ONE BABY STEP AT A TIME: Seven Secrets of Jewish Motherhood
CHANA (JENNY) WEISBERG

Reviewed by Rishe Deitsch, Nshei Chabad Newsletter

INTRO True Confession: I am the wrong person to review this book, because this book speaks specifically to young mothers or new mothers.
Being in my fifth decade of life, I have almost forgotten the days when picking up toys was a constant, when morning sickness had me retching on a street corner and wondering how some women have ten children. I too used to refer to a 16-month-old falling down and cutting her face as a “trauma” (the emotional kind); a child dropping an egg carton on the floor as something that makes it “hard to maintain perspective”; and whether to let my daughter eat her Cheerios with a fork as a difficult decision. It was an effort throughout my reading to try to get myself back into that mindset. So my first comment on “One Baby Step at a Time” is to buy it for yourself if you have small children, or, if you are past that stage, then as a baby gift for women who do. Any woman who has small children or who has just given birth will appreciate tremendously the tips, insights, dilemmas and stories in this book. In fact, I wish I had had it 30 years ago. I would have eaten it up.
Chana (Jenny) Weisberg’s humility is evident throughout the book; she lets each woman who speaks in the book keep her own voice. There is no one party line. Some of the women are avid nursers; some did not like nursing and their babies did better once they stopped. Some of the women are strongly opposed to babies being left in daycare at all; others are proponents of it. Some resented their babies; some adored them from the start. There are zucchini eaters and white-flour eaters. Everyone is allowed her say, and Chana is respectful of all who speak. Sometimes a bit too respectful – I would have preferred the interviews to be tighter. Even though Chana edited them, they sometimes wander. In addition, some interviews struck me as breathtakingly immature and confused. Others make the book worth its weight in gold.
Chana is at her best when she writes about her own mothering, her own household. She describes with great clarity what she believes would be ideal; she pats herself on the back for the times she achieves it; she admits that often she doesn’t succeed.

Chana Weisberg, in the introduction, page 15:
As the Talmud states, “Praiseworthy is the person who… gives charity at all times (Ketubot, 50a). Is it really possible to constantly give charity? Our Sages explain that this refers to those who care for their young children.” …I have included [in the book] inspirational readings which I have called “Blah Buster Tidbits” between the essays and interviews, so that as we go about our days tying shoelaces, peeling oranges, and searching for that ever-disappearing left glove, we will not fall into the trap of feeling that we are, in fact, dedicating our lives to matters of little importance. By the time you put down this book, I pray that you will be able to smile at the truth (and not only the silliness) of the statement: “Mothers are changing the world, one diaper at a time.”

Chana Weisberg on the prevention of emotional orphans, page 22:
…I am not saying that I aspire to be totally focused on my children at all times when they are home. It is important that my children develop patience and learn to respect my need to engage in activities during the day that are not connected to them, such as filling the dishwasher, returning a call from a friend, or saying my morning prayers. What I would like to avoid is getting into a mothering pattern where I am never really with my children even though I am with them. At times, I can go through a whole day of motherhood and realize that there was not even a ten-minute span during which I was totally tuned in and listening to each one of my children. Ten minutes for each child during which I was fully focused on what I am trying to accomplish as a mother – in my life’s mission as educator, role model, and spiritual guide for my children.

Chana Weisberg on “The Heroine in Everywoman,” page 40:
I was wondering who the speaker would be… Our excited hostess declared, “We are honored today to host Mrs. Avital Sharansky, the woman who, along with her husband, defeated the Soviet Union … [and] brought down Communism!” Tears came to my eyes to finally see this great woman in person, and for the next hour I had to remove my glasses again and again to wipe the tears … as she told her life story in halting English, clearly speaking from the depths of her heart…
…This has been a very hard week in Israel. Last week, a 34-year-old mother named Tali Hatuel, in her eighth month of pregnancy, was driving with her four young daughters when an Arab walked up to their car and shot each of them twice in the head, leaving the young father bereft of his whole family, wishing that it could have been himself instead of them.
Last week, the image of this beautiful mother holding her little girls with their bright innocent smiles hung over me day after day. I would go to sleep and see their faces, and wake up and see the image of the husband sobbing with his head in his hands. There was nothing I could do to bring back his family, and since, for better or for worse, I’m not a political person, I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t write up a petition, and I didn’t go to a demonstration, and I didn’t write an enraged letter to the prime minister making one point or another. I just stayed home and took care of my children and cleaned my house and prayed a bit and felt very, very sad.
And then, for some reason, that Shabbat afternoon, listening to Avital Sharansky, I felt the darkness this attack had brought on start to lift. Remembering how this brave couple had brought the Soviet Union to its knees gave me a seed of hope that the Jewish people would also one day be redeemed from this terrible enemy we face day after day, from a group of people who brainwashed a young man to believe that by murdering a pregnant woman and her four daughters, he was doing something that would make G-d happy…
Since I heard of the inhuman murder of the Hatuel family, four women in our community have given birth. At the Kiddush for one of the new babies, I went up to the great-grandmother, an impressive and noble woman who was born in Holland, and wished her a big mazal tov. She said to me with tremendous pride, “You know, this is my fifteenth great-grandchild.” And this great-grandmother, who is not a Torah-observant woman, continued, “Not long ago a very religious woman told me that I am forbidden by Jewish tradition to state the number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren I have. But,” and her voice took on the slightest tremor, “I told her that as a person who lost seventy of her family members in Auschwitz, I think I am entitled to count my great-grandchildren. Don’t you?”
It is the quiet heroism, faith, and self-sacrifice that G-d invested in Jewish mothers that enables us to continue to exist as a people, and that has meant that the Jewish people has outlived all the great and mighty empires that tried to get rid of us – the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union. Maybe Avital Sharansky is less of an exception … than a representative of the strength hidden in all Jewish mothers, which we express in large part by having babies and loving them, [caring for them] and raising them to be good people and proud Jews despite the odds.

On page 57, Dvora Matlofsky’s “Mother Blues,” originally published in“The Mother in Our Lives”:
Half past six time to get up Modeh Ani Benny get up he isn’t getting up Eky get dressed she isn’t getting dressed Hannah’le’s crying goodbye Eky hello Hannah’le here’s your bottle time to daven breakfast will I be able to do the dishes today will I be able to do the laundry will I be able to do the floor what’s for lunch here they are back again Eky doesn’t like the food Shirel’s crying Hannah’le spilled the juice will they let me do the dishes will they let me rest Benny’s home he’s fighting with Eky Hannah’le fell off the chair she’s crying here’s the phone oh no it’s that guy again what’s for dinner I can’t get dinner ready with four children in the kitchen will you please get out they’re fighting Shirel’s crying the neighbor’s complaining there’s the phone again I burned the toast come and eat supper they’re not coming I said come Shirel is crying because there is no peanut butter say Birkat ha-Mazon say it properly please once there were three little goats who lived on the mountain Mary Poppins snapped her fingers now go and brush your teeth with your new toothbrush now get into bed they won’t go to bed Shimon’s home he puts the radio on there has been another terrorist attack I think Benny I told you to get into bed what mitzvos did you do today yes you can have a drink but just one Shema Yisrael why are you crying just one more song good night Shimon I should clean the house but I’m too tired I should put the laundry away I should do the ironing I should write to my mother I don’t know what to say to her. 
I should write my new novel I should.
Good night. Shema Yisrael.
Half past six time to get up Modeh Ani Benny get up he isn’t getting up…

Rebbetzin Yemima Mizrachi, page 63:
If you are angry at someone (your friend, child, husband), that is a sign that they urgently need your prayers. Our children make us angrier than anyone else can – because they are the people most in need of our prayers.

More of Rebbetzin  Mizrachi, page 71:
… G-d answers prayers by sending immediate relief. … When you really pray, notice the relief you feel afterwards. If you think this relief comes from you, as in, “I feel better now that I got it off my chest,” you are mistaken. This alleviation doesn’t come from you, but is rather the direct response of G-d to your prayer. This is [one of the ways in which] G-d answers you, by sending you patience, happiness, strength.

Chana Weisberg tries to drive home the basic truth that if mothers don’t take care of themselves, eventually they won’t be able to take care of anyone else, either (page 82):
The greatest gift we can give our families (and ourselves) is a mother who is thriving physically, spiritually and emotionally. Many of the essays describe hard times – being run down, depressed, exhausted and frustrated – and they also suggest ways to pull ourselves and our families out of the darkness.

On page 86-7, Chana Weisberg falls for the “quality time” myth:
So I am sitting in these classes every day from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and my kids are being watched by a babysitter, and the first day I rushed home, feeling feverish from all the milk bursting to get out of me, and was amazed (and maybe a bit disappointed?) to open the door and find my kids really happy (in better moods than if I had been with them?). Nisa continued to play when I walked in, apparently just as satisfied by the bottle as from me. And I, to boot, was amazingly ungrouchy, energized and inspired to have been learning such fascinating things the whole day. I will repeat, just in case you missed what I am confessing to you: I am finding myself really happy to not have to spend the whole day with my children.
…as I listen to a teacher who is equally accomplished and expert in her field, I ask myself: “And what have you been doing for the past six years? What have you been doing, Chana?” It is true that I have been raising children, shaping souls, but it has appeared over the last week that my kids could have turned out just as well spending their days with a babysitter, with a quality hour or two with mommy packed in during the late afternoon. And I could have been spending my time doing something exciting, out in the world, intellectually stimulating, easier- something else.
Chana wrote this five years ago, and no longer feels this way – except once in a while!

From “The Art of Humming” by Ruchama King Feuerman (page 121:
[How did she] intuit her mother’s mood? Simple: Her mother was humming as she worked. This led the daughter to conclude that the mother was happy.
Think of it. It’s morning on a school day. Socks need to be matched, lunches assembled, sniping comments smoothed over, breakfast eaten. Panic hovers in the air. And there’s Ima at the sink, trying to hold it all together, the hub in the center of the circle. I imagine that woman at the sink as an energy source, both repository and generator of all the … feelings a child might experience during the day. How does she convey a calm cheerfulness in the midst of chaos? Humming lets the children know that despite whatever pandemonium might be reigning at the moment, everything is basically okay. [If] Ima is taking it in stride, [then] the world is a decent, cheerful place after all.

There is nothing demeaning about being a successful homemaker (page 134):
While I could go around thinking for the rest of my life that every moment I spend on the physical aspects of maintaining a home and raising a family is a waste of my potential, this would also mean living a life that is too bitter and miserable to bear.
…When it is hard for me to clean up the kitchen one more time, I find it helpful to remind myself of the tens of millions of Jewish homes that will never exist on account of Hitler’s evil genocide and the silent tragedy of intermarriage. I remind myself what a privilege it is to be the creator of one of the remaining sanctuaries for the Torah’s light to fill up the world… But that doesn’t mean that it’s always easy when I am faced with a playroom that looks like it’s been hit by a hurricane.

One Baby Step at a Time deals with the often difficult transition from the focus on the outside world to the home, and coming to terms with our domestic role (page 135, by Sarah Shapiro):
One night I called Bracha to get an idea for dinner. “Oh, I have a delicious recipe and it’s easy as pie. Dice up some onions and peppers.” (She might have also said tomatoes.) “Saute it in a frying pan and then scramble it up with some eggs and mmmm! They’ll love it.” I did as Bracha said, and it was much easier than pie. Not only that. They ate it.
It wasn’t that I’d never made this dish before, but I think Bracha’s confidence in its scrumptiousness must have affected the way I served it, and probably even the way I cooked it.
A lot of her confidence in the kitchen came from the fact that Bracha just loved cooking. Once, during one of Bracha’s recovery periods following chemotherapy, she asked [a doctor] for advice about how to get her strength back. He said it was very important to do something she loved doing every day, and she said, “What I love most of all is cooking and keeping a house.”
Another factor in the intense pleasure she took in cooking and housekeeping was the dignity and significance she accorded those activities…. One particular memory that keeps coming back to me about Bracha is how she called up one day a little after one o’clock and asked what I was doing. Feeling bored and depressed, I said I was just making lunch and waiting for the children to come home from school.
“How nice.” She sighed fondly. “You’re making lunch. And waiting for the children to come home from school. Isn’t that nice.”
How much pleasure Bracha took in having energy and mobility – the ability to do. As I go about my various life chores, I try to bear in mind how one woman treasured the privilege of standing before a stove, sweeping a floor, taking out the garbage, putting in a load of laundry, folding towels, serving a meal, cleaning up afterwards.
As she used to say, “Enjoy it, mammele, it doesn’t last forever.”

Chana Weisberg, on page 157:
Rebbetzin Talia Helfer was telling us last week that if there are tensions in the home that could cause the children stress, related to finances, health, personal issues, etc. then the mother must [make sure] that the child senses none of it, and can grow up blissfully ignorant.
... Rabbi Shlomo Aviner says that a major responsibility of mothers is to make sure that their children can stay children for as long as possible. They will learn about the evils and the tragedies of the world soon enough, and most likely too soon, without any assistance from us.

A healthy respect for marriage is evident throughout the book (Ayala’s story, page 223):
We got married right after I completed university, and right away we came to live in Israel. From one day to the next, my life changed drastically in a lot of ways, because we left South Africa and came here and started a new life, and also because being married was really, really wonderful. It was a totally different life from living as a single woman… I had always been a very quiet person and I became much more outgoing and confident in social situations because my husband made me feel so good about myself. Marriage was very good for me in a lot of ways.

One day, I would like to sit down and have a cup of tea with Gittel (page 234):
My doctor was on vacation, and I had this young resident who didn’t know how to operate the new hospital beds. He couldn’t even stitch me up properly, and it caused me a lot of problems until I had corrective surgery … years later. I couldn’t sit down for a month. I couldn’t nurse. It was the worst experience of my whole life. It was absolutely horrendous. After the birth I was feeling horrible in all of my body. The baby would cry a lot because I wasn’t nursing right and she was allergic to the formula I was giving her. My husband was up almost every night with her because I just couldn’t handle it... Those were very difficult times. My oldest daughter is still difficult. I think the first child is just always a first child and that’s the end of that.
Gittel, after this gruesome birth experience which left you seriously injured and led to a pain-filled infancy for your baby who was on formula which she couldn’t digest, you are blaming her difficulties on her being an oldest? (Why do incompetent doctors always get a free pass?)

I also had a hard time understanding Adi (243-252):
All of this [present crisis] comes from the fact that I married young, and had children quickly, and now, for the first time in my life, I am starting to think a little bit about myself. Who am I? What’s good for me? The marriage relationship when you marry so young is childish, sort of unripe. It is like a half marrying another half rather than a whole marrying a whole. I’m exaggerating, but a couple that marries after they have studied, and traveled, if they want, and who have done more things on their own, each in their own private world, can get married and build a world together right away, without having to wait for each person to fulfill his or her own needs.
…Now I think that all of this was just not normal. Everything was decided based on necessity, and not at all because of what I wanted. … People have to understand that when they get married young they are getting into a cycle that is not so easy.
…If you leave a baby at home and you enjoy your work, then that’s fine, because you know that working is ultimately good for the children as well. When a mother comes home energized and in a good mood because things are good for her at work, and fun for her, then the children benefit from this as well. It doesn’t matter whether the mother is home or not at home, the main thing is that she should be happy, and calm and tranquil for the hours that she is home.
…I am not staying at home based on ideals. If it were not good for me, I would go back to work. A child with a working mother who likes her work might get less mothering hours on a technical level, but the mother he gets is a happy, energetic mother.

…I hope that my daughters will be much more independent than I am. Of course, I want them to be married and to have children. But I also want them to be independent in their thinking, to follow their dreams.
Adi -- let’s say you expect to see your husband every evening after work, but then he tells you that as of now, he’ll only be coming home two nights a week but he’s happy this way, and the two nights he’s home, he’ll be very happy too… Adi’s weltanschauung seemed muddled to me, and so did Nili’s (298):
Now [baby Aviya] goes to daycare for many hours, from 8 til 3 every day. I need to compensate emotionally now for last year when I was with Aviya 100% of the time. Last year an aspect of the period when I felt like I was a cow, was that I thought I was not accomplishing anything at all… I spent the whole day with a person who does not know how to speak. Okay, she says “gaga,” but is that me?
Adi blames her troubles on marrying too young, but Nili and Anat blame their troubles on marrying too late and having their first children in their 30s. Anat, page 290:
I hope [my own daughter] will get married earlier than I did and start everything earlier, so when she’s twenty she will not waste her time like I did. I feel that I got married ten years too late.
Adi, Nili and Anat were a little tough to swallow, but wise and commonsensical Rebbetzin Nechama Greisman a”h more than made up for them. There are many valuable tips from N.G. in the book; here are some favorites (pages 240- 254):
How would you feel if as soon as you came into the house you saw your husband on the phone, and every time you had to ask him something or tell him something he told you to wait because the person he was talking to was more important? Beware of that phone!
A woman needs to learn how to cook good food that her kids will like. Even if you fail in other areas, at least your kids will want to come home for Shabbos … they’ll want to bring friends home…  and this is extremely important because you want to try to keep your kids at home as much as you can… not somebody else’s home, or the street.
I would tell every young mother to go to a gemach [lending society] or to your parents or wherever and get down on your hands and knees, if necessary, in order to have help in the house, for two hours a day or [at least] three times a week. The Rabbis have said over and over that the most important thing a young mother needs is help in the house- help with cleaning, help with children.
PULLQUOTE So much of our time is spent on housework, that it is a means of expressing our attitudes about life in general. END PULLQUOTE If we hate it and complain, our children will feel rejected. But if we take care of our homes with happiness, then all those around us will feel loved.
Staying up very late usually results in an unproductive next day. One can’t burn a candle at both ends.
Ask for help when help is needed. People will respect you more for doing so. Don’t [let shame stop you].
Bored and depressed? Get involved and get out! Do acts of kindness and find things that bring you JOY!
Acharon acharon chaviv. I loved Devora. I read her interview twice just to make sure I didn’t miss anything and felt I had made a warm and insightful friend. You have got to get the book just to read Devora’s entire interview (pages 264-276).
What I would hope for my daughters is perhaps what I would change for myself if there was a way to go back to the beginning of my marriage again. I would encourage them to find the balance in their marriages between intimacy and separateness. When there is a conflict brewing, I have found that a bit of emotional distance enables me to respond in a more respectful way, while over-familiarity can cause me to react in anger or without thinking before speaking. For years I had such a temper and I felt that if I didn’t say everything that was on my mind and if I wasn’t completely heard and understood by my husband, then our love would somehow be fake or blemished. In recent years, I’ve witnessed what I personally feel are miraculous improvements in our marriage because I have learned that when I have important things to say to my husband, I need to say them only once, and in a calm and quiet tone. That doesn’t mean that I’m fake or distant, it just means I’m showing a little respect to the person I love the most… even if he’s wrong! And usually, his reaction and responsiveness to the issues I raise is better than I’d hoped for.
In all probability, my daughters will need to balance motherhood with a part-time job. That seems to be the reality in Israel, especially if they choose to marry men who spend as much time learning Torah as possible. I hope my daughters, as well as my sons, will be able to communicate their limitations to their spouses, and to come through difficult times even closer to one another. Thank God, I can say my husband and I have…
The indefatigable Miriam Szokovski typed all the excerpts for this review. She even managed to read my scribbles in the margin. Thank you, Miriam. – R.D.