One of my regular families is a set of three boys ages 8, 5, and 2 named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They are excellent; polite, smart, eager to play outdoors and tell me new things. They are an Orthodox Jewish family, which is interesting to me and hilarious to them, because they are endlessly amazed by my lack of knowledge of the most basic Hebrew, and the fact that I have never had chocolate-covered matzah (I'd be quite happy to try it, I've not yet met a chocolate-covered food I wouldn't eat). I know a bit above average about a strict traditional Jewish lifestyle, keeping kosher, etc., but still live in terror I may one day use a dairy plate to serve a meat product and require the entire house to be elaborately cleansed.
Usually, however, we are off on some adventure or other. Last time it was the local water park, where Shadrach and I went down a multi-story tall water slide approximately nine hundred times and discovered that one of the water hoses, if an eight-year-old boy stands underneath it, will remove his swim trunks with astonishing rapidity.
This time we went to a Good Deed Carnival at their school. Today was an international day of doing good for the Jewish community, a really wonderful thing for children to learn. The concept is all the more impressive for being organized, I assume, by a posse of emailing rabbis, since there's no Jewish version of the Pope to make sweeping announcements of the world's activities. The three boys and I spent the day making chew toys for the local animal shelter and blankets for children in the pediatric unit at the nearby hospital, assembling bags full of the ingredients of the traditional Passover meal for the homeless shelter, and decorating covers for challah bread to send to troops overseas.
Now, I am a little Catholic girl, so I've seen challah in the store, but I've never eaten it and I didn't know it had a name, much less that it needed a special cover. Meshach told me that challah was served on Shabbat (the special Friday evening meal), but the reason for covering it eluded me, so I asked Shadrach, aged eight.
"Because," he told me with a casual air, "the wine goes first and the challah gets embarrassed."
I would watch those kids for free.
Usually, however, we are off on some adventure or other. Last time it was the local water park, where Shadrach and I went down a multi-story tall water slide approximately nine hundred times and discovered that one of the water hoses, if an eight-year-old boy stands underneath it, will remove his swim trunks with astonishing rapidity.
This time we went to a Good Deed Carnival at their school. Today was an international day of doing good for the Jewish community, a really wonderful thing for children to learn. The concept is all the more impressive for being organized, I assume, by a posse of emailing rabbis, since there's no Jewish version of the Pope to make sweeping announcements of the world's activities. The three boys and I spent the day making chew toys for the local animal shelter and blankets for children in the pediatric unit at the nearby hospital, assembling bags full of the ingredients of the traditional Passover meal for the homeless shelter, and decorating covers for challah bread to send to troops overseas.
Now, I am a little Catholic girl, so I've seen challah in the store, but I've never eaten it and I didn't know it had a name, much less that it needed a special cover. Meshach told me that challah was served on Shabbat (the special Friday evening meal), but the reason for covering it eluded me, so I asked Shadrach, aged eight.
"Because," he told me with a casual air, "the wine goes first and the challah gets embarrassed."
I would watch those kids for free.
No comments:
Post a Comment