The desire for friends is universal. From babies through adults, we thrive on our connection to others. Anyone who observes an infant wriggling with delight upon seeing her mother – or watches a depressed elderly person suddenly become animated when receiving a visitor – understands this reality. But sometimes a child does not seem to develop relationships. This is the child who complains (or, even worse, does not complain) that he is always chosen last on the team. This is the child who does not get any play dates and is teased and bullied by others.

Every American schoolchild knows the history of Thanksgiving. Our children are taught that Thanksgiving is a holiday that began in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, when, after surviving their first brutal winter amidst disease and starvation, the Pilgrims expressed thanks to G-d for a bountiful harvest. The local Indians, who taught them how to grow corn, hunt turkey, and avoid poisonous plants in their new world, were invited to join the Pilgrims in their feast.

Although feasts to offer thanks were held throughout the 1600s and 1700s, it was not until 1863 that President Lincoln formally established the holiday at the urging of Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent speaker and editor, who became known as the “Mother of Thanksgiving.” Since that time, Thanksgiving has been celebrated as a national holiday on the last Thursday of November.

When you look in the mirror what do you see? You see someone who has figured out that you need eight hours of sleep to function, someone who knows to avoid Great Aunt Gertrude at family simchas so as not to be irritable for a week, someone who has learned to refuse a coworker’s request even though you might want to scream. In short, you are a person who knows how to manage anger, frustration, and hurt better than you used to.

Now look at a child. Children also feel anger, frustration, and boredom, but they haven’t yet had the chance to learn the tools to deal with these big emotions. To top it off, they are surrounded by people who think that they should already know them.

After a super-long summer, winter hit with a bang. (Arctic winds are no joke.) What to do about dinner, when all you want to do is curl up under a blanket after coming in from the cold? (Okay, okay, so we don’t feel like cooking in the summer, either.) Plan easy meals, that’s what! The obvious answer is to shlep out the crock pot during the week. It’s good for more than cholent. Just throw some frozen cutlets into it in the morning – don’t forget to plug it in! – and come home to the aroma of a delicious chicken dinner when you and the kids walk through the door in the afternoon! Plus, there’s another quick-and-easy dinner technique that I just learned about, called sheet pan cooking. Read on!

Anxiety seems to be much more prevalent in modern times than it was in previous generations. Some argue that one of the factors causing this is the number of choices we have on a daily basis. Living in a shtetl with few people, few stores, and few outlets can feel comfortable. It means our lives are simpler and require less decision making. There is less to worry about. In addition, we basically knew ahead of time how our lives would play out, at least regarding those aspects over which we had control. We knew where we would live, what occupation we would follow, how we would eat, where we would go to shul, and where our children would go to school. Today, our choices about all these aspects of life are much broader. Unfortunately, when a person is inundated with options and, thus, decisions, it can trigger anxiety. This can be true even regarding small decisions.

Have you ever heard of a tune entitled “Que Sera Sera”? It was popularized by a singer named Doris Day. The refrain goes like this:

Last year, on the first night of Chol Hamoed Sukkos, an intense storm cast five bolts of lightning into the field behind my house. One of them traveled underground, under my neighbor’s house, and slammed through the solid metal cover of my fuse box, starting a fire in my basement. It sounded like a bomb had hit the house. People down the block told me later that they had felt their houses shake from the impact. I was home with my younger four children, while my husband was at shul with my older boys.

We all froze.

Recovering, I told my kids that it sounded like a transformer blew really close by. I didn’t realize at the time that a force of immense power and hotter than the surface of the sun had just penetrated my home.

Jewish comedy can be traced back much further than the Catskills’ Borsht Belt, where many prominent comedians began their careers between the 1920s to the 1970s. In fact, comedy is actually mentioned in the Torah. The Gemara [Ta’anis 22a] refers to two professional jesters who were – they earned the World to Come through comedy. When they saw people who were depressed, they cheered them up, and when they saw two people quarrelling, they tried to make peace between them. Yet rarely do we come across people, especially in our greater Orthodox community, who have made comedy their profession. Luckily for me, however, I happen to know a few of them.

When I was teaching Chumash, I noticed a disturbing trend. Some students were skilled learners and enjoyed learning anything related to Torah. Others were unsuccessful and also had a negative attitude toward their Torah learning. The gap in skills and attitudes between successful and unsuccessful students grew greater and greater each year of school. I once heard an alarming phrase: If a student dislikes math class, they will hate math. If they dislike their Torah classes, they will hate Yiddishkeit. The responsibility to make sure all students are successful is huge.

My students would look at a pasuk (verse) and quit. I needed to reach them before they got to that frustration point. Literacy research states that if a student recognizes fewer than 85 percent of words and comprehends less than 50 percent of a text, he or she will get frustrated unless motivated or supported. Frustration leads to giving up. The question became how I could help students stay above their frustration level when learning Torah.

When I was growing up, my mom used to get up crazy-early on Thanksgiving morning and start cooking the turkey. While the turkey was in the oven, she made the corn, broccoli, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and more on the stove top. My aunts and uncles would come over, and we children would do an arts and crafts project at the table. Then we’d all sit around the table and say what we were thankful for before eating a crazy amount of food. My father (may his neshama be blessed) used to mix his food together so that the mashed potatoes, corn, and cranberries, topped off with the turkey, formed a huge pile, an amalgamation of the different flavors and textures. To this day, that’s one of my favorite things to do, too. Thanksgiving with family and friends close by, laughing and eating, is my kind of holiday.