Diary of a Day-School Mom: screen-shy, yet finding spirituality on a device?
Week Two, and online prayer is still a hard sell for all of us.
It’s disappointing, because when my daughter and I dipped into it as part of the day-school distance-learning schedule, and it was such a blessing — for both her and me.
Such a powerful experience was a surprise. A capsule history of my spiritual life explains why.
Teens: Agony
20s: Ecstasy
30s: Nostalgia
40s: What?
But! I went to synagogue Hebrew School (see: agony, above), and my kids go to the Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn. On Friday, I got a little bit of that ecstasy back, thanks to Sarah, my 10-year-old.
She was sitting around after breakfast, waiting for class to start, and decided to log on during davening.
“We have a minyan!” I heard one of the teachers say joyfully. So adorable, because the conventional definition of that word is 10 men in a room. This was 10 tweens on a screen, each in their little panel: the Brady Bunch meets Junior Congregation.
“Mah tovu,” the teacher said. “Ma tovu ohalekha Ya’akov, mishk’notekha Yisra’el … How great are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel!”
Now, the teacher said, we are going to think about the places where we dwell.
So I did. And it was that screen. I couldn’t believe it but I — a rigorous rationer of screen time for both myself and my kids — had found connection through a device.
There was a strange robotic burr to her voice, and all the figures were backlit and flickering. I saw my daughter’s friends, and also their siblings. A mom wearing a baby.
I felt so full of love and hope in that moment. I put my arm around my daughter and she smiled and snuggled in. We would make a change, I vowed. We would do this every day. It would help get us through this.
You know where this is going.
Monday came, and it didn’t play out that way. My daughter overslept. I was late getting breakfast for her and my 12-year-old son, Avi.. Our egg pan finally got so scratched we threw it away. I had to prepare for my morning staff meeting. Most crushingly, both kids spurned my suggestion that they sign in for prayers by saying: “There’s nobody there.” Tuesday? Same.
I know what to call this phenomenon. I learned it in graduate school: It’s a collective-action problem, and it’s coronavirus in a nutshell. Nobody does the thing, because they think nobody will do the thing, and so the thing — davening, or flattening the curve — does not get done.
And so, I will do the only thing I can do, which is try to do better tomorrow. Ecstasy would help, but it’s not essential. (See above, 30s and 40s.)
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO