody asked. Aviv just wailed.

Our concerned hosts had come over to see what was going on. "Does he need a doctor?" they asked. "Should we call someone in the neighborhood?"

I frankly didn't know what to do. This had never happened before. We asked Aviv again what was bothering him.

"It's my tummy," he finally said. "It's burning."

My mind began to race. Maybe he had appendicitis, a sudden ulcer…or something. Why would a stomach burn?

As the crying continued for five minutes, then ten minutes without a break, Jody and I tried different approaches. Jody doled out compassion while I went more towards tough love.

"Come on, you can do this, you can get up, it's just a short walk," I cajoled. "You'll feel better when you get into your own bed, you're just tired."

Just tired…that was it! I remembered learning something once that might apply to Aviv in this case. When a sleeper enters the deepest phase of REM sleep, he literally becomes paralyzed.

Apparently, the brain doesn't shut off during sleep, but is just as active during dreaming as it is during waking. So the body actually goes into a state of "sleep paralysis" to keep the slumbering person from acting out his dreams and hurting himself by running down the stairs or trying to fly.

Getting woken up in the middle of sleep paralysis is "alarming," according to the London Sleep Centre, and "children may have difficulty explaining these events (which) adds to the parents' concern."

It would probably also be unpleasant …the body might feel like it's asleep and the burning sensation Aviv was experiencing might occur while the paralysis wore off, not unlike the tingling sensation when your foot falls asleep.  A half-asleep, confused nine-year-old might interpret it all as pain.

There was no way to test the theory and we still needed to get our screaming child home.

Our hosts found an old still somewhat usable stroller. The seat was ripped and one of the handles was bent half way back. It was a tight fit but we managed to cram Aviv into it and cart him down the street back to our house.

He cried all the way home, alerting the neighbors to what I'm sure seemed like a clear case of child abuse. Then when we finally got to our doorstep, something shifted. Aviv sat up in the stroller and his usual, cheerful voice magically returned.

"You know, I think I almost fell asleep on the couch," he announced as if none of the past 20 minutes of parental hell had ever occurred.

Now fully awake, the pain seemed to have passed completely, confirming my diagnosis of probable sleep paralysis, but leaving us with few lessons to share.  

Which begs the question many a worried parent is undoubtedly asking at this point: that is, do I have any advice on what to do if this happens to you and your child? Unfortunately the answer is “no.”

There wasn't really anything we could have done differently. In Aviv's half-asleep/half-awake sleep paralyzed state, neither Jody's compassionate touch nor my sterner approach would have calmed him down. Sitting and waiting it out wouldn't have worked either – he'd no doubt have just fallen asleep again. About the only thing we could have done is let him cry it out, which is exactly what we did.

The best course of action: let your drowsy bear hibernate an extra week…or if that's too long, at least let him sleep where he is…and pick him up in the morning.

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The audio podcast version of this post is available here.

Thirteen-year-old Merav’s phone call was teary bordering on hysterical. It was hard to make out what had happened: was someone hurt? Had she been jilted by a boy?

“It’s Jack,” she sputtered through breathless sobs. “He got away…we don’t know where he is…he could get killed…what are we going to do!”

Merav had been entrusted by our friend Mallory to take care of her dog Jack, a little runt of a mutt with canine ADHD, while Mallory got away for a few days to a bed and breakfast in the Galilee Hills with a no-dogs policy. It was Merav’s first real job, a baby step to people sitting, and she was taking her responsibility seriously.

“Tell me what happened, exactly,” I said to Merav.

Merav had been walking Jack and everything had been fine. She had arranged to take Jack to our friends Lynne and Adam’s house where Jack would have a canine "play date" with their dog Zoe. Jack had been let off the leash; when Merav opened the front door, Jack saw an opening and darted out. Merav quickly caught him.

“But then he bit me!” Merav said. “I had no choice. I had to let him go.” At which point, Jack bolted into the night. Adam ran out after him and began searching while Merav called me.

“He’s probably heading home,” Merav said, trying to think clearly while choking back the tears. Mallory’s house was about a ten-minute walk (or a two minute Jack run) away, just off Emek Refaim Street in Jerusalem's German Colony. “Adam’s going to wait for him there.” Then almost as an aside she said, “Could you bring some chicken?”

“Chicken?” I asked. “How can you be hungry at a time like this?”

“It’s for Jack. We need something to lure him into a trap. He likes chicken.”

I grabbed a slice of left over chicken breast from the weekend’s meal and we met Adam at Jack’s place.

“Any sign of him yet?” I asked. Adam shook his head.

Something darted across the street into the bushes. “Is that him?” Merav asked. But it was only a fat cat who, in the absence of sunlight, bore a remarkable resemblance to our tiny tormentor.

Adam took the chicken, laid it on the stairs, and hid behind the door.

Now by this time Merav had calmed down physically. But her mind was racing. She was afraid of what might happen to Jack…and to her. “Mallory trusted me,” Merav said. How could she live with herself if she betrayed her first major dog sitting job…with potentially grave consequences? Even if Jack was eventually captured, Merav was sure she’d be fired. Her budding business would go down the drain.

Merav and I began walking the neighboring blocks calling out for Jack, to no avail. At a nearby park on Elazar HaModa'i Street, we asked a man if he’d seen a little white dog with brown spots. He had, and pointed in the opposite direction. Jack apparently was enjoying his freedom.

After about a half hour of patrolling the streets, we checked in again with Adam. He hadn’t seen Jack yet but was willing to stay the distance. "Take Merav home,” he said. “There’s nothing much you can do until he comes back for the chicken.

“Call us if you need to be relieved,” I muttered, feeling more than a little guilty at stepping out at the height of the crisis.

Well, I’m happy to report that Jack finally showed up two hours later, presumably hungry but unashamed. He fell for the trap and spent the night in detention. Merav called Mallory.

“Oh don’t worry about it,” I heard Mallory say calmingly to Merav. “He does this all the time. We always get him home...after a bit.”

He does this all the time, I thought? I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or lash out. But Merav’s face was playing a different tune.

The heaviness was lifting as her overbearing guilt dissipated into the darkness. Relief spread like butter on a bagel. If there was a lesson in all this, it was that the power of forgiveness should never be underestimated.

“So, tomorrow, can you walk him in the morning and then again about two in the afternoon?” Mallory asked Merav.

“Sure,” Merav replied with a smile, once again counting up the money she’d earn now that she’d been pardoned with no time added for bad behavior.

As I tucked Merav into bed later that night, she asked me with great excitement and earnestness, “Abba, can we get a dog?” I thought she’d have been temporarily traumatized; I sometimes forget that remarkable ability kids have to bounce back.

“I’ll think about it,” I replied, “as long as he’s not named Jack!”

 
For the past several months, I’ve been growing my hair long. The official reason is that my thirteen-year-old daughter Merav wants to dress me up as a girl for Purim, and she wants my hair longer so she can braid it or work with it in some way.

But there’s another explanation. As my haircutter told me when he discovered the reason why he hadn’t seen me lately: “Every guy in his mid-40s tries to grow his hair long…if he can. Something about trying to reclaim his youth. He eventually decides it looks terrible and cuts it off. It’s just a matter of time.”

Yeah, that’s probably true. It does look pretty terrible. My wife Jody can barely tolerate it. I’ve seen her looking forlornly at the pictures from the kids’ bar and bat mizvahs, just a few years ago, when my hair was still tidy. “You looked so sexy,” she said wistfully one evening. Emphasis on the past tense.

Yet, still I persist. You see, for me, hair has always been about something more than just looks.

I first grew my hair long when I was a pre-teen. I wanted to rebel against the suburban kids who already had transformed my name “Brian” into “Brain” to reflect my grades. If they wouldn’t accept me, I’d go to a crowd that would: the hippie crowd. This was 1973.

The only problem was, my facial features hadn’t caught up with my hairstyle. One day we had a substitute in math class. The teacher called out “will the young woman in the back row please answer the next question?” I looked around to see who she was talking to. “You, young lady,” she persisted looking straight at me. From that day, I had a new nickname. “Briana.”

As soon as I was able, I added facial hair to my appearance. It didn’t grow so well. My English teacher, Mrs. Andreski, pulled me aside one day and, in what in hindsight I see was well meaning concern, suggested I take a black felt tip pen and fill in the gaps.

By college, my hair and my beard had both matured enough to require accessorizing. In went a little stud earring. I was now the complete picture of a San Francisco flower child. Just 15 years too late. But I was cool. I majored in creative writing and played new wave and punk rock on the campus radio station.

Then I moved to Israel and got religion. Suddenly, the hair and the earring (if not the beard) felt out of place with the white shirt and nice slacks I wore on Shabbat. The earring was the first to go – it clashed with the kippa now firmly in place on my head.

For the past few years, I’ve worn my hair very short, though I haven’t shaved my head like some of my compatriots (my hairline has receded a bit but it hasn’t gone balding...yet).

Then, sometime around my 46th birthday, I started to wonder: did my external appearance match my inner beliefs? The kippa and beard had long since come off (it made me look alternately like a Rabbi or a Hamas terrorist, neither of which fit). I’d been working at home already for a couple of years – no more meetings in hi-tech offices. And in the last few weeks, I’ve started a radio show – a podcast playing independent and small label bands and musicians – please check it out at Indiescrete.com. Maybe longer hair would be appropriate again?

It’s been almost six months since my last haircut. My hair is thinner than it used to be in college, and where it once hung down fashionably, it now sort of curls and flips. I can almost tie it into a ponytail. It’s unruly but it’s mine.

At the top of this post are two pictures, one with short and one with longer hair. Now I turn it over to you. What do you think? Should I keep going and please my daughter (and my inner rebel), or return to the easy-care neat and nifty look (and please my wife).

Vote by sending me an email or posting your comments on the blog. I’ll write about the results in a few weeks!

Special bonus picture: me in my college hippie days:



Here's the link to the audio version of this post.
And don't forget, check out Indiescrete, my new indie pop podcast!

Shabbat afternoon in the park with my friend Eliot from out of town, eight-year-old Aviv and Eliot’s two little boys, Liav and Avidan, both of them under the age of 10, playing happily, riding scooters around a mostly empty basketball court while their parents chatted about whatever it is adults chat about.

The weather was glorious; we were still full from the peanut pasta and double fudge chocolate brownies at lunch. It was one of the moments you want to treasure and that you’re aware of while it’s happening, not at some point in retrospect.

That was until Avidan, the youngest of our boys, came running, crying, sputtering between breaths, something about another kid…he was bothering them, tried to take their scooters…it was hard to make out the details between the hysteria.

We looked over in the direction he’d come from. There was a boy we didn’t know, couldn’t have been more than seven, but already dressed like a thug, in a white sleeveless t-shirt. He was swaggering, hands on his hips, a bravado he’d undoubtedly learned from a less than savory older role model.

As he caught us glowering at him in the distance, he just laughed, yelled something unintelligible and strode off around the back of the park building. Avidan went back to play and we went back to our chat.

A little while later the kid in the white t-shirt re-appeared, this time much closer to us. He picked up a stone and threw it in our direction, again laughing and yelling something we couldn’t make out. The rock landed harmlessly a few feet away, but I was at once seething and paralyzed.

How could this kid have sunk so low so soon? If he were my kid, I’d hand him a major time out. But I didn’t know him from Adam. This was a hard case: what could I do, other than sit and take it.

Eliot commented laconically on the kid’s chutzpah and we were about to ignore this latest incident as well when the kid picked up a handful of rocks and with that same sick gleeful grin hurled them our way.

Something snapped. I leaped off the park bench and sprinted in his direction. The kid immediately turned tail and began running off as fast as he could.

The ensuing chase felt like an hour, although in reality it was probably all of 30 seconds. The kid was fleeing at top speed while I was pumping my legs and arms faster than I thought I could go, surging with adrenaline and indignation. All those years of running had finally found a purpose.

As I pursued this pint-size attacker, I wondered what I would do when I got him…if my lungs held out, that is. Could I make a difference, or was this just folly? Or worse…was my behavior bordering on abusive…despite the fact the one side had clearly started it? Maybe I should turn back, before I made an idiot – or a criminal – of myself?

I was closing on the boy in the white t-shirt. He had turned a corner and was running out of steam. As I reached him, he stopped, his tough-guy demeanor finally exhausted.

As I looked into his eyes, I suddenly wondered: could I give him a hug? Would reaching out and showing a moment of unexpected tenderness have the greatest impact? I thought about what an awful life he probably had at home, how he must be acting out in a desperate search for love denied him from his own family.

But this had been a clear case of injustice – repeated injustice mind you – with a complete breakdown in respect for authority (mine)…I was defending the safety of my children. I had no choice.

And so I yelled at him and told him never, ever to do that again. He listened silently, then he ran off.

I want to believe that, for a brief moment, he understood that there are some lines you cannot cross. I want to believe that this will make a difference; that he’ll think twice before he torments another kid…or adult. I want to believe that something about this day will stick.

As I walked back to the park, I was shaking, still unsure that I’d done the right thing. I kept looking over my shoulder, worried that the kid would yet be back, this time with his father, clad in the same white t-shirt and maybe carrying a firearm.

They never came. Instead, Jody and Debbie, Eliot’s wife, were waiting on the sidewalk outside the park.

“What was going on?” Jody asked, her mouth still agape from what must have been quite a spectacle. “We saw you chasing some kid.”

Still slightly breathless, I explained the story as we walked back into the park.

“Wow,” Jody said and I waited for the other shoe to drop. She turned to Aviv. “Did you hear what your father did?”

Aviv looked up from his scootering for moment, made eye contact and said simply “Thank you Abba.”

I guess I did right after all.

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There’s an old saying “the only thing that separates men from boys is the size of their toys.” When my wife Jody and I were first planning out our recently-completed home renovation, trying to decide about such critical issues as whether to redo one bathroom or three, the one thing I held out for was my toy: my TV.

Not just any TV though. I had my heart set on one of those big screen plasmas with the surround sound home theater – five speakers and a scary sub-woofer to pound out the bass. I wanted to be able to really feel the drama and excitement of Jack Bauer going after the bad guys in 24; to be scared silly by the smoke monster in the jungle of Lost across a breathtaking 42-inch widescreen display.

Well, Jody got her bathrooms and I got my flat screen…and, so I soon learned, a whole lot more, at least in terms of family drama.

We hired a company specializing in home theater to recommend and install the system. We debated between LCD and plasma, the future of high-definition connections, and the right size for our viewing distance (“no one ever complained about having a TV that’s too big,” our home theater consultant Max assured me).

The installation process was unbelievable: it took two guys a whole day – pretty much non-stop from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM with only one short break for lunch – to hang the TV and the speakers and connect everything with some $500 alone of the highest quality audio and video cable. They tweaked and tested and tried out every possible parameter.

At the end of the day, the cable guys came to install the Yes Max PVR (personal video recorder) – a TiVo-like device that allows us to digitally record programs with the push of a button.

For a gadget-head like me, this was pure heaven. When I die, skip the pearly gates, just take me straight to F.A.O. Circuit City.

When the system was finally in place, there was no question as to what would come next. We had to watch something. Our first film on the big screen as a family was nothing to write home about – Sweet Home Alabama, a sweet little comedy starring Reese Witherspoon. Still, the picture was spectacular and the sounds of birds chirping and country music came at us from front, back and center. Nothing like a scary sub-woofer to bring out the dulcet tones in a banjo.

The next night, we were back in front of the screen again. And the night after that too. Our previous experience going cold turkey on TV had long since stopped being enforced. That much was clear by where we located the TV in our new house: not in an out-of-the-way little TV nook but in the living room, right in the center of the house. After a few days with our new toy, it was clear we were back on the road to entertainment addiction.

What was I thinking? I figured we could handle it. As a family, we were older, more mature than when we banned the TV outright. Having a state-of-the-art system shouldn’t necessarily go hand-in-hand with the loss of will power. But, apparently, the larger the screen, the greater any existing familial tendencies will be exacerbated. Ours, we quickly learned, broke down into three main categories:

1. Social life? Who needs a social life? Or put another way: “You wanna go to the movies?” “Nah…”

OK, that’s not entirely fair. One of the reasons I bought the TV in the first place was to avoid having to go out to the theater. I mean, what’s the point of paying the equivalent of $8.00 to sit in an either over- or under-heated auditorium with a crappy sound system where you can hear the blam blam from the latest Vin Diesel film next door better than the contemplative Sofia Coppola you intended to see and, in any case, everyone around you is telegraphing the end by talking on their cell phones. If you ask me, you might as well stay home where you can at least hit the pause button.

But the TV with all its big screen and Dolby goodness has become such an allure that we’re finding ourselves turning down other offers…and not just to go to the movies. The other night, a hot new band was playing at a free outdoor concert. Did we get the kids in the car and head out? Of course not. We watched an episode of House MD on the big screen.

(The flip side of this is that now friends all seem to want to pop over to our house. But are they coming to see us…or to see what’s on?)

2. “There’s nothing to do. Can we watch TV?” Beyond eschewing invitations out, there’s also the amazing phenomenon that everything else in the house that once held some interest, particularly for the younger set, suddenly has become entirely and utterly boring.

Nothing else to do? Let’s make a list…hmmm, you could ride your bike, or read a book, or go to the park, or play the piano, or take a dip in the pool, or learn Java programming, or cook dinner, or do some mall hopping or floor mopping …so what do you mean there’s nothing to do but watch the same episode of Family Guy for the 17th time in a row!

3. Quit hogging the remote! Or in the case of our new TV – remotes. Three of them, in fact. There’s the remote for the receiver, which controls the flow of video and audio in and out of the system; the remote for the personal video recorder which is where all the “taped” programs are now stored; and the remote for the DVD player. There’s also a fourth remote for the TV itself, but we only need that when we’re hooking up the laptop to play something we’ve downloaded…legally, from iTunes, of course. Max, my home theater guy, said he'd be glad to sell and program for us a single “universal” remote for us – for “only” another $500.

Whoever controls the remote gets to decide what program the rest of the family will be “allowed” to watch for the evening. This happened, of course, with our old TV. Somehow, though, the shift to 42-inches – ostensibly a mere doubling from our previous 21-incher – has led to proportionally much greater battles.

Despite an escalation in tensions likely to rival a spirited debate over cucumber prices in a Middle Eastern shuk on a particularly humid day, I don’t regret buying the big screen. It really is a sweet system. And, after two months, there are some signs that the novelty may be starting to wear off. Eight-year-old Aviv has made a list (posted prominently on the refrigerator) of “things to do that don’t include TV.” Jody and I got out of the house last week – twice – with friends.

But the truest sign that there may be light at the end of the boob tube came the other night. As we sat down for – you guessed it – another family movie night, we reviewed our selection on the PVR. There were three top contenders: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Elf, and Million Dollar Baby. Now which one would you pick?

•    A cute but mostly fluff-filled romantic story starring Kate Hudson
•    A slight comedy about a human somehow mistaken for one of Santa’s elves, or…
•    The Oscar-winning best picture of the year!

The kids voted for Elf. Jody and I vetoed them.

Thirteen-year-old Merav opted not to watch at all and went downstairs to read – itself an inconceivable possibility just a few short weeks before – though not before spouting off the siren call of the teenager girl: “it’s not fair, why do you always get to do what you want?”

Oh, I don’t know, because we’re the parents?

Fifteen-year-old Amir, however, chose to stay and watch despite being on the losing end. He spent the first half of the movie scowling, but by Baby’s devastatingly ending, though he would never admit it, he had clearly been won over.

And the best part: I got to hold the remote the entire time!

Did you ever hear any of the following in your house?

“It’s not my job, it’s his.”

“I cleaned the table last night.”

“I don’t have time to make my bed. I have to study for a test.”

Well, we certainly have, too many times, and after fourteen years of parenting it was getting a bit old. The same fights and arguments day after night after day.

It’s not that our kids were shirking their responsibilities per se. It’s just that we didn’t have an effective system to track, enforce and reward the desired behaviors. For any task, a parent would generally ask one of the kids on the spot.

In addition to opening the door to dissension, this approach created a general atmosphere of stress. Who’s going to get “picked” tonight, the kids would wonder (and so would their parents)? During dinner I could almost hear those brain cells calculating the latest cunning or creative excuse why someone else should wipe down the counters.

I take much of the blame myself. I’ve never been very good with discipline. Rather than sticking to my guns, when met with a determined teenager or a whining eight-year-old, I’ll opt for the easy way out.

“Sure, I’ll do the dishes,” I’ll mutter to myself. “Fine, I’ll sweep the floor.” After all, what’s a parent for if not to give his children a carefree unencumbered life?

My wife Jody, on the other hand, was of another mind entirely.

“They need to learn to do these things,” Jody said. “It will prepare them for life.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Had I been forced, er…allowed to actually do anything in the kitchen growing up, today I might know how to cook more than just mushroom omelets and French toast. Certainly getting a little more help around the house these days wouldn’t hurt either.

It was time to chart a new course in our household. And that’s what we did…literally, starting with “The Chart.”

Creating a “job chart” may be old hat for many parents. But for us, it was out-of-the-box thinking.

Jody and I started by writing down all of the things that need to get done in the house to keep it running smoothly. This activity can be quite shocking when you realize how much stuff we do every single day and every week. We counted 29 individual activities, not including repeating tasks like setting and clearing the table.

Next we plotted the tasks into three charts arranged by days of the week:

Daily Personal – these are the tasks that each child needs to do on his own – things like Make Bed, Pick up Clothes, Brush Teeth. Next to each task was a checkbox. Because everyone loves checking off an item from their To Do List, right?

Daily Rotation – these are tasks that the house needs and that can be “signed up” for by children and parents alike for different days in the week – Unload Dishwasher and Take Out Trash, for instance.

Weekly Rotation – finally, there were some tasks that only need to happen once a week, like Bake for Shabbat and Take Newspapers to Recycling Bin

The next step was to write out exactly what each job entails. It’s not fair to assume that the kids already know exactly how to do everything they’re being asked without some sort of training.

This was actually a tip I picked up from Michael Gerber’s popular “E-Myth” series of books and seminars. He says that one of the reasons many new businesses fail is that the entrepreneur who started the company – whether it’s a hi-tech software developer or a small family-run bakery – doesn’t create a “manual” for every job that the organization requires. Without this kind of formal documentation, if a key person leaves, everyone else sputters and lurches into crisis. No one, Gerber maintains, can be allowed to be irreplaceable.

All the more so for a family, I figured.

I spared no detail in my line-by-line job descriptions. Here, for example, is how we wash clothes in our house:

1. Check to make sure all clothes from kids’ rooms are in laundry hampers.
2. Remove two hampers from wooden frames and bring upstairs to laundry room.
3. Start cold water in washer on setting for “8 Minutes – Normal” and add liquid soap.
4. Bring up clothes in two hampers from parents room.
5. Sort out whites and wrinkle release clothes.
6. Put colors into washer.
7. In 45 minutes, check and put any clothes to be hung on line in dryer for 10-15 minutes.
8. Remove clothes and hang them and move remaining colors to dryer.
9. Set dryer for 60 minutes and press Start.
10. Switch washer setting to warm water and follow process above.
11. After water has dispersed liquid soap, add whites from both kids and parents.
12. Hang clothes as necessary and dry the rest.
13. After each load, move clothes to basket and bring down to living room. Return basket to laundry room.

Who: Abba
Duration: 4-5 hours
Frequency: Weekly
Day: Tuesdays

I will allow you to exhale one collective “oh my God,” but no cracks about yekkes or me being excessively anal, you hear?

When we had finished all our preparatory work, we printed out the job descriptions and charts and called a family meeting.

The kids are always a little suspicious about surprise family meetings (it’s like a pop quiz – nothing good can ever come out of it), so I set out immediately to reassure them. “We want to share with you a new system that will reduce stress in our house,” I began.

After a brief introduction, we whipped out the papers. Our youngest, Aviv, immediately took to the charts. He was ready to start checking things off before he’d even read them, bless his good natured little eight-year-old heart.

Twelve-year-old Merav proceeded to peruse each job description as if she were studying for a test. She also appeared to welcome the new structure.

Only fourteen-year-old Amir was savvy (or is that cynical) enough to realize what was coming next.

“And what happens if we don’t do our jobs?” he asked.

Jody and I had discussed this already. “There will be rewards and consequences.”

“I knew it!” Amir said and buried his head in his hands.

“If you don’t get your jobs done,” Jody continued, “you won’t be able to use your computer or GameBoy or watch TV the rest of that day. Nothing with a screen in it.”

“That’s not fair!” Amir blurted out, brimming with hormones and indignation.

“What’s so important that you have to be on your computer every day?” I asked. But it was Merav who responded.

“I have to check my email,” she said.

“But you’ve only had an email account for, what, less than two months,” I countered.

Aviv was still studying the chart. “How can we put away backpacks in the morning?” he asked, referring to a task on his Daily Personal chart. I explained that this was a task for when he gets home. He nodded approvingly and proceeded to check off the task.

There was some more back and forth, and not an insignificant amount of discussion about what the reward should be (a night out at the movies, dinner with pizza and ice cream?) Everyone signed up for daily and weekly jobs (whether begrudgingly or with gusto). The night ended without any fisticuffs, though not entirely on the optimistic note in which it had begun.

It’s too early to tell how this is going to work out over the long term. Research shows it takes about a month of consistently doing something to bring about a real change in behavior. But the initial results look promising.

The next morning, all three kids’ beds had been made and the breakfast bowls had been rinsed and put in the dishwasher. There was no argument that night over whose job it was to wipe down the counters. The day after the same. By day three we had to give a punishment to one child for leaving clothes lining around on the floor, but I did it with as much compassion as I could muster and received no lip in return.

Clearly we are heading into highly uncharted territory!

It was the seventh week of Merav’s latest illness. Sharp and constant pains still pierced her abdomen. She felt dizzy and weak, no doubt in part a result of self-imposed starvation as the very thought of food in her current condition nauseated her. Her head pounded and her joints ached.

As we headed to the Family Medical Center after a night where she (and we, her parents) slept only a few brief hours, I felt sure her doctor would order her immediate hospitalization, if nothing else than to pump her up with nutrients so she wouldn’t waste away. We were, suffice it to say, in quite a panic.

But Dr. N didn’t send us packing for Hadassah. Instead, he carefully read through the summaries written by the specialists and technicians who had conducted various rounds of tests on Merav over the course of the last two months. He then read us the results, confirming what we already knew.

Her colonoscopy was clear, he said, So were the results from her “Upper GI” (a test that involves swallowing radioactive barium and then x-raying the liquid as it makes its way downward). Her blood results – completely normal too.

He then turned to my twelve-year-old daughter. “Merav,” he said, “I can find no sign of disease. Nothing acute or life threatening. It’s time you start to see yourself as a healthy girl again. You need to get back into a normal routine and life.”

That should have been the best news of the day. Yet I must have looked horrified. That was it? After everything she’d been through, after all the poking and prodding, the drinking of foul fluids and being told there was nothing we could do but wait patiently for another round of tests while Merav writhed in pain, her knees held tight against her chest begging me nightly “Abba, make the pain go away.” That’s the end of it – you’re fine, now get on with your life?

Perhaps sensing my confusion, Dr. N wisely chose...to avoid me completely. “Do you think you can do that, think of yourself as healthy?” he continued, looking straight at Merav.

Merav shook her head. “I don’t know. It hurts too much.”

I finally found my voice. “Are you saying…” I said to Dr. N, “that this has all be in Merav’s head? That the whole illness was – no…is – something psychosomatic?”

Of course that wasn’t what he was saying at all. He proffered his best guess: Merav was suffering from something called “IBS” – short for “irritable bowel syndrome.” It’s diagnosed primarily through process of elimination. There are no physical signs of disease in the body, but the symptoms are very real. Merav certainly didn’t bring this on herself, Dr. N assured us. And it was probably totally unconnected to her illness the previous year.

Then, perhaps to make me feel better, he prescribed a cocktail of anti-spasmodics, pain killers and paraffin oil.

Now, Dr. N is not normally from the school of “tough love” medicine. So, as he nearly threw us out of his office, I wondered if maybe there was some method to this seeming madness.

I decided to play along. Despite my frustration, I would try to see Merav as healthy again. I’ve never been a big believer in the whole “power of positive thinking” thing, but it was worth a try.

No more doctors. No searching for the top pediatric rheumatologist in town. No pushing to schedule an appointment with the head of infectious diseases at the children’s hospital in Ramat Gan. We’d change our attitude. The seed had been planted. Time to let it grow, if only a little.

And so the next morning, I said to Merav “Would you like to come out to brunch with me and get some ice coffee?”

Merav was initially reluctant, citing the usual aches and pains, but the idea grew on her. And before long we were walking to the Café Hillel on Emek Refaim Street where Merav ordered her favorite beverage, I got a chai masala with soy milk (my favorite beverage), and we shared a chocolate croissant.

“Can I have milk in my coffee?” she asked tentatively as we were ordering. What would normally have been a standard question had a meaning all of it own. For on top of everything else, during this period of illness we had taken Merav to a Chinese herbalist who put her on a highly restrictive diet that included no dairy products or white flour.

The diet had inadvertently contributed to her predicament: with most foods making her nauseous, the only ones she actually wanted were forbidden. She had been subsisting on two pieces of toast and jam a day for weeks, hardly enough calories for a growing girl.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m pronouncing this diet null and void,” I said. “Didn’t the doctor say you had to go back to your ‘regular’ life?”

Merav’s mood began to brighten.

As we were sipping our drinks and soaking in the buzz of a Friday morning in Jerusalem when the cafes are all packed and the streets flow like the proverbial milk and honey with friends and acquaintances from the neighborhood, my cell phone rang. It was our good friend Ruth who had taken a keen interest in Merav; the two had been close since her previous illness the year before.

Ruth said she wanted to buy Merav a “small animal.” She had been struck by a hunch that Merav might find it beneficial to take care of another living creature. I gave the phone over to Merav.

Merav nearly jumped out of her seat. She launched into a stream of consciousness chatter that was downright invigorating. It had been a long time since so much energy had come out of our little girl’s body.

Ruth picked Merav up and they headed for the pet store where they lovingly held and evaluated all seven hamsters available before settling on a cute little critter that Merav named “Mazie” after the imagined talking dog in the Judy Blume book “Just As Long as We’re Together.”

The pet store put together a spacious cage at Ruth’s request with a running wheel, various colorful crawling tubes and a little house. Merav held and watched and generally stayed transfixed on Mazie the rest of the day…and the next day…and pretty much the day after too.

Her pain passed and she’s been 100% better ever since.

While they were out shopping, Ruth told us later that Merav had commented that she gets “very attached to things” and that sometimes she finds it “hard to let go.” Could she have gotten attached to the concept of being ill?

I don’t believe that this was all in her head. Neither does Dr. N, I’m sure. But what he understood – apparently before any of us – was that holding on to a concept of being “sick” can impede a healthy recovery just as cruelly as a purely physical condition. His admonition to “get back into life” spurred all of us into action.

Can one’s thoughts really affect health in such a profound and real way? In our case, there seems to be no doubt. I like to call it "the power of positive hamstering."

It’s hard to believe we’re back again. Back in the hospital, that is, a year after our twelve-year-old daughter Merav was hospitalized for severe stomach cramps, joint pain, jaundice and suspected hepatitis.

Last time, she was admitted for a week, and wound up missing nearly two months of school. The doctors chose to wait it out, to avoid invasive procedures, and mysteriously and miraculously, the pain eventually passed without explanation. The doctors never settled on a diagnosis other than suspecting “an unknown virus.” We went on with our lives hoping this was a difficult but one time fluke.

But now, a year later almost to the day, Merav was once again buckled over in pain, complaining of many of the same symptoms. She had once again missed weeks of school. This time, though, her doctors decided the time had come to get more aggressive in their probes. That’s why we were here at the hospital – thankfully this time only as an outpatient - for a test that would take a half-day at most.

But oh, what a test. Merav was having a colonoscopy.

A colonoscopy is a test that checks the gut - the colon and bowel - for signs of inflammation and irritation. It looks for such things as ulcers and IBD – Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Given the location of Merav’s pain, her doctor felt it was important to see what was going on inside.

A colonoscopy, in truth, is not such a big deal. It’s recommended for just about everyone over the age of 50 as a cancer prevention check. You’re put under general anesthesia so you don’t feel a thing. I ought to know: I’ve already had two of them myself. They were no big deal. Really.

Try telling that to a twelve-year-old.

A colonoscopy is one of those tests that just sounds “yucky.” They’re sticking something inside of me…where? Our assurances to Merav that she would be asleep the entire time did not assuage her anxiety.

“What if I wake up in the middle?” she asked.

“You won’t,” I replied. “No one does. It’s virtually impossible.”

“Maybe one out of a million wakes up?”

“I didn’t check. I suppose one out of a million might.”

“And what if I’m the one out of a million.”

“Look, the worst part of the test is not what they do in the hospital, but the preparations,” I said.

And that was certainly true. The day before a colonoscopy the patient has to drink not just one but two bottles of Sofodex – a powerful liquid that totally clears out your system. It doesn’t do it gently either.

The medicine itself doesn’t have a taste per se; rather it’s a “feeling” that is hard to describe if you’ve never had to take it - a slimy mix recalling petroleum and oysters (not that I would know...about the latter at least). It burns going down and induces instant nausea.

The first time I had to take it, I mixed it into a glass of Sprite. The bubbles seemed to exacerbate the experience. For the next six months, I couldn’t drink a Sprite without viscerally reliving the memory of the Sofodex.

Merav wisely mixed her Sofodex into a glass of strawberry-banana juice.

“Don’t sip it,” I warned Merav. “Just drink it down it in one fast gulp.”

Merav immediately took a sip. Teenagers…they never listen!

She immediately shook with revulsion. “I’m not drinking this,” she said. “Forget it.”

“You don’t have a choice,” I said sternly. “Don’t you want to get to the bottom of this, and find out what’s causing all the pain?”

“I prefer the pain to drinking this,” she said.

Eventually, though, she took it. And despite her initial hesitation, it was actually a very brave thing to do. She could have run away. She could have refused entirely. Taking one’s medicine constitutes both figurative and literal courage.

Still, I suspect it will be a long time before Merav ever drinks another glass of strawberry-banana juice again.

The outpatient clinic at Hadassah Hospital at Mount Scopus is located in the far corner of a basement. To get to it, you have to walk past the kitchen and past the laundry, down a long and agoraphobically wide corridor with no windows and just a few flickering fluorescent bulbs. If anyone from Hadassah is reading this: guys, next time you raise some money, throw a little into sprucing up this entrance passage.

My wife Jody, Merav and I were met at the entrance to the clinic by Edna, a tough but sweet talking nurse. She walked us through the recovery room (where we got to see the other patients lying on beds looking rather out of it after their procedures – not a good introduction for a twelve-year-old already quite nervous as to what was coming next).

A six-month old baby was in line for a colonoscopy before us. “It shouldn’t take long, 20-30 minutes maximum,” Edna assured us, adding almost in a whisper: “you see, he’s very little.”

An hour and a half later, we were finally called in. Why did it take so long, I worried. Did they make a mistake? Is the doctor a quack?

The colonoscopy room is a jungle of wires and dials, TV monitors and long black tubes. The anesthesiologist was there with her vials of chemicals. There were several nurses waiting and a smiling bald doctor in one of those green hospital shirts.

Merav was shaking but solid. Someone drew a curtain and asked Jody and Merav to step behind it where Jody helped Merav change into a special smock. When the curtain opened again, I saw the terror in Merav’s eyes (or was that my own reflected by the bright lights illuminating the equipment?) as she climbed onto the table. The IV went in, Merav’s eyes started to close and we were asked to leave.

45 minutes later, the doctor appeared in the waiting room, smiling.

“The procedure went perfect,” he said, “No complications. She’s clear. There’s nothing wrong inside. No inflammation. Nothing at all.”

A wave of relief swept over me. My daughter is fine. She isn’t sick. The nightmare is over.

Except that, in Merav’s case, the “good news” wasn’t entirely good. All we’d done was rule out one possible cause of Merav’s problems. But the source of her pain was still a mystery and was, unfortunately, not about to end just because she’d gotten to the other side of a most unpleasant procedure. There will be more tests on the road to diagnosis.

In some ways, it would have been better if they had found something in her gut. At least then we’d know what was wrong and we could begin some form of treatment rather than letting her languish in pain while the interminable search continued.

We said thank you to the doctor and walked quickly to Merav’s bed in the recovery room where she was just opening her eyes. “How did I get here?” she asked. “I was just…a minute ago…I was in the other room…”

“You’re going to be fine!” I blurted out to Merav. “The doctor said there’s nothing wrong.”

But she had already closed her eyes. "It will be another two hours before the anesthesia wears off and she can hold a proper conversation," Edna told us.

There are many types of bravery. There are people who run into burning buildings and there are soldiers who fight against unbeatable odds. But there is also the simple bravery of being able to go on despite the pain and uncertainty, to not give up no matter what needs to be drunk or done in the name of progress.

Merav clearly demonstrated that bravery during the day’s harrowing procedure. As Jody and I continue our search for a diagnosis, maybe we have too.