By Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence
Even for kids who have been born into the Orthodox Jewish religion, observing three consecutive three-day yomim tovim proves to be a challenging endeavor.
It wasn’t uncommon when my seven-year-old looked at me and asked if she could watch something later that night, and I’d tell her that we had yet another day to go until that could happen.
“Another day?”
Her eyes would get big in disbelief that a holiday could seemingly have no end, and she would go back to doing whatever she kept herself busy with beforehand.
The beauty of blind faith and acceptance wasn’t lost on me. In a world outside of ours, where anything goes, and there are no rules, teaching our kids from a very young age that there are certain things we just don’t do at certain times is a tremendous exercise in self-restraint and an inner belief that this enhances our lives instead of taking away opportunities.
The beauty of such a holiday is only recognized by people of a certain age, with our daily lives overrun by technology and a constant need to check in on others and keep them informed about what’s happening in our lives.
For thousands of years, we did without it, and I often fantasize about how much safer and simpler a time it was. People did many things you knew nothing about, and everyone lived their lives for themselves and their loved ones. There was contentment across the land. Something like that.
As kids, we sat on long car rides without tablets and personal electronic devices, either spacing out, reading a book, or listening to music. We’d play license plate games, trying to spot as many different state plates as possible and screaming out our findings, occasionally arguing that New Jersey wasn’t an out of state plate even though it clearly was. Or we’d fall asleep, taking advantage of a time when there wasn’t much else to do until you reached your destination. Things haven’t changed much since I recall when one of my siblings or I would ask how much longer it would take to get to our destination, and my parents would consult the MapQuest printouts and guess how much longer it would take with the traffic we hit. Except now, my kids clearly see the ETA emblazoned on the screen, but I hope and pray that a shortcut will cut the time in half. Unfortunately, despite all the advancements in technology, they still haven’t figured that out.
It was a long holiday, one I had heard about for the last few years being a close cluster of many days of yontif, and I wondered how my technology-obsessed kids would deal with it. But the good news is that the hardest part of the holiday was sitting in the car for over two hours for a chol ha’moed outing. The actual days of yontif were beautiful, and I’ve been reflecting on what made this particular holiday so special.
I think that when there are no distractions, that’s when the magic happens. When there’s an opportunity to disconnect in order to connect, you get to see your people in a different light. When there’s no promise of a tablet or TV on the horizon, and all they have is a conversation or dinner prep, you get them completely present. We had many moments during the holiday that made me pause and really enjoy what we were doing, and I was acutely aware that these events would be remembered in the future. There was a somewhat dull Friday afternoon when I went through the short list of things my boys could do. When they nixed all of my ideas of reading a book or playing a board game, I decided to teach them how to make potato kugel
Usually, I use a food processor but I grabbed my box grater and gave them the basic instructions on how certain types of potatoes brown immediately, so we got to work. One child peeled the potatoes, one manned the oven to watch the oil heat up for the kugel, two teens were on potato grating duty, and one cracked eggs while I carefully watched. What resulted from having way too many people in my tiny kitchen was one perfect potato kugel. That night, as I took the food out to serve, the kugel was the definite star of the show.
It was devoured that night, and thus, the new tradition of making kugels by hand over the yomim tovim that have Shabbos attached to them became established.
Along with the endless games of Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly and my boys occasionally standing on Branch Blvd. to see if any passerby could tell them the score of the Mets game, the series of three-day holidays were beautiful and, dare I say, something I’m looking forward to celebrating with my family again.
Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence is a native of the Five Towns community, a mom of 5, a writer, and a social media influencer.
