How to Be a Jewish Parent: A Practical Handbook for Family Life [Paperback]

Anita Diamant (Author), Karen Kushner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2000

How can I make the holidays interesting and meaningful to my child?
Should I send my child to a Jewish day school? A Jewish summer camp?
What kind of synagogue is best for my family?
How do I plan a family trip to Israel or add Jewish heritage sites when traveling around the country or around the world?

If you are, or hope to be, a Jewish parent in more than name, you have a lot of decisions to make. So many choices! But you can have no better guide to this wealth of opportunity than Anita Diamant.

The author of popular books on Jewish weddings and baby rituals, Diamant now joins with family therapist Karen Kushner to help you through the next steps. They give creative, practical answers to these and many other questions, provide guidance on how to foster Jewish decision making for children of all ages, describe how to make your home a "Jewish space," and explain the importance of synagogue membership, holiday celebrations, community service, and other family activities.

Diamant and Kushner draw from many sources to describe the practices, customs, and values that go into creating a Jewish home. They combine insights from Jewish tradition with contemporary developmental thinking about how children learn and grow. They provide addresses (including Web sites) where you can find specific information and other resources. And since experience may be the best of all teachers, they share their own and other parents' stories and observations. For Diamant and Kushner, the number-one goal of How to Be a Jewish Parent is to give parents (and grandparents) guideposts to raising joyful children within the rich tradition of the Jewish faith and culture. No Jewish family should be without it.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Parenting is a wholly human practice, and a holy one." This description of parenting comes from the Preface of How to Be a Jewish Parent by Anita Diamant, with Karen Kushner. At a time when statistics predict continued dilution of Jewish identity, when many "discussions of Jewish parenting seem like a last-ditch effort to preserve an endangered way of life," Diamant and Kushner instead consider parenting to be the project of "raising healthy, joyful human beings within our rich, diverse, life-giving tradition." The first part of the book, "Parents as Teachers," describes how to create Jewish spaces within the home, how to involve children in a Jewish community, and how to teach them about the Jewish calendar. The second part of the book, "Ages and Stages," addresses the particular challenges of raising children in various age groups. And the third section, "Modern Life," speaks to some particularly challenging situations, such as physical, mental, and learning disabilities. Throughout, Diamant and Kushner combine insights from scripture, psychology, education, and everyday experience. Like Diamant's previous books, How to Be a Jewish Parent arrives as the definitive reference in its field. --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

How do you advise anyone how to be a parent? With so many parenting styles and types of families today, the answer is almost necessarily to offer choices. In fact, Diamant, author of several Jewish handbooks and the best-selling novel The Red Tent, and Kushner, a clinical social worker, call their easy-to-read guide "a book of choices" whose agenda is "to raise happy, healthy children by providing a window into Judaism's rich, varied and life-affirming traditions and values." Sections on making a Jewish home, finding community, celebrating holidays and observing life-cycle rituals from birth to death are chock-full of innovative strategies, practical explanations, age-appropriate suggestions and bibliographies to foster Jewish literacy. The book explores every avenue for enriching Jewish life, from affixing a play mezuzah on a doll's house and having a family joke fest on the joyous Purim holiday to shopping for a synagogue, school or camp. A chapter on conflict acknowledges the tensions that arise between spouses, or between parents and children, based on differing perceptions of "how to be Jewish and how Jewish to be." Diamant and Kushner gear their recommendations to the liberal Jewish community. Parents who are just beginning their Jewish journeys as well as those who are already knowledgeable and experienced will benefit from their wise, creative ideas. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Schocken (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805211160
• ISBN-13: 978-0805211160
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,320,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

In my first novel, The Red Tent, I re-imagined the culture of biblical women as close, sustaining, and strong, but I am not the least bit nostalgic for that world without antibiotics, or birth control, or the printed page. Women were restricted and vulnerable in body, mind, and spirit, a condition that persists wherever women are not permitted to read.

When I was a child, the public library on Osborne Terrace in Newark, New Jersey, was one of the first places I was allowed to walk to all by myself. I went every week, and I can still draw a map of the children's room, up a flight of stairs,where the Louisa May Alcott books were arranged to the left as you entered.
Nonfiction, near the middle of the room, was loaded with biographies. I read several about Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, and Helen Keller, with whom I share a birthday.

But by the time I was 11, the children's library was starting to feel confining,so I snuck downstairs to the adult stacks for a copy of The Good Earth. (I had overheard a grown-up conversation about the book and it sounded interesting.)The librarian at the desk glanced at the title and said I wasn't old enough for the novel and furthermore my card only entitled me to take out children's books.

I defended my choice. I said my parents had given me permission, which was only half a fib since my mother and father had never denied me any book. Eventually,the librarian relented and I walked home, triumphant. I had access to the BIG LIBRARY. My world would never be the same.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Start, September 9, 2000

By 

F. Greene "Rabbi Fred Greene" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to Be a Jewish Parent: A Practical Handbook for Family Life (Paperback)

This wonderful, accessible book is a great start for a new or not-so-new Jewish family. The explanations, historical accounts, resources, and suggestions are all shared with sensitivity and clarity for those not familiar with their Jewish heritage, but eager to learn so that they can transmit our memories and traditions to another generation. A "must buy" for Jewish parents who want to share Judaism with their children but are unsure or insecure about how to begin. It is also a great gift. Use it well.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars you get more than you bargin for with this book !, February 20, 2007

By 

new mom "kr" (southern cal- United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Be a Jewish Parent: A Practical Handbook for Family Life (Paperback)

i bought this book hoping to gain some insight into things i can do to make our household more 'jewish' and ways to guide our new baby to a life of 'jewishness' that we didn't have until we had her.
i thought this book would at least give me some ideas...and it does this plus so much more.
i have actually learned tons from just reading the first few chapters (with new baby -not alot of time for reading)...things that i never learned in my childhood about jewish traditions and prayers and holidays.
i even impressed my brother who married into an orthodox family when i recited the prayer for 'firsts' when he was with us when the baby saw her first snow.
i really feel much more confident that i can teach my daughter some valuable lessons that i hope will become a part of her life that will always be with her.
i recommend this book to those of us who just never got the 'jewish stuff' from our growing up and want to give their kids more than just bagels and lox.
it also gives us tools for answering so many of the questions that jewish kids will ask their parents, and i firmly believe that the way we answer these questions will make a difference in our kids level of commitment to their jewish heritage.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A "must have" on many levels, October 13, 2008

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Raise a Jewish Child: A Practical Handbook for Family Life (Paperback)

First published in 2000, How to Raise a Jewish Child has been updated with a new introduction by Anita Diamant, author of The Red Tent. This is a book written by Diamant and Kushner because in their words, it is a book that "is about raising healthy, joyful human beings within our rich, diverse, life-giving tradition....Jewish parenting is about giving your children a gift that will help them become the wisest, strongest, happiest people they can be."

If only it was that easy. As a parent of two Jewish teenagers, do I wish I had this book 14 years ago? Maybe so! The subtitle of this book is, A Practical Handbook for Family Life. I would have rather seen it titled a guide versus a handbook. Then I wouldn't feel guilty for the pages I skimmed through and for those I didn't even read.

The authors state this is a book of strategies and tools in raising your children. They stress that this book is also a celebration of Jewish life. The celebration focus is what makes this book so versatile because it allows the Jewish or non-Jewish reader a wonderful overview of the Jewish cycle of life. Chapter titles range from "Creating a Jewish Space" to "Making Community" to chapters broken down into the child's respective age. The chapter "Defining Jewish Time" gives a wonderful look at the Jewish holidays, including the Sabbath, and supplies a variety of prayers necessary to each important holiday.

I found this chapter the most educational. Because of this chapter not only is this book helpful for parents raising Jewish children but helpful to couples entering interfaith relationships. This book is a wonderful reference book for those who have questions about the specifics of the religion for example, what is the meaning of the holiday of Shavuot and the role of non-Jewish family members in specific rituals and rites of passage. A great book for new parents who plan on raising their children in the Jewish faith or for new couples who hope to incorporate the wonderful traditions of the Jewish religion.

Armchair Interviews says: Guidebook or handbook, this has a lot of excellent information.