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Raising a Child with Soul: How Time-Tested Jewish Wisdom Can Shape Your Child's Character » (Original)

Book cover image of Raising a Child with Soul: How Time-Tested Jewish Wisdom Can Shape Your Child's Character by Slovie Jungreis-Wolff

Authors: Slovie Jungreis-Wolff
ISBN-13: 9780312541965, ISBN-10: 0312541961
Format: Paperback
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Date Published: January 2009
Edition: Original

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Author Biography: Slovie Jungreis-Wolff

Slovie Jungreis-Wolff is a freelance writer and parenting instructor. She is the daughter of Esther Jungreis, renowned rebbitzen, author of Life is a Test, The Committed Marriage, and The Committed Life and founder of Hineni International. Slovie has taught Hineni Young Couples and Parenting classes at the Hineni Heritage Center in New York City for more than ten years. Visit her at www.raisingachildwithsoul.com.

Book Synopsis

With the seemingly insurmountable pressures placed on families today, many parents lack the spiritual foundation and practical knowledge to chart a clear-cut course in child-rearing. Parents question whether nurturing their children’s souls is even possible in the fast-paced materialistic culture in which we live. Utilizing the insight that springs from her knowledge of Torah wisdom, her personal experiences and the experiences of those she has counseled, Slovie Jungreis-Wolff, a longtime parenting coach and advisor to young couples and families teaches in detail how to approach the entire gamut of issues, with a special emphasis on strengthening the child’s morality and character. Parents will learn how to:

• Instill simchas hachayim, "true joy," in their children

• Value chessed, kindness, in a self-absorbed world

• Create a mikdash me’at, a home filled with calm and reflection

• Teach children gratitude and appreciation

• And much more…

From discipline to sibling rivalry to effective communication skills, this book offers unique concepts and pragmatic ideas that can be understood and applied to both Jewish and non-Jewish households.

Graham Christian - Library Journal

So far, 2009 has been rich in spiritually driven child-rearing guides. The most scriptural and perhaps least helpful for the anxious parent is Craughwell's, which, like a biblical Goops book (see Gelett Burgess's Goops and How To Be Them: A Manual of Manners for Polite Infants), retails with some glee a double handful of the more nightmarish stories of the Old and New Testaments-Amnon, Adonijah, and Berenice, to name just a few. As he did in his Saints Behaving Badly, Craughwell retells these stories in narrative and then follows each story with a brief reflection.

The Parent Adventure, by Rodney and Selma Wilson, longtime contributors to Homelife magazine, with Scott McDonald, associate director of LifeWay Research, is a more conventional guide for the believing Christian parent through the trials and tumults of a child's life. Its central assertion is that children's lives ought to be "more about knowing God than anything else."

Elliott's guide shrewdly addresses the persisting challenges of raising boys in today's culture, frequently without fathers. Like Wilson and his coauthors, Elliott sees the principal duty of children as the duty to God but offers Jesus as a kind of male role model for the growing child.

Jungreis-Wolff (The Committed Life), daughter of Rebbitzen Jungreis, brings a Jewish perspective to bear on the child-rearing question. She shows the reader how to instill not simply Torah principles but simchas hachayim(true joy) in children. Not surprisingly, given Judaism's focus on the home as a source of spirituality, she recommends the home as a sanctuary of peace and spirituality for thechild.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Introduction: Roots 1

1 Paising Spiritual Children 5

2 The Foundation: Gratitude 19

3 Happiness 39

4 Communication 64

5 Self-Esteem 111

6 Compassion 157

7 Discipline 184

8 Sibling Rivalry 228

9 Priorities 249

Epilogue 261

Meditations and Prayers 265

Acknowledgments 267

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