Lee and Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival

United Jewish Federation of Tidewater & Simon Family JCC's Lee & Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival 2024

For over 40 years, this annual celebration of Jewish writers, books, and ideas has featured authors from various backgrounds who have written about diverse topics. Featured author events allow the community to engage with bestselling and up-and-coming writers.

Schedule of Events

6:30PM - 8:30pm: Lenore Skenazy: Jewish Book Festival

Learn to raise independent kids with the author who started a movement. Perfect for parents and guardians of children of all ages, Skenazy helps teach grown-ups to step back so kids can step up.

In the newly revised and expanded Second Edition of Free-Range Kids, New York columnist-turned-movement leader Lenore Skenazy delivers a compelling and entertaining look at how we got so worried about everything our kids do, see, eat, read, wear, watch, and lick -- and how to bid a whole lot of that anxiety goodbye.

Using research, humor, and feisty common sense, Skenazy demonstrates:

How parents can reject the media message, “Your child is in horrible danger!”
How schools can give students more independence, and what happens when they do. (Hint: Teachers love it.)
How everyone can relax and successfully navigate a judgey world filled with way too many warnings, scolds, and brand-new fears
With real-world examples, advice, and a clear-eyed look at how our culture forces fear down our throats, Skenazy describes how parents and educators can step back so kids can step up. Positive change is faster, easier, and a lot more fun than you’d believe. Skenazy has helped millions of American parents feel brave and optimistic again—and the same goes for their kids.

Ever since her column “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone” created a media firestorm, Lenore Skenazy has been declaring that our kids are safer and smarter than our culture gives them credit for. In response to the blowback, she started Free-Range Kids, the blog-turned-book-turned-movement that garnered her the nickname “America’s Worst Mom.” She has lectured everywhere, from Microsoft to DreamWorks to conferences and schools across the country and even at the Bulgarian Happiness Festival. You may have seen her on “The Today Show,” “The Daily Show,” “Dr. Phil,” or her own reality show, “World’s Worst Mom.”
Lenore is co-founder and president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence. Before all this, she was a reporter and columnist at “The New York Daily News” and “New York Sun.” Her other books include "The Dysfunctional Family Christmas Songbook" and "Has the World Gone Skenazy?"