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Baltimore Jewish Moms – Through the Generations

Has life changed for the Leibowitz Lichter clan?

By Rahel Lerner
Photography by Justin Tsucalas

Popular culture often mocks the relationship between mothers and daughters. Daughters roll their eyes at their clueless mothers; mothers nag at their irresponsible or ungrateful daughters. So it is a great pleasure to come across Barbara Leibowitz Lichter and her four daughters, whose close relationship and shared commitment to family and Judaism upends this stereotype.

Lichter and her late husband Barry Leibowitz raised their daughters off Liberty Road near Milford Mill. Today, the four — Miriam Golob, 45, Stephanie Weinstein, 42, Wendi Kaplan, 39, and Nancie Leibowitz, 36 — still live near their mother (and near where they grew up) in the Baltimore area. The three eldest are themselves mothers to daughters (and sons) of their own.

Which raises the question: During the past 45 years, when the Leibowitz clan has been raising daughters in Baltimore and its environs, how has life changed?

The Working World

Lichter’s devotion to Jewish life and to volunteering, from carpooling to the sisterhood and Parents Association, has been a constant in her life. She began working part-time at Chizuk Amuno Congregation as coordinator of their cemetery in 1989, when her youngest daughter was still in high school, and after her husband’s death in 1995 she took on more responsibilities. But for nearly all of her child-raising years, she was a stay-at-home mom.

Lichter’s daughters, all of whom have worked outside the home at least some of the time since their own kids were born, point to that as one of the biggest generational differences. Kaplan, mother of Brett, 9, and Mallorie, 6, who works four days a week as director of development for the Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts; says, “My mother didn’t work. Her priority was raising the kids. It sounds so old, almost ancient to say it, but she really was a housewife. My priority is still my kids, but my generation has more things that pull us outside the house and make us struggle and struggle to raise the kids.”

Weinstein, meanwhile, a teacher at the Goldsmith Early Childhood Education Center at Chizuk Amuno, agrees that working outside the home is the biggest difference between her mother’s parenting and her own.

As the youngest, Leibowitz, had the experience of living at home while her mother was working, although she says that as the older daughters left home her mother “became more involved in volunteering and had more and more on her plate, so going to work formally didn’t make such a difference.” She thinks that being the youngest and having a mother who was more involved outside the home, whether as a volunteer or professionally, made her more independent.

Golob, meanwhile, worked when her first child was young, but quit “due to baby-sitting issues” after her second child was born. Although she says that at first being home was a hard adjustment, she feels lucky that she was in a position to do so. Like her mother, she relishes her role, being home when her kids are, being an active volunteer at Chizuk Amuno, and having the time to pursue continuing Jewish education through programs such as the Wagner Institute at The Jewish Theological Seminary.

Parenting Styles

Family affection is evident when the daughters joke with their mother about how parenting styles have changed. “I was neurotic,” Lichter laughs. “I washed their shoelaces each night.”

Her daughters agree that their mother was a strict disciplinarian and that they let their own daughters get away with things they would not have gotten away with.

Golob’s daughter, Adina, 14, and Kaplan’s daughter, Mallorie, evidently share a strong personality. Kaplan says Mallorie has “very strong opinions. I have to pick and choose my battles.”

Golob uses almost the same words to describe Adina. “My daughter has a mind of her own,” she says. “(When younger) she would come to school with mismatched clothes, hair unbrushed. You have to pick your battles.”

Lichter, it seems, would not have stood for that. “I used to put my daughters between my knees and do their hair. I didn’t ask what they wanted,” she recalls. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that hair styles would be a generational lightning rod — or that Golob wears her hair short to this day.

Lichter also points out the changes in safety concerns. “When I had Miriam,” she says, “I got a crib and dresser and used it for all four daughters, and lent them out to friends and family. But I had to get rid of it when the first grandchild was born because the (spaces between the) slats were a bit too wide and the baby’s head could just possibly get stuck. We didn’t know about that.”

Weinstein agrees that safety is a bigger concern today. With more information available to parents, she says, “I know more, so I have to be more careful. I can’t just let my daughter run out and play the way we did — I have to be out there with her.”

Jewish Identity

One thing all agree on is that the four daughters were raised in an atmosphere that was steeped in Judaism The religion was so important to them that, Lichter says, even though “the neighborhood had a nursery school in a church up the street, I carpooled (to Chizuk Amuno) because I wanted the kids to go to Jewish preschool.”

However, the daughters see changes in the world since they grew up. On the one hand, there are more options for Jewish education. Adina, for example, after years of public school and twice-a-week Hebrew school, chose The Shoshana S. Cardin School for high school. But Jewish day schools weren’t an option for her mother and aunts, all of whom did, however, continue their Jewish education through Hebrew high school at Baltimore Hebrew University, something which Golob says that few of her friends from religious school chose to do.

Several of the daughters commented that the religious school environment has changed since they attended. Kaplan, whose children are enrolled at religious school at Beth Shalom in Columbia, says that other parents don’t always see it as a priority. “A lot of people think of it as just another after-school activity,” she says. “My kids understand this is who we are.”

The Leibowitz daughters themselves illustrate the changing role of women in American Jewish life and at Chizuk Amuno in particular. Lichter speaks with pride of the fact that all four of her daughters can read Torah, but they didn’t all have the opportunity to do so at their bat mitzvahs.

Golob had her bat mitzvah on a Friday night; she read a haftorah from “the haftorah book,” she says, recalling with a laugh that the haftorot the girls read at their Friday night ceremonies weren’t even necessarily the correct readings for that week.

Weinstein, next in line, had a Friday night bat mitzvah, but she was also called to the Torah for an aliyah on Shabbat morning. Hers was one of the last such bat mitzvahs at Chizuk Amuno. Rabbi Joel Zaiman arrived a few months later and made the change to Saturday morning bat mitzvah ceremonies. At Liebowitz’s bat mitzvah, she and her sisters all read Torah; and in the next generation, it was a given that Adina would do the same.

Daily Life

Although Lichter’s daughters have spread throughout the greater Baltimore area as they have formed families of their own, it is certainly notable that they have all chosen to stay relatively close. Kaplan and her family are in Clarksville, Weinstein and hers in Reisterstown.

Moving farther from the epicenter of Baltimore Jewish life is another change since their childhoods, although both say that their respective neighborhoods mimic the kind of close neighborhood life they had in Pikesville as kids. “The schools are more diverse [in Clarksville],” Kaplan says. “My kids know they are Jewish and where they come from, but they also know there are other ethnicities and backgrounds, and I like that.”

Leibowitz is in Owings Mills, as is Golob, who moved there with her family after living in Columbia, Md. and Virginia for several years. “I couldn’t stand to be away,” Golob says. The “pull of Pikesville” was so great that even when her family was in Columbia she took her kids to Chizuk Amuno.

Still, Golob notes that the pull is less centralized than it was when she was a kid. Although as a child all her friends were in her neighborhood, she finds that her kids’ friends are more spread out. That is true for her own friends as well. Whereas her parents had a dinner group in their neighborhood which still meets every other week, she “can’t walk to anyone’s house anymore.”

Leibowitz moved back to Baltimore from New York when her father was sick and despite stints living elsewhere for her consulting work, has chosen to stay in Baltimore. For her, “What makes Baltimore home is my sisters, my family, my nieces and nephews.”

One wonders if those nieces and nephews will someday choose to stay in Baltimore. Golob says that although she would love to have them here, she knows it may not be realistic to think that they will find the professional opportunities they are looking for in Baltimore. There are also differences in her kids’ lives that make them more open to different places.

“They’ve traveled more, seen more. When I was growing up everyone had Baltimore roots, (but now) very few of Adina’s friends at Cardin have their families here.”

Wherever they end up geographically, it is clear that this family will always be close, brought together by their devotion to Jewish life and to each other.

It is a family which should bring Barbara great joy and pride this Mother’s Day and every day.