Non­fic­tion

Can I Have a Cell Phone For Hanukkah?

Sharon Duke Estroff
  • Review
By – February 24, 2012
This book is a step by step com­pre­hen­sive guide for the mod­ern mom on how to raise young Jew­ish chil­dren as Jew­ish mentsches. It has sug­ges­tions on top­ics rang­ing from play dates and extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties to birth­day par­ties and bar/​bat mitz­vahs. It includes infor­ma­tion about observ­ing and cel­e­brat­ing Shab­bat and Jew­ish hol­i­days and gen­er­at­ing inter­est by the chil­dren. There are read­ing, web­site, and tzeda­ka oppor­tu­ni­ty lists. Estroff deals with the inter­net and says that par­ents must stay cur­rent. She rec­om­mends not try­ing to keep up with the Jon­esteins and not mak­ing your­self and your kids crazy by over­book­ing their sched­ules. She advis­es main­tain­ing rea­son­able lim­its in every­thing from allowance to par­ty plans to com­put­er usage. Much of the advice is com­mon sense, but for the first-time par­ent of ele­men­tary to mid­dle school kids, this is a warm­ly writ­ten, easy to read source­book with an exten­sive index and bibliography.

Miri­am Brad­man Abra­hams, mom, grand­mom, avid read­er, some­time writer, born in Havana, raised in Brook­lyn, resid­ing in Long Beach on Long Island. Long­time for­mer One Region One Book chair and JBC liai­son for Nas­sau Hadas­sah, cur­rent­ly pre­sent­ing Inci­dent at San Miguel with author AJ Sidran­sky who wrote the his­tor­i­cal fic­tion based on her Cuban Jew­ish refugee family’s expe­ri­ences dur­ing the rev­o­lu­tion. Flu­ent in Span­ish and Hebrew, cer­ti­fied hatha yoga instructor.

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