When my son Ari was in kindergarten the teacher asked the class “what would you like to be when you grow up?” When she called on Ari he said “a fire truck.” Even at age five, Ari knew how to deliver an outrageous line with a straight face. Over the decades he’s honed that skill. Because the year was 1977, the teacher knew that Ari was testing her; therefore, she simply said, “That’s interesting.” Ari, realizing that his teacher was up to the task of teaching him, went on to have an excellent school year.

This Chanukah, as every year, Baltimore will be ablaze not only with the lights of the menorah but also with fond Chanukah memories from across the globe.

A Village in Germany

Mrs. Irma Pretsfelder grew up in a village of only two Jewish families, about 50 miles north of Frankfurt, Germany. She was almost 13 years old, in 1939, when her family fled the country for England. “Our family didn’t make that much of Chanukah,” recalls Mrs. Pretsfelder. “We lit the candles and sang “Moaz Tzur,” but as far as giving gifts, it didn’t happen in our house – there was no Chanukah gelt or gifts. My mother hand-grated her potato latkes and made her own donuts from scratch, with yeast. They were deep fried, unfilled, and dipped in sugar. How we loved them! We didn’t play dreidel; I learned that over here. It also wasn’t the custom to put our menorah in the window. Here I do, because everybody else does. During Hitler’s time, we were afraid of repercussions; we certainly didn’t have it in the window.”

The bulging suitcases are packed with thought of all possible eventualities. Shopping sprees preempt the target date of departure. Shampoo and conditioners, in-style skirts and tops, or favorite type of kippa and belt, that fit the school’s specifications, contact lenses and solutions, deodorants, toothpaste, pictures of the family, linens, Shabbos clothes, hoodies and sweaters that sport the newest insignias – all are stuffed into two pieces of luggage and hand luggage, ready for that long awaited gap year in Israel.

But how much forethought went into preparing the student for his/her new environment? School will now be the new home, but, whereas home is familiar, forgiving, and supportive, school will be foreign and formidable, with no built-in support system.

Well, to say it’s about time is what I would really call an understatement. This year marks the tenth-year anniversary for my sheitel. It was 10 years ago that we married off two of our children. At that time, I bought myself a brand new sheitel and at a remarkably good price, too. Who knew it would last as long as it did?

Here I am, 10 years older, and my sheitel is finally ready for the dust bin. And while I’m at it, I’ve decided that I’m tired of the tried-and-true look that I’ve worn all these years. I’m not one of those women who can visualize what kind of sheitel I’d look best in without seeing it, nor am I that interested in the latest fashion. In fact, I can’t say I would even know what that is. I’m more the type of person who knows what I don’t like more than what I do. I definitely had my work cut out for me with this task as my quest for the new me began.

Thanksgiving and Chanukah – two of my favorite holidays – are coming up almost simultaneously this year. One of the things I love about Thanksgiving is that expectations are met. I expect there will be a bunch of food and chaos – and voilà – every year – that’s what I get. No one crying about not getting the present they wanted.

Come Light the Menorah…

Expectations for Chanukah are a little different. We light the candles. We eat latkes. Then there is the minor detail of presents. We don’t have a minhag of giving presents every night, but the kids do get gifts (especially from Grammy and Pop and Granny and Poppop and the aunts and uncles). I try really hard to set expectations properly. (It makes my heart sad when I give someone something I think they want and then have a puddle on the floor because the recipient’s expectations were so drastically different.) Sometimes I say to my kids, “Imagine I am about to give you spaghetti sauce.” (They would never want spaghetti sauce as a gift, of course.) “Therefore, whatever you end up getting is better than spaghetti sauce!” Doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does. 

On a recent Shabbos, I walked a mile to attend a beautiful shul kiddush in honor of a baby girl. She was already nine months old. That was fine because in the Askenazi community a kiddush celebrating the birth of a girl can be given at any time and place. That’s the minhag, custom. “The pattern of Jewish life is completed by a fascinating network of minhagim,” writes Abraham Chill in his sefer Minhagim, “which have evolved throughout the ages from place to place.” When a Jewish girl or a boy is born, whether Ashkenazi, Persian, Sefardi, or chasidic, many minhagim come with the gift of a new life.

“Once upon a time,” most women left their jobs once they had a child. But by the late 1980s, the milk-and-cookies mom of the 1950s and ’60s had been largely replaced by the working mom. The transition was not smooth, and the tension between the two groups played out in the media and in private life in what was called the “mommy wars.” Now, more than 30 years later, and with a majority of mothers in the workplace, the skirmishes have died down, but it is still one of those topics about which everyone has an opinion. Stay-at-home mothers criticize working mothers for neglecting their kids, while working mothers look down at stay-at-homes for being too indulgent and not contributing to their family’s income. Is there a right and a wrong? That is the question I will explore in this article. But one thing is certain: Whether a mother should work or stay at home is a dilemma that no family can avoid.

Editor’s Note: The footnotes containing relevant citations for this article can be found at the end of the article.

I, like others, have gone through many other channels trying to get my voice heard. Medical professionals, other concerned parents, teachers and staff members, and public health officials have all told me that they have given up trying: No one is listening, and nothing will make a difference. I have a Ph.D. in Immunology from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and as a professional in the field, a member of the community, and a parent of young children in the schools I feel obligated to speak out publicly and say that we, as a community, must do better.

During the Fall 2020 school year, we saw a layered approach also worked in schools in, for example, Missouri,²⁰, Utah,²¹ rural Wisconsin,²² and Florida.²³

My father’s family lived in the Bavarian town of Gunzenhausen since the 14^th century. When my parents had to flee their home in the middle of the night, 83 years ago, it marked the end of six centuries of Hellmann presence in that town. My parents, Richard and Betty Hellmann, often recalled their harrowing experiences on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938. They never kept it a secret.

My father was born, and lived his entire life, in the house at 13 and 15 Kirchestrasse (Church Street). It was a double lot in Gunzenhausen, a town of about 16,000 people in Mittlefranken, the Middle Franconia region of Bavaria, about 35 miles southwest of Nuremberg. The house was large, built in 1745, and had been purchased by my great-grandfather in 1867 for 7,200 florins. (I do not know how much that is in today’s money.) Several Hellmann families lived in the house but all the other families were gone by 1938.