What are My Qualifications to Be Mrs. JewishMOM.com?
After all these years, you might be wondering what my credentials actually are to be Mrs. JewishMOM.com.
It’s true, I am a JewishMOM. But aren’t we all?
And if you are receiving services from any sort of professional–a dentist, a lawyer, a pediatrician, while they are distracted by their computer screens you will surely sneak a peek at the diplomas on their walls to make sure that they are qualified to do what they are doing.
So I want to tell you a bit about the diplomas on the wall of my office (I mean, like, if I had an office…).
Firstly, I have an MA from Hebrew University in Non-Profit Management. Which qualifies me to manage this website, which is definitely non-profit no profit.
Secondly, I have a BA from Bowdoin College in Russian and Government. Meaning, in other words, I received my BA in Soviet politics. And this, I believe, is the more important JewishMOM.com qualification of the two.
Huh?
Let me explain with a story from this morning…
Since we moved, I have been checking out new doctors who are walking distance from our new home, and this morning baby Yonatan and I paid a visit to a doctor I’d never heard of named Dr. L.
Once in the waiting room, I realized that the receptionist as well as the doctor were Russian speakers. And then I looked around and realized that everyone else in the waiting room was as well.
The waiting room was tidy but old-fashioned, and it wouldn’t have required to big a stretch of the imagination to imagine that I was, in fact, waiting for a doctor in Soviet Moscow.
Except for a few things I noticed around the office…A sketch of Jerusalem’s landmark Windmill. Another sketch of a Chassid with his head bent in plaintive prayer at the Kotel. A Baruch Asher Yatsar sign by the bathroom.
And seeing the mixture of Soviet and Russian and Jewish and Israeli made me think, for at least the 10,000th time, that we are living an impossible miracle.
The country which I was quite obsessed with during my college years, the all-powerful and deathly threatening Evil Empire, the Soviet Union, has been washed away like a sand castle in the tide. After decades of struggle to free them, today the majority of Jews from the Former Soviet Union, close to a million, live in the Land of Israel.
Former refusenik Natan Sharansky is the Chairman of the Jewish Agency. Another former refusenik, Yuli Edelstein, is the Speaker of the Knesset.
My BA taught me that faith makes sense. That the impossible can come true. That Hashem runs the world. That miracles happen.
And what course of study, what degree hanging on my wall, could better prepare me for life as a JewishMOM?
I love the way you see connections between seemingly disparate ideas.
And here I thought you were going to tell us how you were better able to communicate with the Dr. in Russian! Your ending was better. As moms we have to operate from the standpoint that miracles are necessary and possible daily!
Love it! I was a religious studies major in university and as a baalat teshuva my husband likes to quip that I’m probably the most successful religious studies graduate my university has ever had!
cool!