When I asked Mimi Greisman her age, she beamed and proudly said “77½” — a reflection perhaps of her decades of entertaining and educating toddlers.
Greisman is the doyenne of Bay Area early childhood Jewish educators, having served as a preschool teacher, a preschool director and, today, as a roving one-woman Tot Shabbat. She has worked over the years with local organizations and synagogues such as Congregation Sherith Israel, Congregation Emanu-El, Congregation Adath Israel, Jewish Baby Network and multiple JCCs.
Generations of Bay Area toddlers grew up captivated by her stories, songs, puppet shows and infinite, loving patience. I personally saw her in full Tot Shabbat mode years ago at The Kitchen. It’s something to behold.
Though she is known by toddlers across the region, her most widespread achievement is the infectious song “There’s a Dinosaur Knocking on My Door (and He Wants to Have Shabbat With Me),” which she adapted from a 1989 secular children’s song by Linda Arnold. Greisman’s song has spread as far as the U.K., she told me.
The Shabbat song became a children’s book, published by Greisman last year. A new board book edition will be available in September.
The San Francisco native — she’s never lived anywhere else — lives in the Sunset District with her husband, Irving Greisman. They have three adult children, two in the Bay Area and one in New Jersey, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Congratulations on the book. I have to say, my own Tot Shabbat experiences in Austin in the early ’90s were sadly bereft of Shabbos dinosaurs. But about 10 years ago, I was writing about a Tot Shabbat in the East Bay, and suddenly they started this song about the Shabbat dinosaur and the kids went absolutely wild. Where did the Shabbat dinosaur come from?
Linda Arnold wrote a lovely song about a dinosaur. I loved the song. I loved the melody, and I thought, “You know what? I’m gonna convert this dinosaur.” And I converted the dinosaur to Judaism, and he’s been pretty happy ever since. Linda Arnold is wonderful, and she is very supportive of me doing a book. So, we’re all on the up and up with that. We’re having a nice collaboration with that. But I wrote all the Shabbat lyrics — so that’s where I come in.
When did you realize it was a big phenomenon? I know it’s spread internationally and there are many YouTube videos of different Jewish children’s singers doing it.
I didn’t know it was as big as it is until recently. My husband, Irving Greisman, who you might know from Irving’s Premium Challah — he’s not doing challah anymore, he’s doing lots of other things, and I’m one of his projects. He’s a computer guy, so he went into the computer and he said, “Look how many thousands of people are YouTubing this.” So I decided to start telling people that, “Guess what, I wrote the Shabbat lyrics to it,” and then I decided to write a book.
My machatunim, my daughter’s mother-in-law, Maureen Arnow, did the illustrations. And Irving did a lot of the coloring and the computer stuff that you have to do to make it wonderful. So it’s been a really fun project for all of us.
And it sold out! But this new board book is much, much better because it’s smaller and little kids can hold it.
Why a book?
I thought this would be really great to have as a book. You know, there’s a lot of books like that. Like “The Wheels on the Bus,” if you know that song, there’s a book about that. Raffi did a book about “Baby Beluga.” It’s a really wonderful thing.
I’m an early childhood and family educator, and I go around the Bay Area doing Tot Shabbats and doing Shabbat programs at JCCs and synagogues. And I’m always singing the dinosaur song. But when you have a program and you can hold up the book, they can see the pictures as well as hear the song, and it’s kind of just fun.
Well, that’s a good segue, because it’s my impression that every Jewish toddler in the Bay Area must have encountered you at some point for multiple generations. It seems like you really get around.
I’ve been doing this for decades at many places, and I still absolutely love it. And I go all around the Bay Area. I have a program at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. I have a program at Congregation Am Tikvah in San Francisco. I have a program at three JCCs.
What kind of Jewish things did you do with your parents when you were a little kid?
My parents, as with Irving’s parents, were Holocaust survivors. They separately escaped with their families. My father went to Panama. My mother went to Chile, and then both families came to Mexico City because Mexico was one of the countries that was very welcoming to Jewish people who were escaping Hitler. They met there, married there and got pregnant with me. When she was in about her seventh month of pregnancy, they followed my aunt, who was a doctor, to San Francisco.
Take me through a Mimi Greisman event for little kids. What are they going to get?
Well, what I’m trying to do, David, is really make it a wonderful, positive Jewish experience for not only the children, but the parents. My title is early childhood and family educator, and I really love to respond to the whole family. Right now, it’s a very, very hard time in the world. And I think it puts more emphasis on what I’m doing to make this Jewish experience with parents and children very positive, very loving, very kind and very accepting of everybody.
I really like to make sure that everybody feels very included. We have a lot of interfaith families. We have a lot of gay and straight families. We have a lot of interracial families. Everybody should feel when they come to my Tot Shabbat that they’re welcomed in.
And I’m so happy that they’re with me. I play guitar and I sing a lot of Shabbat songs with them. And I like to keep it moving. I have stories that I tell, but I also do a lot of jumping around so that the kids get their shpilkes out. I love for the parents to feel welcomed in and that they can feel safe. And right now, that’s a big deal.
I don’t have a rote way of doing things at all. As a matter of fact, the opposite. I go with what the energy is in the room. If I feel like the children are liking a story and they can sit for another song, that’s great. But if I feel like I have to get out the parachute and do bubbles and bring out my puppets, I’ll switch.
I did Zoom for two and a half years during Covid and that was amazing. That was like 18 little tiny boxes of babies.
It was so hard because usually I didn’t get the parents. They were so happy to have five minutes to go do the dishes. They put the kid in front of the TV and say “bye.” So I had all the babies, and sometimes I had to say, “On the third row, the third one to the right, the little baby just fell asleep in his oatmeal” — which really happened.
How did you get started?
I’ve known from a very, very, very young age that I loved being with young children and that really this is my calling. I’ve been doing it for a long time, over 50 years.
I was a preschool teacher for many years and then a preschool director for many years. And now I really love doing programs for families. That feels really important to me and very fulfilling.