Except for a missing foreskin, plentiful facial hair and general anxiety around Germans, there’s not much I have in common with most Hasidim. That whole no-pork thing just isn’t going to fly in the Gross-Liu household, and while I do cut a dashing figure in black, I am rather particular about my underwear. Oh, and having as many children as possible? Nope!
That said, I had an interesting Shabbat dinner last week at the home of a Chabad rabbi in Bratislava, Slovakia. (Don’t ask.) Rabbi Baruch Myers and his wife have… a lot of kids. Not sure exactly how many—10?—but there were a lot of cute children ranging from 2 (0 if you include the bun in Ms. Myers’s oven) to, well, old enough to get married. There was Shevy and Yossi and, oh man, many, many more.
It’s hard enough getting through a regular meal with just one child. Now, imagine you want to lead 12 or 13 kids (and a handful of adults) through a meal-time religious service that you want them all to participate in because, you know, God wants it or something. That’s pretty much a recipe for armageddon.
But they did it, they got through it all right. Baruch would do his best to get everyone to follow along, but if they didn’t, oh well, he’d just go on singing the prayers by himself, and give a little half-smile everytime a kid joined in for a verse or three. And his wife? Wow! With lightning-strike efficiency, she quizzed each of the younger kids on the various stages of the Passover seder, praised them when they got things right, and calmly handled the hurt feelings when one kid answered another’s question. I guess when you plan on raising that many kids, you quickly learn how to manage them with the least amount of tears.
Seriously, I was impressed. Not swearing-off-oysters impressed, but still.
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