In the leadup to Canada's federal elections tomorrow*, there's been lots of talk about whether expatriate Canadians should have the right to vote. * (yeah, I know, super-awesome that they did it again on a Jewish holiday!) Last time around, we didn't. They changed the law to say you could only vote if you'd been gone less than 5 years and intended to return. We were under 5 years, but couldn't honestly say we planned to return to live in Canada. So our rights were taken away. But this year, in response to a legal challenge from a pair of Canadians abroad, the Supreme Court reinstated our rights. The 5-year condition, they said, made no sense and hadn't been instituted in response to any particular problem, real or perceived. Still -- lots of Canadians, including some of my beloved family members, don't think we should be voting. They're not alone. I don't have statistics, so I can't say most, but I know many people back there feel
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Well, we're back in the homeschooling saddle, if only for a few days before I'm heading off on a crazy-stupid two-day gallivant across Europe. The entire month before summer vacation, every Israeli parents' WhatsApp group is on fire with camp registrations and plans to ensure that our beloved sweeties don't have to go more than ten minutes without a “misgeret ,” or framework. It's mostly for the parents' benefit, so they don’t have to miss work, which I get, but I also believe kids need a break. I mean, school let out last Friday, and on Sunday morning, most of my kids' friends were off to the various "day camps" run by the schools. That one Shabbos can't have felt like much of a vacation. I was wondering how it would go with summerschooling this year, because NR is getting older and GZ is the same amount of stubborn as always, or perhaps more so with age. But if these last 3 days are any indication, it's actually going better than in
Every year we’re in Toronto, and for years before we made aliyah, my mother hosts a shalosh seudos for the ladies of our shul. For some reason, my mother’s shalosh seudos always manages to fall out on a different parsha, so I can’t repeat what I’ve said in previous years. If you’re curious, here are some of these masterpieces from previous years… Parshas Chukas (2009) Parshas Re’eh (2010) Parshas Chukas (2011 – I guess it has sometimes repeated) Parshas Devarim/Chazon (2013) Parshas Pinchas (2015) The point being - I had to start from scratch looking at this week’s combined parsha – Matos-Masei. There is a very shocking section near the beginning of this week’s parsha. It’s connected with what we read two weeks ago in parshas Balak. Back then, the people of Moav and Midian sent women in to seduce the men of Bnei Yisrael – not just physically, our commentators tell us, but spiritually, leading the Jewish men into worshiping idols. Now, it’s time for revenge. Interestingly, we’re t
Growing up as a hyphenated Jewish-Canadian, I admit, the “Canadian” part didn't really matter much. It was just a word for everybody around me, including me, but mainly everybody else. These days, being Canadian usually comes up when Israelis ask me, "What part of America are you from?" The answer, of course, is NONE. Sure, I could get by on a technicality, since I'm from North America just like United Statesians are. And Cubans, Barbadians, and many other people. Heck, even if I was from South America, it's all still America, right? But that's not what they mean. What they mean is which state, which major American city? Am I from LA, New York, one of the handful of other places in the U.S. that a typical Israeli has heard of? Nope. I'm from Canada. Oh, Canada. Great. They nod. They've heard of it. "Isn't it cold there?" Canada… is the cold bit, the hat America wears to protect itself from the arctic.
Here in our last 24 hours in Toronto, I am living out the mashal of the fish and the diamonds. Maybe you've heard this mashal (parable)? For sure, my kids have: many, many times. In the story, a man leaves his home, somewhere normal in Europe, and sets sail to seek his fortune in some exotic island, perhaps near Africa, where it is rumoured that the streets are paved with diamonds. He arrives at the island, and discovers that the rumours are TRUE. Diamonds are everywhere! He scoops them up to fill his pockets and rushes into a restaurant to order a lunch fit for a king. Of course, he discovers when he goes to pay with the diamonds at the end of the meal, that they are utterly worthless on the island. What the restaurant wants in payment is... fish. Bleakly, he wanders from store to store, discovering that the only currency anyone will accept is fish. (Don't ask why; this is not the most realistic story, okay?) So, okay. The guy stashes the diamonds in his pocket a
I just got flamed on Facebook – now that’s something that doesn’t happen often. (My life’s pretty boring, I guess.) But when I saw this story in a Facebook group, about the Jewish Defense League setting up shop in Montreal, I mentioned that I found their tactics "disgusting." Oops. (photo credit: JDL Canada website) Apparently, it was the wrong thing to say. Apparently, for criticizing those who hate the haters, I become hated myself. Moi? I was attacked on all sides by my fellow Jews who offered such threats as: "Wait until one of the savages comes after your kids and delivers their heads on platters to your front door," "[you are] the poor little Jew who skips into the cattle car excited to get to the spacious work camps," and "[you] to Nazi officer: "Sir, which cattle car door should I use?'", "[you] portrait of a Jewish lemming." These comments tell me everything I need to know about the JDL, its suppo
I won’t go on at length, because my blog is “niche” enough already, but I have been dreading signing up to self-publish on CreateSpace (an Amazon company) because I’d heard that they withhold tax at a rate of 30% for foreign people. (Apparently, Canada is foreign.) There is a way around this, CreateSpace will tell you . First, you need to get an officially certified copy of your passport, which is not the same as a notarized copy because it will cost you a lot more. Then, you submit them (or the original passport – ha ha ha) with a bunch of other paperwork, including a letter from your prospective “employer”, to the IRS to eventually, someday, get an ITIN – taxpayer identification number. You can do this the slow-boat way by mail or submit it – for another fee – to a certified “receiver” company in your foreign location. Either way, once you have your ITIN, you just submit a form to CreateSpace telling them not to keep your money or give it to the IRS… simple. Anyway, that was t
Haven’t been posting here much, so I’m linking up to two guest posts I have written for other people’s blogs (or collective blogs) in the last few days, so you know that I’m still out here, writing up a storm… and NOT packing, which is what I probably should be doing. First, this guest post at the fabulous Birkat Chaverim blog (much too shmancy for me, usually!) about Teaching Pirke Avos (okay, Avot) . And then there’s this one , about preparing the kids for our coming aliyah, hosted on the Homeschool Horizons blog , a collaborative bloggy reinvention of a belly-up Canadian print publication. Because it’s a mostly Christian site, I have used mainly English terms here. Still – it’s all true, every word. Enjoy!!!
Last week at our regular Thursday homeschool drop-in, somebody mentioned that their first couple of weeks there, they saw me and my friends Rachel and Shira and our kids and we must have seemed like such a unified, cohesive bloc that they were actually afraid they were going to be in the minority because they weren’t Jewish! Halevai. (if only) As it is, I usually feel like we’re the only ones in the world. Finding Jewish homeschoolers around here is a crazy enough challenge, even with no stipulations about observance, Jewish knowledge, Jewish studies curriculum or any other criteria – just folks who identify as Jewish along with their kids, and who are homeschooling. I have put out feelers every single year, and have never figured out why there are so few of us. It’s lonely, and I wish there were more. There seem to be enough Jews in Toronto’s religious community that there would be more than a few families homeschooling at any given time… and yet, there aren’t. Is it because
A few weeks ago, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (in Ottawa) announced that it was going back to BC (before Christ) and AD (anno domini, “the year of our Lord”) for dates on anything “intended for the public,” while continuing its policy of many years to use BCE and CE on documents intended for a more academic readership. You can read all about it in the National Post here . Rabbi Reuven Bulka, a prominent rabbi in Ottawa, came out with a response that sounds pretty much like something my teenagers usually say: “no-one cares.” In fairness, the article says, he “prefers BCE because it is more inclusive, but… can live with the change.” I can live with it, too, but I’d rather not, and I’m not going to just sit by quietly. And if you live in Canada, neither should you. I was dismayed to read in the National Post that you're going back to using BC and AD for dates on museum displays and other materials "intended for the public". http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/02/
This is a kid who doesn't "like" drawing... in quotation marks because the truth is, he loves to create pictures, but doesn't love to make them up from scratch out of his own head. You might say he's not very creative, but more likely, he's just scared. Kid #4 in a family of draw-ers, paint-ers, and other big, creative types, and of course he's worried he'll get made fun of. He has attempted various Draw Write Now draw-alongs with us (scroll down in this post to see some of his early attempts). But this week, he discovered a "how-to" for a rather inane little kids' magazine called Chirp (from the same folks who bring you such insipid Canadian reading as Chickadee and Owl). Now, these kids ADORE Chirp, for no particular reason I can see other than he's consistently drawn and cheerful. But the how-to draw, while it has inspired Naomi to do a few sweet doodles of her own, is like kindling in the wishful hands of Gavriel Zev
Who knew…??? “Visioning” is an actual, official word, useable by political officials and laypeople alike. I say this in the wake of a lively local park meeting in which various stakeholders got together to forge a vision statement for the park. Now, rationally, I can understand the importance of this – a central vision as opposed to willy-nilly projects here and there throughout the park with no consultation or process. Fer sure. But there is a lesser, reptile part of my brain, deep, deep down inside (I promise I kept it subdued!) that just sat there, growling and snarling, as people passionately discussed the values the park embodies in their lives. It should be green , for instance, in every possible way. The park should be safe , and traffic-free . (It seems to me that if you start letting in cars, it can no longer be defined as a park , but one group apparently felt the need to specify: “TRAFFIC FREE ZONE.”) Another group, paradoxically, listed both “access to wild natu
Now that aliyah is becoming more of a reality, I’m thinking I have to move ahead on my lifelong dream of saving up enough Canadian Tire money to buy a chocolate bar. I know… this sounds like a pretty small dream. It’s just one of those things, you know? My brother mentioned this delightful possibility to me probably about 35 years ago… that you could save up enough Canadian Tire money to buy a chocolate bar , and nobody could stop you from paying for it that way at the checkout!!! It’s been in the back of my head ever since. At first, it was just the titillating thought of owning a chocolate bar. Later, it was the thrill of getting a free chocolate bar. Now…? Well, now I think I’d do it for the irony, and the sheer Canadiana of it. If you’re not from here, you may never have fondled Canadian Tire money, and you must know, you are really missing something special. These are REAL MONEY, actual banknotes, which I believe are actually printed by the genu-wine Canadian Banknote C
Yet another homeschool field trip, our last for a while, because I’m off to Baltimore next week. This was FUN, despite several last-minute cancellations bringing our group size down to 13 kids (though this meant we could sneak along a friend’s kid for free!) and horrible weather so we couldn’t enjoy the usual outdoor recess with period games and toys. Most of the kids didn’t know how to spell; with the unschooly bent of most homeschoolers here, the spelling bee the schoolteacher organized was a bit of a joke. Even after practicing the “list words” for fifteen minutes (writing them, reading them, saying them aloud), most of the children were still guessing letters somewhat randomly, like a G in the word “rain.” Naomi Rivka did fine; her word was “ring,” which she spelled on the first try. Despite this, I respected the fact that the parents did not jump in at all to “rescue” their kids from potentially embarrassing situations. Perhaps that’s part of the philosophy – if they feel
Toronto’s newish Toon Town Mayor , Rob Ford, weighed in last week at 330 lbs and vowed, in a pun on his many campaign promises, to “cut the waist,” initiating a campaign and special website (paid for out of his own pocket; the city isn’t paying a dime, apparently) so you can follow his progress as he weighs in every Monday. As of today, he’s down 10 lbs… water weight, I say. But as he challenged Torontonians to join him in losing their “waist,” he mentioned “hitting the gym,” which is a fascinating irony given that not everybody in this city has the money to join a gym in the first place, even in a season in which outdoor exercise is an iffy proposition. But wait, you say! What about the Welcome Policy, which ensures that citizens at every income level will have access to healthy and enriching programs for themselves and their children? Ha ha ha. You see, I signed up for my regular Tuesday-morning aerobics class, the one I’ve been taking since, oh, 2008 or so. Now, since the
Three new printables this week, free and fun! 1) Parsha Worksheets. First, for Parshas Vaeira, a 3-page printable that includes a one-page overview of the parsha story (same as the one I wrote last year ), a narration / illustration page for the child to complete with or without help, and a cute mini-book (taken from the Pesach lapbook) with a song for learning the Ten Makkos / Ten Plagues (to the tune of “This Old Man”) in Hebrew or English, which can be cut out and pasted onto the narration page as a keepsake and memory aid. 2) Letter Gimel Cut/Paste. Second, this is part of Gavriel Zev’s alef bais explorations now that we’re up to gimel, a simple sheet that lets kids decide if an object is “gadol” (which starts with gimel) or “katan”. I made this for Naomi Rivka, but Gavriel Zev loves cutting and pasting so much…! 3) Canadian Currency Posters. I almost forgot! These Canadian currency posters appeared here during Chanukah last year, but I have updated them with a more ge
Have you noticed ANY typos in this thing ? Somebody on CurrClick gave it two stars (out of 5!) because “I was very excited about this product but it is poorly written, has many spelling mistakes, is very confusing (at least 4 sections on the Menorah, but they are not together).” I think it’s a fantastic idea to put everything Menorah-related together, and I apologize if it is confusing – I plan the components and create them, but generally leave them in the order in which they were first created. Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s because I work in Microsoft Word on an old computer, and the thing has a heart attack working with large files and lots of graphics, and sometimes when I move stuff around it is lost and gone forever. Anyway, it’s a valid point (though I wouldn’t give a product TWO stars out of five for that). BUT… where are the spelling mistakes she’s talking about??? I’m doing a spell-check of the teaching and overview and noting where word gives me a wiggly underline.
I took a look through Ontario’s Social Studies curriculum standards for Grade 1 and had a good chuckle. Starting with the term “Social Studies” itself, a phrase which has – over my lifetime – replaced the more useful and specific subjects, “History” and “Geography.” As Rob & Cyndy Shearer put it in the introduction to their updated edition of Famous Men of Ancient Greece , “The most pressing bits of information conveyed in the majority of elementary social studies texts are, ‘You live in America,’ and ‘The fireman/policeman/doctor/librarian is your friend.’ These things, we believe, any non-comatose child knows long before kindergarten.” If that’s the case, the Ontario curriculum truly excels in presenting Social Studies for the comatose child. I know that, given general guidelines like these, some truly gifted teachers may soar to great heights, and some, maybe many students may blossom. But I would absolutely LOVE to see all kids and teachers challenged with specific standa
From the department of “Don’t Ask Your Child to Do Something You Won’t Do” comes my latest escapade: sketching a copy of work of art. We suddenly, mysteriously became members of the Art Gallery of Ontario a couple of months ago: my mother handed me an envelope with the Costco membership we impulse-bought at Canada Blooms, a parking ticket, and… “I joined the Art Gallery and your family is included.” This incidental thing must have been well over $100. I kind of stuck the card in my wallet and forgot about it… but when I noticed yesterday that they lend FREE WHEELCHAIRS, suddenly, it was the deal of the century. Yes! I may be broken like the Hummel figurine that I am , but I can ride for free at Ted’s capable hands. Adult admission alone is $20, which partly explains why we hadn’t been in about a decade. The other reason is that the kids hated it, so we never went back. Today, we left THOSE kids at home (I always extend an invitation, and sometimes, rarely, they accept
A few weeks ago, I blogged about “ winning a gift card .” I was joking, but guess what??? I won!!! I got my card in the mail this week, and tonight, had some fun choosing and ordering homeschool books – what else? – online from Chapters / Indigo . I’m SO happy, I just want to tell all Canadian homeschoolers to go check out their site one more time. Remember, the first issue even has an article by me in it! (more to come if I can get my act together to write for their issue topics / deadlines…) So what did I buy??? Ancient Science , by Jim Wiese, as recommended by Michelle at Lionden Landing . Before she was a homeschool mama, she was a science teacher who really knows her stuff! I’m very excited about this book. Science Around the World , by Janice VanCleave, as suggested by our Grammar-Stage Elemental Science curriculum. And finally, just to use up the gift card… Just So Stories , by Rudyard Kipling, because I have it on my Kobo, but we’re enjoyin