Rabbi's Words

Family time – Creating Sacred Memories

When was the last time you sat with your children around the kitchen table, had dinner and spent significant time together? When was the last time you engaged your children in helping you cook a meal or bake a special treat?  Family fun is not expensive.  In these days of financial uncertainty and stress, let us engage our family in the family experience that we may have had as a child or those that our parents, grandparents and their parents experienced. Let us teach our children that it is not only going to the mall, shopping and using the credit card that makes us happy.  We all get hooked, even the Rabbi does.  There are so many things that we can do that will create life-long memories. Memories that will last far longer than the newness of the purchase that we had to have.    Family fun can include preparing a meal, together, baking cookies, playing pictionary or charades, scrabble or monopoly. What about all those pictures that you took or have in your possession, why not look at them as a family, re-tell the stories, make a memory book or a collage. Something we have done as a family each year in Israel is to create a fun video.  We all have video cameras, set the camera on a tripod, plan a skit as a family and have fun acting it out. I am confident that you will laugh, have fun but most importantly capture the closeness with each other that will create that sacred memory that will last forever. Take the time to stop and to be. In this state of economy and in a world filled with general sadness, create sacred moments together, its worth it, its fun and its free.  Amen.