When we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the Valley of Love and Delight…
to turn, turn, will be our delight
till by turning, turning we come round right.

The author of this Email had no idea that this was one of my favorite songs when I was a little girl. And she had no idea just how much it meant to me when she suggested that Josh and I, living an Orthodox life in Jerusalem, had found our very own "place just right." I agreed with her from the bottom of my heart.

But I did not always feel this way. Like many women who are mothers today, when I graduated from college just over a decade ago, my education had prepared me to do just about whatever I wanted- for a career in diplomacy, or in academia, or anything else I could have dreamed. I envisioned a life spent crashing through glass ceilings.

But when I became a mother five years after my college graduation, I realized that the education I had received had prepared me for every possible job, career, or calling in life- except one.

I wrote the essays in this book between the years 2002 and 2005 about the joys and hardships of my abrupt transition from being a full-time student to being the mother of three children under the age of four. In this book, you will see me trying my hardest to figure out how to be a good mother and manage a home, despite a distinct lack of parenting and domestic skills, and in the shadow of the tension caused by the terrible Intifada that claimed over a thousand Jewish lives. An intensive, sink-or-swim course under less than ideal conditions in Jewish Motherhood 101.

I wrote many of these essays in order to send them out to the several hundred women on the mailing list of www.JewishPregnancy.org, a popular website that I created in 2001. Within a few hours of sending out these Jewish Pregnancy Updates, as I called them, Emails started pouring in from list members in North America, Australia, Israel, South Africa, and the UK. The mothers on the list reacted strongly to what I had written- I had made them cry, or I had spoken about an idea that had really inspired them, or I had, they insisted, gotten something entirely wrong. Their letters made me realize that writing honestly about my life as a very well-intentioned and often bewildered young mother provided a lot of much needed validation and encouragement for other women, as well as an opportunity for all of us to think about and discuss issues that are central to our mothering lives.

And, in the end, it has taken the crash course in Jewish motherhood described in this book for me to fully understand the American folk song that I sang along with all the other fourth graders at Friends School in Baltimore. This is because it describes exactly what you will see me doing a lot of in the coming pages- turning my heart around and around and around, in search of a place just right. Just as the rotation of the Earth causes night and day simply by changing our perception of the light of the Sun, so too, I realized that I can often turn darkness to light by simply moving and changing and turning myself. Turning my heart to God for help and guidance during difficult times, turning to teachers and other mothers in order to become more skilled and inspired as a mother, and learning to look inward and turn around the way I think and see the world in order to make my life easier and better.

The Rebbetzins and the Seven Secrets

The challenges that you will see me facing in the coming pages are close to universal for mothers of young children, but the specific ways in which I have coped are unique in some ways to the Jerusalem community of Nachlaot that I have called home for the past decade. This is because of the great influence on my life of two Nachlaot teachers whose insightful and innovative ideas on Jewish womanhood and mothering have left a big mark on the homes and hearts of many young mothers here. It is these two teachers who, in their classes as well as by their personal example, have introduced me over the years to the "Seven Steps of Fulfilled Jewish Mothers."

The first teacher is Rebbetzin Talia Helfer of Jerusalem's Sanhedria neighborhood. Rebbetzin Talia was born in Rechovot into a family of religious Holocaust survivors, and when she married and moved to Jerusalem she devoted herself to mothering a large family. Fifteen years ago, she began teaching classes in different Jerusalem neighborhoods on the essence of the Jewish woman and mother.

Rebbetzin Talia has taught thousands of students over the years, and I have had the privilege of attending her classes on parenting in Nachlaot for the past three years. In her weekly lectures, Rebbetzin Talia emphasizes the importance of using encouragement and enthusiasm to bring about children's cooperation in the home as well as in their education towards the performance of mitzvot. I hope that what I write about the tremendous benefit I have received from Rebbetzin Talia's classes will inspire all the women who read this book to seek out helpful parenting classes in their own communities.

The second teacher is Rebbetzin Yemima Mizrachi. Rebbetzin Yemima grew up in Jerusalem in a French-speaking family, and graduated with a degree in Law from Hebrew University. She grew up in a religious family that encouraged her to excel intellectually and professionally, and it was only when she married and became a mother that she started looking to Judaism, and specifically to the teachings of great Chassidic rabbis, as a way to infuse spirituality into her everyday life as a wife, mother, and Jewish woman.

In recent years, instead of law, Yemima has found her calling in passing on these teachings to her hundreds of students around Jerusalem, among them the many Nachlaot mothers who fight over seats at her weekly class on the Torah portion. Every week, she provides practical advice based on Torah sources on how we can bring more inspiration and spirituality into our lives as Jewish mothers.

The Interviews

The last section of this book contains seven interviews with religious mothers from the Jerusalem area: English-speaking mothers and Israeli mothers, stay-home mothers and working mothers, Charedi mothers and Modern Orthodox mothers, mothers of eleven and mothers of one. These women talk honestly about the challenges they have faced raising young children, and I sincerely hope that their stories will provide some comfort and validation- on days when a mother goes to bed with her heart in her socks because she yelled at her four-year-old who cried himself to sleep, or on the days when a first-time mother of a three-month-old feels like a candidate for the FBI's Most Wanted List because she realizes that she has never been so terribly miserable and lonely in her whole life.

In other words, if there is any conclusion I have come to after speaking with so many mothers while writing this book, it is that motherhood inevitably contain aspects that are downright tough for every woman who ever carries a newborn baby through the hospital's sliding door and over the threshold of her own home. May the knowledge that we are not alone in our struggles provide some comfort, and may it mean that we learn to forgive our own foibles and to love ourselves at least a fraction as much as God does for all the good things we mothers do around the clock for so many people. As the Talmud states, "'Praiseworthy is the person who…gives charity at all times.' Is it really possible to constantly give charity? Our Sages explain that this refers to those who care for their young children."

To this same end, I have included inspirational readings which I have called "Blah-Buster Tidbits" between the essays and interviews, so that as we go about our days tying shoelaces, and peeling oranges, and in search of 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."

As I conclude this introduction, I am thinking about the stereo that we perched at the top of a high bookshelf so that it would be safe from curious little hands when we brought it home from the store four years ago. This means that for the past four years, whenever I have wanted to listen to music or to put on a tape for my daughters, I have had to stand on top of a rickety wooden chair, and feel around for the control buttons that are too high for me to see on the top of the stereo. This also means that I usually press the wrong buttons a few times, rewinding when I want to fast forward, pausing when I want to start, and turning on the radio when I want to listen to a CD. And then, the other day as I was feeling around the dusty top of the stereo and pressing all of the wrong buttons, I noticed a remote control coated with dust that we must have placed next to the stereo when we brought it back from the store. I took the remote control down, and went to the kitchen to find two batteries to insert into it, and bingo, I was able to turn on the tape, rewind the tape, increase the volume, turn on the radio instead, all while standing on the ground, the rickety wooden chair parked safely at the table.

I pray with all of my heart that learning and implementing the seven secrets described in this book will do for you what finding this forgotten remote control did for me. I pray that this book will dust off some tried and true insights and advice, and place them into our hands, so that we will all be able to spend less time confused and frustrated while groping around in the dark and pressing all of the wrong buttons as we try our best to raise our beloved children. May this book validate our experiences at the same time that it inspires us and empowers us to make Jewish motherhood a bit easier and smoother, infusing our mothering lives with more happiness and holiness.

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