Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Video ‘Pep Talks’ Take On Jewish Mothering

After the birth of my second child three months ago, nursing late into the night and surfing the Web, I discovered an online video series geared to Orthodox mothers called Mommy Peptalks. These videos offer words of maternal support, guidance and encouragement from Chana “Jenny” Weisberg, the author of several books on Jewish parenting.

In one pep talk, she provides her take on why raising children is the most important career:

In another, she discusses “what Judaism teaches us about being happy mothers”:

In late 2007, Weisberg began filming the segments (2- to 10-minutes each) in an effort to promote her book “One Baby Step at a Time: Seven Secrets of Jewish Motherhood. ” (Debra Nussbaum Cohen mentions another one of Weisberg’s books in this recent post) But the videos found loyal following, particularly among Orthodox Jewish women living in North America, and Weisberg continued with the series. She reports that her 75-plus pep talks have been viewed upwards of 120,000 times.

Weisberg told The Sisterhood:

I believe that each and every woman raised in Western society today has been brainwashed to believe that paid work she does outside of her home is of value, while anything she does behind her own locked front door as a mom and wife and Jewish homemaker is totally worthless, oppressive and a waste of her intelligence and energy … My goal is that through understanding this, and by watching videos about inspired and inspiring Jewish moms, they will feel happier and more pumped about being Jewish moms.

Exhausted from juggling my own life with a newborn and a toddler, I find her videos to be uplifting. Clean-faced with a warm smile, Weisberg lets us in on her own daily struggles, and gives viewers tips for navigating their own challenges. “It’s really no fun to be a martyr, but it’s even less fun to live with one,” is one of Weisberg’s lines.

Point taken — and thanks.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.