At Wit’s End With Eco-Conscious Daughter

Dear Molly:
My husband and I sponsor a kiddush at our shul after services every other month. It’s our pleasure to do so, and every so often I turn the kiddush into a luncheon so people can really linger and spend time with one another. My children (ages 11, 14, 17) come with us to shul frequently. My oldest child, Rebecca, is very interested in ecology, waste, recycling and greening. She studied about it in school last year and has become really absorbed in the issue. She has changed some of the way we use our resources at home, making all of us more aware of waste and the importance of reusing and recycling.
Now she has turned her attention to the kiddush in

shul. It upsets her that we use paper plates and that there is often food left over that gets thrown away. She has insisted that we gather the leftover food and distribute it to the homeless on the way home.
I find this embarrassing and awkward but have told her that if she wants to do it herself, she is free to do so. So a few months ago she started collecting the food and distributing it.
Now, though, she wants us to buy glass plates and cups for the shul so that they can stop using paper products. She’s been lobbying for this, and everyone is resistant to it. The shul staff don’t want to be bothered; the rabbi and officers are not interested in instituting this new policy and Rebecca is off on one of her rants about the Jewish community being hypocrites. I’m at my wit’s end with her and wish she would be content with changing our home and her own life. It’s gotten a lot more political than I have any interest in pursuing at shul and I would like her to stop persevering on this issue. What do you think?
— Not-Green-Enough Mom

Dear Not-Green-Enough Mom:
I think you should be proud of your daughter. Taking a principled stance and making adults live up to what we say we care about is actually one of the more serious agendas of adolescence. People like Rebecca, who can push all of us to live a little better and do a little more than we think we can should be valued and nurtured. I say, help her out by figuring out a way for the shul to care about not wasting resources, even when it’s inconvenient for them to do so.

Dear Molly:
There is a feud in my extended family that has resulted in one family suing another in court. Lots of us have gotten dragged into the litigation, participating in discovery and being asked to testify. Lots of us think this is what the older generation would have called “a shanda” — something that is unseemly and should never have happened. I decided to try to end the mess and called up my cousin who is the instigator to try to get her to back off and find a solution to a messy financial problem. Even she agrees that the mess occurred naturally — not through anyone’s malice.
Nonetheless, she is pinning a lot of old wrongs (in her mind) onto this issue and thinks she can create justice for everything that has ever bothered her about the other side of the family by winning this one issue in court. I tried to reason with her but got nowhere. I’m so disgusted with her and her family that I would like to have nothing further to do with them, but I’m afraid there will be a final break in the whole family if we all start taking sides. Why do families get themselves into such stupid tangles — about things that happened 20 years ago?!
— Disgusted with
the Whole Mess

Dear Disgusted:
I’ve often wondered the same thing myself. I’ve noticed that many people, as they age, are less interested in fueling disputes than they were when they were young — and I mean by this even the most difficult of people. I used to think this was because people have less energy for the venom, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that, in fact, they give it up because they have more wisdom about what’s important and what’s not. Pray that your cousin finds the wisdom to stop trying to destroy her family before she succeeds at that very sad enterprise.
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