When Jake was four he started asking me a lot of questions about God. More specifically, he’d spring a “Who’s our God?” question on me when I was checking-out at the grocery store or signing him in at daycare. He was also quite intrigued with “the baby Jesus” and church.
Desiring to remain neutral and divinely agnostic, I did my best to answer his questions and give him a sense of the existence of many spiritual persuasions both with and without a god. A little birdie told me this will likely be a focus area for this year’s Book Elf… who also has a plan to lower expectations now that the library has re-opened on Saturdays. And just in the nick of time given all the religious learnings Nate brings home daily.
Now to be perfectly clear, my writings on this topic are simply to capture the humor and joy of learning about an unfamiliar religion through the eyes and explanations of a four-year-old… never to cast judgement or make light of religious beliefs or religion itself. There are plenty of other blogs for those sorts of crazy, comment-inducing shenanigans. These stories are the gentle, chuckle-inducing type and are just too precious not to capture based on the concerns of some future googling human resources partner.
And so we begin…
A few weeks ago we attended a house-warming party at Matt and Dr. Antsy’s house. As I’ve mentioned, Nate attends the same Temple as Matt and so it was a great opportunity to try and clarify some things… fortunately Matt tolerates my sense of humor. Plus he knows Rabbi. We recently saw Rabbi at Chili’s and it was truly a celebrity sighting.
Nate has actually missed a significant number of school days in September and October as there are many important Jewish holidays during this time. And if you’re going to close school every Monday and Friday, you might as well through in some teacher training days for good measure.
Matt confirmed that “Yonkey-Poor” does in fact mean “I’m sorry” as Nate faithfully reported. Well, maybe not that exact phrase.
He also provided some further context on the “lula and the lemon” which is technically a palm frond called the lulav and an etrog. The etrog is a special Israeli citrus fruit– imagine a wrinkly lemon. In any case, he concurred with Nate’s direction that you “wave it around when God is near.” Good news is, Nate is two-for-two.
I shared with Matt that Nate brought home a Torah he made, as well as a special kiddish cup. I was a bit disappointed that Matt didn’t even know any of the words to The Itsy Bitsy Akavish and was unable to identify the flag Nate made with a crest and two lions. But he also enjoys “hollow,” speaks a bit of “Hebwew” and can confirm that Rabbi does not have gum stuck to his hair.
We got in a bit of a scholarly debate when it came to my questions about Cantor Meeka. She’s Nate’s music teacher and based on some research, it appears a Cantor has many important responsibilities beyond the preschool music program. Matt was able to confirm that her first name is not in fact Cantor. But is it Meeka? I’m still unclear. In any case, I speculated it seemed too coincidental that Cantor sounds like cantar in Spanish, which is to sing. And mostly I see Cantor Meeka singing the Itsy Bitsy Akavish and playing her guitar. He argued that I couldn’t possibly be right because Hebrew is most definitely unrelated to Spanish.
O’contraire, Señor. Cantor is the English term which does in fact come from the Latin canere… Somehow being used interchangeably with the Hebrew, hazzan. One point for me. Did I mention Matt is also one of the most competitive soccer players I know? His half-time pep talks can be summed-up as: Don’t stop scoring until we’ve crushed their souls. No, really… those were his exact words.
And so our year of Nate being Jewish-ish continues. James was recently lamenting that it is only one year. It just isn’t enough time. Even after the Cantor Meeka thing, I did still potentially wheedle an invitation to Passover at Matt and Antsy’s. I’m super excited…
Challah!