EEEEEEmuna

My daughter was quite small, maybe two years’ old, when I first started to notice what we’ll call ‘E-number bounce’. She’d eat something with artificial food colouring – red, or something blue, or drink something orange – and the next thing I knew, she’d be bouncing all over the house like Tigger on speed.

When I lived in the UK, I actually thought I could control my children, and their eating habits, so I started ruthlessly rationing the sweets, and I made E-numbers public enemy number one.

Oooooo, the fights I had with my daughter. The tantrums. The screaming fits and mad rages (clearly, I’m talking about myself…) A particularly low spot happened when we had a massive argument over a big box of chocolates that someone had bought us for a Shabbat gift. I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember dumping the whole box on my daughter’s head, and telling her to ‘Enjoy!!!!!’ Thank G-d, two year olds don’t do sarcasm: I felt guilty about that episode for years, but apparently, it’s one of my daughter’s most treasured happy memories.

Fast-forward 10 years, and it’s that daughter’s bat mitzvah. In the meantime, we’ve gone what I think most people would call ‘religiously’ healthy. I’ve chucked out the white flour and white sugar; margarine was banished five years’ ago, and I usually only cook with olive oil. I won’t buy anything with more than two E-numbers on the labels, we don’t do Coke, or Sprite, or Fanta, and I try (and fail miserably) to limit the sweets to just a few, and just for Shabbat.

So I was talking to this daughter about what she wanted to do for her Bat Mitzvah, thinking we’d do a Tomb of Mother Rachel / Kotel / volunteering for old people type activity, and I got back: sugar dough.

If you’ve never seen sugar dough before, it’s like edible Play Doh. It comes in every chemically-created color known to man; it has about 10 ingredients that start with the letter ‘E’, and its other ingredient is sugar.

Great!

I ummed. I ahhed. I tried emphasizing the ‘mitzvah’ part of bat mitzvah – and then, I gave in. She’s only 12 once, and I really, really wanted her to start off her independent adult Jewish life feeling happy and loved. (And all those E-numbers were a short-cut to the ‘happy’ part…)

But that’s not all. My daughter told me that no-one in her class eats ‘brown’. The bread had to be white; the pasta had to be white; the cheese had to be ‘proper’ cows’, and not ‘healthy’ goats’; there had to be pink fizzy drinks and Coke and gobs of sugary syrups to put on the ice-cream…

In short, every foodstuff that I’d banned over the last decade was invited back for my daughter’s birthday. I ummed, I ahhed. I tried to tell her that no-one would even notice that the pasta was brown, if it was under two tons of sauce and cheese – and then I gave in. I understood that I could take a stand, and make my point, and stick to my guns – but then, she’d probably dafka (spitefully)eat chocolate cake for lunch for the next 50 years just to spite me, like my friend who got force-fed ‘healthy’ as a kid and now thinks that Twix is a meal replacement.

The big day approached, and I cooked, I cleaned, I arranged, I re-arranged. I spent a small fortune on the dress, on the balloons, on the paper goods, on the fancy sugar dough activity, on the quality ice cream…

About three hours before the bat mitzvah, my daughter informed me that she needed marshmallows, to arrange artistically in a vase on the dessert table. My overwhelming instinct was to yell an emphatic ‘NO!!!!!’ at her, and then go back to stressing over the pasta dish I was trying to make.

But something (maybe the big picture of Rav Arush that’s on my fridge) stopped me. I smiled a very fake smile, and I told her I’d think about it, and to leave me alone for a few minutes.

What happened next can only be described as a sneak attack of the evil inclination: I’d literally spent months praying, spending, organizing and arranging, so that my daughter would have a happy, stress-free bat mitzvah. I swallowed the sugar dough, the white pasta, the Coke, the million ice creams, everything – and now, my evil inclination wanted me to go to war over a $2 pack of marshmallows.

“What?!?!?!? What is this girl playing at! She’s so ungrateful! She’s so taking! I need to teach her some good middot! I need to stick to my guns on the marshmallows! She’s had her own way on everything else! She’s so, so, so….” My good inclination interjected at this point: “She’s so concerned that the dessert table should look pretty. You also want that. She’s just mirroring you. She’s a great kid, and you’re going to ruin the whole bat mitzvah for the sake of a $2 bag of candies.”

I grabbed my coat, and ran out the house.

I knew my good inclination was right, but it was so hard to fight that nasty, evil voice that was picking holes in both me and my daughter. I ran off to the supermarket, with my husband, and we bought the marshmallows.

I breathed deep; I stuck my fake ‘everything’s OK’ smile back on my face, and I went back home, with strict instructions to myself: “You, Rivka, are to keep your mouth shut. I don’t want any point scoring, no mean comments, no ‘atmosphere’. It’s your daughter’s bat mitzvah, and you know that things go after the start. Give her the best start you can, spoil her a bit, make her feel loved. And if you still need to give her a lecture about ethics, do it tomorrow!”

Thank G-d, He helped me to keep silent.

That night, there were hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of E-numbers floating around my house. There was probably every poisonous chemical known to man. There was so much sugar dough on the floor after the activity, that my shoes were getting stuck to the floor.

But that’s not all there was. Thank G-d, there were tens of incredibly happy girls. Thank G-d, there was a really lovely, laid-back atmosphere. There was lots of spontaneous dancing and singing (probably thanks to the E-numbers…) My daughter was absolutely radiant.

Thank G-d, it was a night filled with joy, and hopefully the start of an adult Jewish life, similarly filled with happiness and friendship and laughter and good wishes.

I could have ruined it all so easily, by stressing my daughter out over a pack of marshmallows that when all was said and done, were probably the least poisonous candy in the house by a mile.

The next morning, I spent a whole hour thanking G-d for sending me Rav Arush, and all his parenting insights; for giving me my precious children in the first place; and for giving me the opportunity and eeeemuna to put a lid on ‘what I wanted’, and to put my kid first.

A mitzvah always leads to a mitzvah: I realized that if I drink a bottle of that fizzy pink stuff in a couple of week’s time, I could probably get all the Pesach cleaning done in a day…

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Check out Rivka Levy’s new book The Happy Workshop based on the teachings of Rabbi Shalom Arush.