Secrets of a Jewish Mother: Real Advice, Real Family, Real Love by Jill Zarin, Lisa Wexler, Gloria Kamen Read Free Book Online Page B

for? Life is short. Pick up the phone.

In Conclusion
    How important are our friends? How important is oxygen? Without both, we can’t breathe in this world. The Jewish mother judges the success of a person’s life by the quality of her relationships with others. You don’t have to like everybody, and believe us, not everybody has to like you. But when you do find those special connections with people, you need to appreciate them, nourish them and sustain them.
    In the end, does it matter how much money you have if nobody wants to take a trip with you anyway? Does it matter how beautiful your home is if you never entertain, never fill it with great conversation and hearty laughter? What difference does it make if your daughter becomes a doctor if there is no one in your life who can kvell over your nachas? Friends do all of that for us.
    Great friendship is of paramount importance for Jewish people. The famous prayer we say in shul, the Shehecheyanu, which is as hard to pronounce as it looks, goes: “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.” Jews say this prayer on the first day of every holiday and at major celebrations and occasions. This prayer is also said upon seeing a friend whom we haven’t seen in thirty days or more. That’s how much we Jews value friends; we say a prayer of thanks to God when we reunite.
    Speaking of prayers, do you know the ending to one of our favorite movies of all time, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life? The hero, George Bailey, is reading the inscription on the Bible that the angel Clarence has given him, after George realizes that his own life was worth saving. What is inscribed on that Bible? “Remember, George: No man is a failure who has friends.” Our sentiments exactly.

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    Dating
    Just because he isn’t perfect
doens’t mean he won’t be
perfectly right for you.
     
     
     
     
    O ur kids are growing into a generation of young adults that forgot how to date. What happened? Dating as a courtship ritual seems to have disappeared. Where did it go? More important, what replaced it? Random, anonymous conversations on social networking sites? Hook-ups? Or is that yesterday’s word? We can’t keep up. Even the word “partying” has morphed into a pejorative term, implying drug use rather than enjoying yourself at a party without drugs. Many of our young people are lonely. They don’t have “socials” the way we used to or safe places to meet other young adults. For some reason their own friends don’t “set them up” the way we did. If they are not in college and cannot afford an apartment of their own, their social world is tiny. So many kids today are content to sit home at their computers, watching life from a screen in their comfortable bedroom, rather than getting out there and participating in life. Joanna tells her mother, Lisa, all the time: The computer is both a blessing and a curse.
    Despite the lack of what we used to call “dating,” meeting people and seeking a life partner is still an important part of life. The rules may change daily, but that just makes socializing more confusing, not less essential. Twenty- and thirty-somethings are still out there looking for their perfect mate. We have also noticed that the issues of dating resurface frequently in middle age, because so many people are either divorced or widowed. There may be a lot more baggage at that stage, and many more complexities, but whether we are twenty-four or fifty-four, we still have the same feelings of anxiety and rejection: Is he or she out there? Why didn’t this one work? Why didn’t he like me? The key is to maintain hope: I’ll check in tonight on JDate; maybe Mr. Right is waiting on my desktop.
    In this chapter we explain how we found our Mr. Rights. More important, we tell you how to identify the definitely Mr. Wrongs.
    What are the sexual expectations of today’s youth? Of