Frugal Jewish Education: Using Jewish Music to learn about Passover (ShirLaLa Pesach)

Oh, my.  Can you believe that the first Seder is just a week from today?  Passover will be here and gone before we know it, if you can believe it.  One thing that is really important to us is making sure that we make the most out of every holiday at home, so our kids both know what is going on at the actual celebration and are excited about it in the weeks leading up to it.

One of the best things about the Seder is all the songs and prayers that are unique to the Seder.  Who doesn't love a rousing rendition of "Dayeinu" or " Adir Hu?"   The excitement and warmth of sharing the same songs together year after year is what makes everyone feel like they belong.  However, the abundance of songs can also be scary, especially for kids whose list of Jewish song repertoire consists of "Bim Bam" and "HaMotzi." 

This means that one of the best ways to involve your kids in holiday celebrations is to teach them the music that goes along with them.  But maybe you didn't pay perfect attention during every minute of every riveting Sunday school lesson when you were eight years old, maybe you are a little older than eighteen, or maybe you haven't gone to a full seder each year. What if you don't know all (or any, oy!) of the tunes or words well enough in order to pass them along to your children? 

Well, Shira Kline has you covered. 

Shira is a woman who is as passionate about Jewish music and Jewish family education as I've seen anyone.  If you play her Passover CD in your house and car for the week leading up to Seder, I promise you that you and your family will be familiar with and excited about the tunes.  Here it is:

Just one more thing.  Now, if you're like me, you've anxiously downloaded a bunch of CDs about which others have gushed, "No, really, you don't even realize it's kid's music! Seriously!"  And then you copy that sucker onto your iPod and excitedly plug it into the computer and WHO WERE THEY KIDDING?!!?!  Because anything that drones on about colors, the alphabet, brushing your teeth, or clapping your hands is kid music.

So, you know I'm telling you the truth when I tell you that you don't even realize that ShirLaLa is kid's music.  Well, half of it is - the honest-to-goodness kind, that instructs our sweeties to "shake your tushies" and make froggy noises.  The other half, however, is just great Jewish music.  She and her awesome band have recorded the old-school, straight-up Seder songs to a mildly rockin' beat so that singing the same old songs is actually really fun.  She even recorded the Festival Kiddush and Candle Blessings without background music, as you would hear them in someone's home.  She really, really wants to give families the tools to step into Jewish traditional celebrations knowing their tunes.  Especially for only $8.99 for 20 tracks... It's an incredible thing.
In case you're still wavering, here's my track-by-track review (since we've been listening to this nonstop for a couple weeks now and I could do it with my eyes closed anyway) :

1.Pesach Bamba - Sung to the tune of "LaBamba", Shira has one of these on every holiday CD.  It incorporates sweet verses about Pesach between choruses. 

2.Hal’l'l’l'luyah - Another song Shira has on every holiday CD, with "Halleluyah" as the chorus and holiday-specific tidbits in between.

3.Let My People Go - A song about Moses and Pharoah.  The chorus encourages the children to sing "No, no, no!" What kid doesn't like that?

4.Building Cities  - Er...we usually skip over this one.  Not so grabbing, maybe?

5.Listen King Pharaoh  - another song about Pharoah that encourages kids to shout along.  Love.

6.Frogs - A contemporary classic.  The one that starts with, "One morning when Pharoah woke in his bed..." Includes real frog sounds, a highlight for my little ones.

7.Hallelu  - Shira tells the story of the actual Exodus and crossing of the Sea of Reeds with a backdrop of "Hallelu" - the same tune my fellow hippy-dippy Reconstructionists like to use for Psalm 150.  She ends with "Kol Haneshema Tehallel Yah."  Your kids listen to this, and they'll know it for shul too.

8.Miriam’s Song - Debbie Friedmans, z''l.  Lyrics have been slightly modified to go "...and the children dancing with their timbrels..."

9.Elijah Rock - The classic gospel tune.  Love it.

10.Kadeish Urchatz - The "order of the Seder" tune as you grew up with it.

11.Mah Nishtana - The Four Questions sung to the traditional tune.

12.Lotsa, Lotsa Matza  - A song about all the foods we eat on Passover.  (Matzah, chicken, matza balls, gefilte fish...)  We've made up movements to go with each food.  SO fun.

13.Dayeinu - Traditional tune.  My kids are OBSESSED with "Dayeinu," especially Rami.

14.Passover Game  - Each verse gives "clues" to guess which Passover thing she's talking about.  Asher loves this one.

15.Who Knows One? - A rendition of "Who Knows One?" with different voices for each answer. NOT traditional.

16.Bashana Haba’ah - a fun, upbeat tune.
17.Candle blessing for festivals - Debbie Friedman's z''l tune sung a'capella.

18.Kiddush for festivals - Traditional tune sung a'capella.  Really great if you don't yet know how to make Kiddush for Chag - the same tune goes for all of them!

19.B’tzeit Yisrael - A short version of Hallel, sung in many homes.

20.Adir Hu - Old school, straight up "Adir Hu."  Still awesome.


So, what are you waiting for?  Go do the download and blast this sucker as much as you can for the next week.  Any CD that can teach my kid to do this in (seriously, no joke) less than an hour total of singing along has my ringing endorsement:



(Full disclosure: Shira hasn't compensated or asked me to do this in any way, shape or form.  She doesn't even know I exist, actually, which now that I think about it makes me kinda sad.  Shira, are you reading this?  If you are, let's have a lady date.)

What Passover music do you love to share with your family?  Do you have any more recommendations for us?

Countdown to Passover: Plague Playthings

The Passover Seder, the ritual Passover meal, was designed with children in mind.  All kinds of tricks and gimmicks are employed to keep the children involved: the asking of the Four Questions by the youngest child, staying up late to hunt the for the afikomen, sweet special-for-Passover foods, kid-friendly songs.

If you're a little kid, all these things are very cool.  But there is one more thing about Passover that is cooler still.  The central element to the Seder is called "Maggid," which means "telling."  We tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt, where, in order to push Pharoah to let the Jewish people go, G-d sent a series of plagues to afflict Egypt.  Those plagues included: Lice, Locusts, Frogs, and Vermin.  So of course, for Passover, we've got to have frog, bug, and snake toys to play with!

I think it is this very reason that Passover brings out the kid in me.  Have you ever gone to orientaltrading.com and searched for "frogs?" 



If your kids are obsessed with superheroes like mine (yes, I'm talking to you, Mara), they'll love that a lot of them have the same colors as their favorites.  Here's Iron Man:


This year, the dollar section at Target had the most awesome giant bug toys, and I found some insect finger puppets at Oriental Trading.


These snakes were a dollar at Wal-Mart.


My favorite find of the year?  Hefty zooPals products.  They make frog plates and utensils in the shapes of frogs and snakes (you do have to pick through the packs to find ones you want.)  The plates are disposable, but you can use the utensils all Passover long, or probably year-to-year if you want.


I have been known to decorate the Passover table with frogs and bugs.

(If you are reading this and you are one of the kind souls hosting us for Seder this year, I apologize in advance.  My kids will probably insist on bringing at least some of our creepy-crawlies with them, unless you are seriously opposed...)

I collect a few things each year.  This year's haul was disproportionately large because all the toys I've collected are sitting in storage somewhere in Columbus.  But I'm happy to add to the stash!  In a normal year I'd spend about $10-$15  on Passover plague toys and accessories - I spent about $30 this year.   It is so, SO worth it to see my kids excited about Passover!

Stay tuned for a post on Passover books and haggadot for kids, and one on Passover music as well!

What are you doing to get your kids (and yourselves) excited for Passover?

Frugal Jewish Education*: Learning Alef-Bet, Pretzels and M&Ms Edition

This week in Frugal Jewish Education: Learning Alef-Bet.

Since he turned two, Asher's been demonstrating an ability to recognize letters and, in most cases, the sounds they make.  Accomplishing recognition of letters and their sounds is the first step on the path to reading readiness. 

Even though it's not typical to start children learning alef-bet until they are much older and have completely mastered the English alphabet, usually around second grade, I figured it couldn't hurt to give it a go with Asher.  (We have been reading to him in Hebrew since birth and doing casual letter recognition like "Alef is for Asher" for quite awhile.)

I decided we'd focus on learning one letter per week, mostly on Mondays, when Asher doesn't have preschool, and then follow up with review the rest of the week.  I purchased an excellent pre-primer workbook, which Asher LOVES working with.  We keep each sheet in a binder and Asher is really proud to look back on what he's done and show Abba all his hard work.

(Asher "circling" the letter that matches the one at the top)

In addition to a classic worksheet approach, however, I'm looking for new and creative ways to engage Asher (and, by extension, Rami) in learning his letters.  I want him to look forward to each lesson as a fun activity that offers something new and exciting each week. Hopefully this will direct his attitude towards learning throughout his childhood and his whole life.

It is a custom to have children eat cakes or cookies decorated with Hebrew letters on the first days of their Jewish education, so that words of Torah will always be sweet in their mouths.  I thought it'd be fun to start our Hebrew letter learning by making the shapes of each letter out of something edible and sweet.  Pretzel sticks and M&Ms fit the bill!


(learning the letter gimmel)

Asher had a ton of fun with this and asks for "pretzel alef bet" on many days.  In particular, this exercise helped him remember that "bet has a belly button" because the "belly button" (dagesh, or dot in the middle of the letter) is made out of an M&M!


What fun (and maybe tasty?) ways have you found to teach your children their letters?  Please share in the comments - I'm always looking for new ideas!!!

*About the Frugal Jewish Education Series:
(The book of Proverbs teaches us, "Chanoch L'Na'ar Al Pi Darcho" - "Teach your child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." This is one of the bases for the mitzvah (commandment) to Jewishly educate our children. According to traditional interpretation, the commandment "P'ru Ur'vu" - "Be Fruitful and Multiply" is not only an imperative to have children if we are able, but also to raise and educate them.

Throughout the life of this blog I'll be sharing some frugal tools and methods that I've found for Jewishly educating my children. This is in no way intended to be a slam on formal Jewish education - I believe that formal Jewish education, such as Jewish preschool, supplementary religious school, Jewish day school, and Jewish camp - are powerful and important tools in educating and socializing our children in a Jewish communal context, among other things.
As a Jewish educator myself, however, I understand that formal Jewish education doesn't tend to "stick" as well unless those ideas and lessons are somehow reinforced at home. While I am an ordained rabbi and have an extensive education that allows me to someday (G-d willing) teach my children very in-depth and detailed lessons, you don't have to be a rabbi to instill a love of Judaism and Jewish learning and a sense of Jewish commitment in your children. There are tons of great things you can do in your home that require little to no knowledge of Hebrew or Jewish anything to reinforce what your kinderlach (kids) are learning at school. This series will highlight those as I encounter them myself.)

Frugal Jewish Education: Using the iTunes store to build your Jewish music library

The book of Proverbs teaches us, "Chanoch L'Na'ar Al Pi Darcho" - "Teach your child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."  This is one of the bases for the mitzvah (commandment) to Jewishly educate our children.  According to traditional interpretation, the commandment "P'ru Ur'vu" - "Be Fruitful and Multiply" is not only an imperative to have children if we are able, but also to raise and educate them. 

Throughout the life of this blog I'll be sharing some frugal tools and methods that I've found for Jewishly educating my children.  This is in no way intended to be a slam on formal Jewish education - I believe that formal Jewish education, such as Jewish preschool, supplementary religious school, Jewish day school, and Jewish camp - are powerful and important tools in educating and socializing our children in a Jewish communal context, among other things. 

As a Jewish educator myself, however, I understand that formal Jewish education doesn't tend to "stick" as well unless those ideas and lessons are somehow reinforced at home.  While I am an ordained rabbi and have an extensive education that allows me to someday (G-d willing) teach my children very in-depth and detailed lessons, you don't have to be a rabbi to instill a love of Judaism and Jewish learning and a sense of Jewish commitment in your children.  There are tons of great things you can do in your home that require little to no knowledge of Hebrew or Jewish anything to reinforce what your kinderlach (kids) are learning at school.  This series will highlight those as I encounter them myself.

My children are very young, which means that while they can't grasp detailed or in-depth lessons, their little brains are forming a mile a minute.  That also means that they respond to the most basic of lessons, internalizing things like language building-blocks and melodies to songs at an astonishing rate.  We have a CD of Jewish camp songs that we play in the car, and the first track is "Modeh Ani," a Jewish prayer said upon waking up.  I was astonished that, while Asher cannot read or speak Hebrew, he could sing back not only the tune, but most of the words to the song.  Little children learn through repetition, and while Judaism does not value rote recitation of the prayers without understanding the words, I think it's really good for my kids to know how to say the prayers and understand their basic meanings. ("We sing 'Modeh Ani' in the morning to thank G-d for another new day ahead of us.")  Now I know they're capable of learning to say a prayer like "Modeh Ani" even if it contains more complicated Hebrew and ideas.

This motivated me to have even more Jewish music on hand to play for my kids.   With Chanukah just around the corner (at the beginning of December this year!  Yikes!) I wanted to employ the "listen to a CD over and over again" technique to help my oldest learn the blessings for the candles and some other songs (and my littler ones to become familiar with the tunes.) 

This is where iTunes came in.  I knew I wanted some specific songs, like "Maoz Tzur" and the Candle Blessings, but I didn't know which versions both my kids and I would want to listen to over and over and over again.   A quick search in the iTunes store gave me a list of songs I could sample.


I really liked the sound of one version, so I clicked over to the whole album ("ShirLaLa Chanukah" RULES) and bought a bunch of songs I liked. 


Pandora Radio is another great tool for this.  You can "create your own radio station" to listen to songs of a certain genre.   Type in "Chanukah" to listen to full songs.



This is where the "frugal" part comes in.  iTunes lets you, in most cases, purchase one song at a time, so if you're looking for 3 specific songs, you pay your $3, your kids learn the prayers, and you're done.  I decided I really liked the whole CD, and I bought it (19 songs) for $10 - around $.50 a song, or a great bargain.  Or, if you're using Pandora, you listen to whole songs for FREE.

My kids are already listening to the songs in the car and learning about Chanukah.  Asher can tell you the story of the Maccabees and the oil that lasted for 8 days, and he knows the basic tune for candlelighting now.  I dropped $10 and I only have to spend as much time as I would spend in the car anyway on this little piece of their Jewish education.  It may be obvious - but I'm learning new tunes too!  This is a great way to not only teach your child, but learn together with him.

Stay tuned for more Frugal Jewish Education posts!

Frugal Lessons from the Field - Taking Advantage of Free Stuff with Little Ones

On Tuesday, Haagen Dazs celebrated its 50th birthday by offering up free scoops of ice cream.
Obviously, a stellar afternoon time killer family fun activity for my two big guys.

Luckily I was not 100% blinded by joy at the promise of Free Haagen Dazs, and kept my wits about me before cashing in.  Here are some things I did before taking advantage of that amazing free offer:

1.  Find the nearest location.  There's only one Haagen Dazs here in Columbus - luckily, it's only about 9 highway miles away.  For a different freebie, we might have decided that this was too much of a schlep, but for the time sucking sheer fun and deliciousness value of free ice cream cones, I thought it was totally worth it.

2. Call to make sure your location is participating.  This took three phone calls for us.  Nobody answered at the number listed for our location, so I called Haagen-Dazs' corporate number.  They let me know that each shop is a franchise and could decide whether to participate in the promotion (this is also true for giveaways at other franchises, like Dunkin Donuts, so watch out!)  I finally called the mall where our Haagen Dazs is located, and they gave me the correct number to call.  It took about 10 minutes of phone time, but I finally verified that our location was participating in free scoop day.  Imagine if I had schlepped the whole family into their car seats, down the highway, into the stroller, and through the mall only to find out we couldn't get free scoops!



3.  Make an event of it.  See if there is anything close by the location of the giveaway that you could combine with free stuff to make an even more exciting outing for your family (although seriously what could be more exciting than FREE ICE CREAM!?!?!)  Our Haagen-Dazs happens to be in a mall with an awesome kids' playspace. Even though Rami wasn't into his ice cream cone, he still had a great time rough-and-tumbling it with the other kids at the mall.

So, now that you're drooling over all that free ice cream we got, make a plan to get your own!  Wal-Mart is offering a free sundae tomorrow.  So, those of you who aren't shomer Shabbat, click here to enter your zip code to see if a Wal-Mart near you is participating!  (And to the rest of you, Shabbat Shalom and treat yourself to some ice cream after Havdalah.)

Who's got more tips for me on how to make the most out of free stuff?

Celebrating Shavuot the Fun, Delicious, Educational, and Frugal Way

I'm so inspired by the Creative Jewish Mom.  She's committed to teaching her kids about Judaism in a fun way.  Her crafts are always beautiful, kid-friendly, and most of the time are super-frugal to boot.   She made an incredible cake for Shavuot and it made me think of how I could do something similar and hands-on with my two big guys.

Shavuot is a great holiday for teaching little kids because the concept is simple (it's the day that God gave us the Torah) and the traditions for celebration pretty much revolve around eating dairy foods, which means excellent desserts are possible.

This year, to celebrate Shavuot, we made some cupcakes.

(Head on over to our family blog to read the full project explanation.)

The cupcake mix cost $.88.

 

(We already had the food coloring and muffin cups.)

The frosting (that included sprinkles) cost $1.50.

 

The chocolate wafers were (a completely riduculous) $1.69 - but worth it.

Total cost of the project was $4.07. 

Not too shabby considering The Frugal Ima is 3 weeks post-partum and kind of a sleep-deprived, cranky disaster. It was such a success that I'm motivated to think of other fun projects to teach my kids about the holidays, and hopefully supply them with some awesome childhood memories to boot.

By creating frugal ways to teach about and celebrate holidays, I'm hoping to do a few things:

• begin family traditions that are do-able each year, regardless of the financial circumstances;
• put the lessons of the holiday in the forefront, instead of the monetary considerations;
• and establish that Judaism and its celebrations are kid-accessible and friendly - who cares if my kids ruin cupcakes that only cost $4?

I'd love to hear about your family's holiday traditions and their frugal aspects.  What are you doing to celebrate this Spring?

Your Kids Don't Really Need (More) Toys - The Exodus from Egypt vs. Our Kids' Stuff

Post-Edit Prologue:  

Dear Saba, Savta, Auntie Al, and anyone else who has lovingly lavished toys upon our kids,

We love every single toy you have brought our kids.  We appreciate that you love them so much and have thought so carefully about what they would enjoy, and then brought it to our house.  

Like the time Saba brought all of Uncle Steve's vintage toys (including He-Man, and a sweet castle and pirate ship,) Savta brought some really excellent puzzles and an awesome pre-loved parking garage she smartly picked up , and Auntie Al went to great lengths (including fending off Airport security, or schlepping around to every single McDonalds in town,) to bring the boys some pretty sweet stuff.

The boys LOVE all your gifts.  LOVE them.  And we love them too.  We just don't love having them take over our house.Which is why we box them up and rotate them - the boys are always overjoyed all over again when they see and remember the stuff you brought them.

We know you think carefully and lovingly about the toys you gift to the kids.  We know you don't bring over junk, or excess.  We know that you know what we're talking about when we bemoan toys taking over our house.  Which is why this post is *not* about toys that you've brought.

So, if you see a toy you brought in one of these snapshots, you should know - we only store stuff the boys love.  This post isn't about hating on toys - it's about hating on materialism  and toy excess and ridiculousness.  And I know that you know what I'm talking about, because as many toys as we grew up with as kids, we also were encouraged to make forts out of moving boxes, Halloween costumes out of felt scraps,  and pretend wedding bouquets out of fall leaves.  Which is what this post is all about, anyway.

Now that that's been (hopefully) cleared up, here's our post.  And thanks, Auntie Al, for once again making me a better person through your superior sense of tact combined with, well, your superior sense of tact.  Love you.

~~~~~~~

The other morning, I used up a tray of eggs.

I was about to toss out the cardboard carton bottom, when I glanced over to see Asher playing with some of his zoo animal toys.
I cut a row off the carton and told Asher it was for the Hippo's food - which is, obviously, Cheerios.

He played with that thing for a solid half an hour.
Turns out the tray was really for *his* food - he ate all the cheerios and the babka I put in it afterwards.
So, after serving double duty as a toy and as a little plate, I just threw it out.
Because it was FREE.
Which was awesome.

This is not to say that our kids don't have toys. 

Oh, they have toys!

{An entire playroom for the express purpose of housing toys}


{Stacks of toy bins in our garage}

Most of these toys were slowly brought in over the past two and a half years by adoring family members and the occasional garage sale find. 

It's gotten to the point where we've started to store most of them in the garage and rotate them out, because there were too many toys for the children to utilize if we kept them all in the playroom at once.

This year, we've instituted a no-toy policy for birthdays. (More on that in a future post.)
We also regularly sweep the house and playroom, gather a box of toys in which the kids are disinterested, or have never taken interest, and donate them.

Why? you might ask.  Your kids might take an interest in that later, or they might grow into the toy.  You may as well keep it around.

Well, in large part, the kids just like playing with free stuff (like egg cartons, or, say, my wallet) better than they like those darn expensive, made-in-China, tons-of-frustrating-pieces toys.

On the Jewish front, we've recently ended the Passover season, and moved into the period of time where we remember the journey from Egypt to Sinai.  Many commentaries discuss the drastic change that the Israelites went through when they left Egypt.  They had homes, they had a reliable food source, and they had stuff.   (They also complained about the loss of that stuff quite frequently according to the Torah.)

A large part of the Passover experience is commemorating, and appreciating, that our ancestors who left Egypt could take nothing with them.  All they had was matzah they could bake quickly, and what they and their animals could carry.  In this season, where we count down the days of their journey from slavery (leaving Egypt) to freedom (receiving the Torah at Sinai) we are, in yet another way, forced to remember what's really important - family, community, our shared experience, and faith in something larger than ourselves that will ultimately supply everything we need.

This is a Jewish attitude that stretches from Passover throughout the rest of the year.  It translates to a focus on recognizing how rich we are in what we already have.  One small way we begin to cultivate that attitude in our children is by minimizing the importance of toys, and highlighting our own creativity and time together.  For two-year-olds, I think converting an egg carton into a hippo trough is a decent place to start.

Crystal over at www.moneysavingmom.com recently started a series of posts on this topic called "Dealing With Toy Overload."  Check it out here for more reading about why your kids don't really need (more) toys, and how to deal with the ridiculous amount they already have.

Parenting Frugally: What Babies Need

As we (b''H) welcome a new baby into our home, I'm remembering what it was like to prepare for our first baby about three years ago.  It can be very difficult for unseasoned parents to figure out exactly what baby needs to make it through his or her first year healthily and happily.  In the age of the internet, lists of things that we "need" for baby are easy to come by - and overwhelming to say the least.

The vast majority of things on these lists are unnecessary for a few reasons:
- You already have them (i.e., antibacterial handsoap, lotion, laundry detergent) or
- they are dangerous for baby (i.e., crib bumpers, comforters) or
- you don't really need them (i.e., wipes warmers, burp cloths, diaper pails, pacifiers, shoes, toys, baby towels, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum)!

So, are you ready?  Here is the Frugal Ima's simple and comprehensive list of Things Your Baby Really Needs, in order of importance:
1.   You.
2.   Something to eat.
3.   A safe place to sleep.
4.   Something to wear.
5.   A safe way to get from one place to another.


Here's how we fulfill this list in our house, in case you're really curious:
1.   You. - Ima and Abba.

2.   Something to eat. - Nursing, and the occasional midnight bottle with generic (yes, generic!) formula to let Ima sleep a fair stretch.

3.   A safe place to sleep. - A pack-and-play with bassinet insert.

4.   Something to wear. - Just some onesies - it's warm outside!  And, of course, diapers.

5.   A safe way to get from one place to another. A correctly-installed infant car seat, used by both brothers but never in an auto accident.

Isn't that amazing?  You can have happy parents, happy baby, AND a happy bank account all at once.

How the Frugal Ima Got to Be Frugal: An Introduction

Our Story:
David and I entered the full-time, for real, salary-earning work force just under two years ago.  Before that, we had been sweating our way through 5 years (each) of grueling graduate coursework, living on a scant part-time income and a mass of student loans (ugh - more about that in future posts.)   Of course, like most graduate students, we were barely making ends meet, and certainly not saving for the future.

Our lives seemed to get even more hectic once we started working.  David started at his firm in August.  I started work as a campus rabbi in September.  Rami was due to join the family in November.  Because of the move across states for our jobs, David had to take another State Bar Exam in February.  Between sleepless nights, stressful Jewish holiday seasons and legal projects, and keeping two babies fed and clean, it seemed like Crazy + Insanity + Ridiculousness had come to live at our house.  We were in Survival Mode. 

We bought prepared foods.  We bought a new car.  We bought new clothes and pajamas for the children.  We paid a cleaner.  We ordered takeout.  We bought a HOUSE.  We didn't think we were spending extravagantly - we just thought we were spending what we needed to spend.  And, like many Americans making more than respectable salaries, we were still just making ends meet.  We couldn't tell you where our money went at the end of every month.  

A few months ago, I got Fed Up.  I drew up a budget and a calendar of payments for each month.  We sat down together, went over it, and saw that all our money was being spent on things that we could identify, and that no money was being saved.

We were faced with a double-whammy of a reality check: 
1. We made what most Americans would consider to be a very, very good salary and
2. we had not saved a dime for our emergency fund or our retirement, let alone the children's educations.   

Something had to give.  Thus started our practice of cutting costs wherever possible and working together to live happy, fulfilled, non-deprived lives while doing that. Now, we're cooking from scratch, loving the heck out of hand-me-downs, clipping coupons, re-purposing whatever we can, avoiding any unnecessary purchases, cleaning our own house, taking advantage of free entertainment, and focusing on saving every month.

The Story of This Blog:
As I scoured the blogosphere for tips and tricks for running a happily frugal household, I began to notice a common theme.  The frugality bloggers who most inspired me, more often than not, were blogging from a religious perspective.  These bloggers, who were mostly women and mostly Christian, had found arguably one of the most compelling reasons to stretch their dollars and run frugal households - their faith traditions directed them to do so.  

"Hey!" I thought, "I'm a woman of faith!  I'm a rabbi, for Gd's sake!  Doesn't Judaism have something to say about this?"
And, as is always the answer to that question, I realized that, yes, Judaism has a lot to say: about money, avoiding waste, making the most of what we have, mindfully saving for the future, and being content with our lot.   
Not only that, but it has more to say - about how our actions surrounding money and how we treat the things we are lucky enough to possess impact our children and the world around us. 

I look forward to sharing our family's road to a financially - and Jewishly - responsible household.  I hope you find some inspiration, both spiritual and financial.   And, most of all, I look forward to growing richer in my understanding of money, wisdom, and good sense through our conversations here.