I’m in the process of trying to pull off an upsheren for my son. If I didn’t have a job and a million other things demanding my attention, I would love to throw myself into coordinating all the details and finishing it off with special touches — because I genuinely enjoy that kind of thing. But it’s a crazy time of year, both in magazine-land and in life, so I dele-gated a bit, cut a few corners, and it will be a beautiful milestone. Whether I tilt my head this way and that to find the perfect font for the label on the pekaleh or not, the pekalach will still be given out, and the haircut will still happen.

But the fonts are only irrelevant because a) my emotions for this mile-stone are a lot larger than the fonts, and b) because there’s so much more filling my brain space as we speak.

And it’s not just fonts. I happen to be guilty of the following, but I get worked up about it nonetheless. Can we talk about how we invest way too much energy into our kids’ wardrobes each season? As a storeowner once told me, you need to reeeaaallly love your kids if you managed to get a certain highly desirable outfit in a particular color one season. Which is a big joke, of course, because we know it’s all a means of filling our own “look-put-together-o-meter.” Just think about how much less we cared last year, when half of us didn’t get Shabbos shoes until well into the season, because, well, Natives. And how we felt deeply that as long as the kids are happy and have something Yom-Tov dig and special, we couldn’t be more content.

We know that when we fill our minds and use our energy on other things, getting the exact shade of the season holds a lot less value. We simply don’t care as much, and it becomes almost inconsequential.

When the wardrobe rush ends, the menu-planning one begins, and the same holds true with the recipes we choose to make and the way we doll up our tables. You know by now that I see value in a bekavodig Yom Tov table with delicious foods that are unique and special for Yom Tov. But maybe we can pull off stressing less this season by filling up on what really matters to us. Think multi-family dynamics, generation-to-generation synergy, and minimizing comparisons at large Pesach gatherings. That’s where corners can’t be cut, and the details really do matter.

As I was reviewing this supplement one last time, I got excited all over again about the recipes we put together for you. They’re different but not too different, and I can imagine them on all of your tables. In order to make them as helpful as possible, we included notes at the bottom of each recipe, basically anticipating your questions before you even asked them. May we bezocheh to see the Geulah b’karov,

CHANIE NAYMAN
Food Editor, Family Table

(Originally featured in Family Table, Issue 734)