SEPTEMBER 26 • 2024 | 85
J
N

to if the parents are getting along 
and communicative. Even so, the 
concept behind the holidays for 
families is the same, she says. “I 
think the message is really, how do 
you create a meaningful experience 
while also recognizing it’s a new 
experience for your kids.” 
Having a united front for the 
kids can be very challenging, but if 
parents are aligned in their parenting 
and can get information to their 
kids, it can go a long way in helping 
kids feel comfortable with the 
changes happening, she says. “We’re 
asking kids overnight, especially 
older kids, to just suddenly be OK 
with this new normal,” she says, 
adding it’s helpful if parents can 
bring understanding and empathy to 
the table as it relates to the changes 
happening for their kids. “New 
experiences can feel special even 
though they’re different, changed or 
apart.” 
Erica Adell Cahn’s parents both 
showed up for holidays and other 
celebrations, even though they 
were divorced, says Cahn of West 
Bloomfield. “When I was growing up 
and my dad had us, my mom would 
say ‘come over and we’ll celebrate 
together,’” she says. “It was always an 
open invitation.”
With her own divorce, says Cahn, 
who practiced family law for a 
decade, she further saw just what 
a priority protecting the kids and 
getting along when possible could 
be. As her ex-husband is not Jewish, 
respecting each other’s religion was 
also very important, she adds. 
And since getting married to 
her current husband, Michael, 
Cahn says, she’s always had both 
sets of her parents — her mother 
and stepfather, and father and 
stepmother, over to join them and 
their kids for holiday festivities. 
“Everybody always comes over for 
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” 
she explains. “Because at the end of 
the day, you’re still family.”

JUGGLING SCHEDULES
The idea is to help the kids 
experience the holiday with their 
parents, and parents get to be a 

part of it with their children, she 
explains. “Whether you’re together 
with your children or have a dinner 
together where you’re able to talk 
about the holiday even for 10 
minutes, or whether you’re able to 
share your children so they can have 
the new traditions that are starting 
at both of their parents’ new homes,” 
she says. “It’s going to help your kids 
tremendously, because they never 
asked for this.”
Meanwhile, people heading to 
High Holiday services amid divorce 
shouldn’t worry about what other 
synagogue-goers might think, or be 
self-conscious about celebrating the 
holidays, she explains. “I feel like 
a lot of people worry about what 
other people are thinking or saying. 
Eventually it becomes old news, it’s 
not like everybody sits there and 
says, ‘Oh, she’s divorced,’” she says. 
“Don’t ever let somebody keep you 
from practicing your religion and 
sharing that with your children. You 
can’t care what people think, you 
really can’t.”
Modern families can be complex, 
says Lauren Willens of Bloomfield 
Hills, especially around 
the holidays, when 
invitations roll in and 
everyone’s got different 
ideas about where to 
be. Her ex-husband and 
son, 12, from her prior 
marriage, her kids from 

her second marriage, and family on 
both sides all factor into the High 
Holiday celebration equation, she 
explains. 
“The reality is, when people get 
divorced, and I’m saying this as a 
lawyer, you put a proposed schedule 
out there, but the reality is there’s no 
perfect way to consider this, because 
the needs of your second marriage 
families, your existing families 
and your kids — ultimately, the 
people at the center of all this, their 
needs, wants, desires and schedules 
change.” 
With a number of doctors in the 
family, scheduling is especially key 
to being able to gather, but without 
her ex-husband’s sign-off, she can’t 
really plan for when she might be 
hosting, where she’s going or who 
she’s going with, she says. He’s likely 
in a similar boat, she surmises, and 
further, her son has preferences, 
too, whether it’s not missing a 
cousin’s dinner on one side or a 
grandparents’ dinner on the other. 
“The High Holidays are such a 
beautiful family time of the year, 
and it’s just really challenging for 
ex-spouses, their families and the 
kid that’s a product of the divorce 
to really have to juggle all of these 
moving targets.” 
The High Holidays, she says, 
are intended to be a period of 
reflection, kindness and growth, 
and these kinds of circumstances 

can and should be approached the 
same way. In this case, there are no 
societal norms for how to handle 
the holidays, and often no easy 
answer, she adds. That means that 
something beautiful and wonderful 
sometimes winds up being just 
complex, whether that’s because of 
additional layers of other family 
plans, divorce or priority demands 
on people’s time. 
“I don’t think it’s about what 
night you sit down for the family 
meal; I think it’s about showing 
love, kindness and compassion, and 
figuring out how to make it work 
in your family in line with those 
values,” she says. “If my son’s not 
with me at services the day I go to 
services, it doesn’t make it any less 
of a holiday.”
Rabbi Michael Moskowitz, 
of Temple Shir Shalom in West 
Bloomfield, reiterates 
that open-mindedness, 
creativity and 
preparation are key. 
“There’s no set way 
to get this done and 
make it work, because 
everyone’s different,” he 
says. “Every situation 
is unique, and the most important 
thing when I’ve met with families, 
is how can we be open-minded and 
creative to understand how can we 
make this work, knowing that it’s 
different than it was two or three 
years ago when they were married.”
Rabbis can also be a resource for 
families trying to navigate these 
kinds of challenging moments, 
he says. Meanwhile, he points 
out that all relationships demand 
compromise and families across 
the board have some figuring to do 
when it comes to the holidays.
And while divorce is painful, the 
idea when it comes to the holidays 
is to try and make it so families can 
still have something meaningful on 
the holiday, rather than something 
to dread, he says. 
“The blessing that we have around 
Rosh Hashanah is not that we begin, 
but we begin again,” he says. “There 
are always opportunities for new, for 
beginnings again.” 

Rabbi 
Michael 
Moskowitz

Lauren 
Willens