In our series on the Seven Deadly Sins as vehicles to explore big emotions, it’s Greed time. We decided to use our kids' impending religious rites of passage into adulthood (B'nai Mitzvot) as the context for the conversation about how meaning and materialism meet. This Jewish life-cycle event is full of family decision-making: how many people to invite, what kind of party shall we have, and how to keep meaning at the forefront of a day that also has celebrations, gifts, and a lot of homework and prep to fulfill religious duties in front of the community.

In this episode, Dana offers incredibly helpful advice about how to impart your values around money, material goods, and honoring special moments. Fully aware that these values are not “one-size-fits-all,” Dana shares tips for making those communications specific to YOUR family. And Amy offers her own services at a deep discount.

We discuss our own elder daughters’ bat mitzvahs (already passed) as illustrations of what these occasions can look like in two different slices of NYC. And coincidentally, as of publishing this, Dana’s son’s bar mitzvah is just days away, and Amy’s younger daughter will become a bat mitzvah in exactly a month. Through their conversations, Dana and Amy reveal their different approaches to the day, showing that there’s more than one way to become an adult… both for the kids and their parents over fifty!

Stay tuned, as we may do a follow-up episode or bonus to report on how the big days turned out.