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September 20, 2010

By Josh Lambert

For those parents still looking ahead to the college years as a welcome respite from their current entrenchment in adolescent angst and emotional pyrotechnics, Wendy Mogel’s The Blessing of a B Minus: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Resilient Teenagers (Simon and Schuster, October) presents strategies for dealing with the junior-high and high-school set. Following up on her surprise hit, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Mogel draws as much from contemporary psychological research and frank common sense as from the Jewish pedagogical tradition: Don’t expect her, for instance, to endorse the Vilna Gaon’s advice to his wife and daughters that “every amusement is worthless” and so “the main thing is to remain at home.”

September 20, 2010