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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Nov. 19, 2008 / 21 Mar-Cheshvan 5769

Don't get all bento out of shape

By Celia Rivenbark

Celia Rivenbark
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Why are so many women determined to make more work for themselves? Remember last year's dreadful "ghosting" and "elving" craze? Women across this great land baked homemade treats, wrote clever little poems and delivered them, in secret, to their neighbors like some sort of psychotic chain letter with marshmallows.


Men, meanwhile, drafted players for their fantasy football teams and took a nap.


Ghosting and elving was bad, but the bento box craze showing up at school is even worse. Bento boxes are Japanese lunch boxes with little compartments for different foods. Fancy foods. Foods that bring out the Mommie wars like nothing I've ever seen.


Foods like faux sushi constructed from strawberry cream cheese, bananas and white bread that looks just like the real fancypants sushi you'd get from the nice place at the mall.


One Texas mom I read about cut up a boiled egg to look just like a daffodil; another carved a realistic bunny rabbit entirely out of white cheddar for her daughter's bento box. And you thought Texas cheerleading was competitive.


In Japan, the bento lunchbox is highly competitive because mothers believe a successful bento box represents the "uprightness of the household, a true measure of a mother's love."


Great. I finally got the hang of making pancakes shaped like Mickey and now I gotta make rice balls that look just like Hello Kitty for my kid's lunchbox. Wonder if it's OK to substitute Sour Patch Kids candy for miniature fruit kebobs? Probably not.


My daughter's lunchbox is just an insulated sack from Target so it would be hard to, as one parenting Web site (www.toomuchtimeour hands.com) recommended, display macaroni and cheese shaped like a VW bug, complete with fruit roll-up windows. Guess we'll just have to stick to ham on wheat or peanut butter and banana, all with crusts intact. If the Target bag gets smelly, I put it in a paper bag. I am SO not upright.


Bento boxes aren't perfect, anyway. Those tiny compartments can't hold more than two full-size Doritos at best.


In Japan, the bento box is supposed to remind the child that his mother cherishes him and that his home is a haven. Even as he is biting into a train caboose made of whittled sea urchin, his mother is literally counting the minutes until his return home. Nah, that won't give him a complex.


Far be it from me to criticize another culture's centuries-old belief system. Just kidding! Of course that's what I'm doing, but it's for the right reasons: We got enough crap to do without fretting about our kid having Most Honorable Lunchbox.


I shouldn't worry. I live in the South and it's almost impossible to make a decent Dora the Explorer out of potted meat.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Celia Rivenbark is an award-winning news reporter and freelance columnist for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Comment by clicking here.


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© 2007, The Sun News Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services

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