The other day as I was sitting in the kitchen after school with my two daughters and baby boy, I started thinking about how fortunate I am to have such wonderful kids. (In other words, I had gotten in my morning nap that day and no one had nagged me since breakfast.)
I told my girls, "I can't believe that Hashem (what we call God, but literally means "the Name") gave me three such wonderful children. What a lucky mommy I am."
My younger daughter, who's 3 1/2, then asked me, "Mommy, does Hashem have children too?"
"Not exactly," I explained. "We're all sort of like Hashem's children, but Hashem doesn't have children like mommies and daddies do because Hashem's not a person."
"Right," my daughter agreed. "Because Hashem is pretend."
"Hmm," I thought, "better find out what they've been learning in that Orthodox Jewish pre-school of theirs!" But I knew that my daughter was just getting her terms mixed up.
So I asked her, "You don't really mean that Hashem is pretend. What you really mean is that we can't see Hashem, right?"
She agreed. (Phew! Major theological crisis with three year old averted.)
So I went on and told her, "Just because we can't see something doesn't mean that it's not there. Why, this room is full of air, but we can't see it, can we?"
She shook her head "no".
"But when I do this," and as I explained, I blew in her direction, "you can feel it, right?"
"Right," she answered.
"So we can't see air, but sometimes we can feel it," I continued. "The same thing goes with Hashem. We can't see Hashem, but if we work on it, and pay attention, we can sometimes feel Hashem in our lives."
Tomorrow night begins the holiday of Shavuos which commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people. The Torah is a guide book and its commandments a vehicle which help us to detect and build a relationship with the Almighty. With hard work and focus, may we merit to feel Hashem's presence always.
Wonderful explanation of air and Hashem.
Posted by Jendeis on May 27, 2009 at 3:16 pm
wow- I loved that analogy of blowing wind and Hashem. I will def use it when my girls get older and start venturing into those questions (their jewish pre school better do a good job of teaching them as well!)
Posted by Maya on June 9, 2009 at 5:22 pm
wow, great analogy! it helped me too, and I’m 24
Posted by Elisheva on June 18, 2009 at 7:41 am
I know this is way after the original post, but I had to comment because I had the same conversation with my 4 year old daughter. I too had to explain the difference between pretend and invisible.
Keep up the good work.
Posted by Ellie on April 12, 2011 at 1:35 am