Passover Preparations

Traditional Passover preparations at my house have usually my son and I huddled together watching the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments while my wife does the last minute cleaning (it is essential that every bit of chametz - bread product – be removed from the home.) My wife, understandably, hates this tradition for many reasons. However, my son has now been doing it for most of his life (this will be his fourth year of it) so she is stuck with it. I was doubly excited because my daughter just turned three and would have been ready to join us. Naturally the networks have decided not to air it – further evidence of the moral and spiritual decay of our society.

Fortunately, my family has other, even deeper Pesach traditions. Many families at their seder (traditional Passover feast) sing a song called “Who knows one” (usually sung in Hebrew “Echad mi yode’ah”). It goes:

Who knows one? I know one. One is our God, in heaven and on earth.
Who knows two? I know two. Two are the tablets of the covenant; One is our God in heaven and on earth.

And so forth to 13. You want more, Google it.

In my family we sing this song in Yiddish. Very occasionally, we run into others who also know the Yiddish version (although never with the same tune). I decided that my son is old enough to learn it as well. Like all things Yiddish, this had to start with a story:

My grandfather, your great-grandfather, your bubbe’s daddy, was named Bernie. When you were born, all of your great-great aunts said you looked just like Bernie. When your sister was born, the same great-great aunts agreed that she looked like Bernie. The truth is, most babies look like Bernie - Bernie was fat and bald.

When he was a little kid he went to Hebrew school, but it wasn’t nice like your school. It was grubby and the one thing he learned that really stayed with him was this song. You told me you are learning “Who knows one” in Hebrew. At his Hebrew school, Bernie learned the song in a language called Yiddish.

So I sang him a little bit of it, and my son burst out laughing (an appropriate reaction to Yiddish – a language with a disproportionate amount of onomatopoeia.) It also threw him a little; he thought Hebrew was the Jewish language. I explained:

You know about Hebrew, the holy language, the language of Israel and Torah. Yiddish is different. For centuries lots of Jewish people lived in the great Northern Plains of Europe. It wasn’t a happy time. It was cold, boring, and the people around us didn’t like us very much. The governments there liked us even less. Many terrible things happened to us there. You should be grateful everyday that your great-great grandparents left.

But, as a tiny gift to make up for it, God gave us the funniest language ever spoken – Yiddish. That funniest thing about Yiddish is that it is so close to German. But German is a serious language – a language where, “Good morning” is a direct order. In Yiddish, even though a lot of the words are the same and if you know one you can understand the other, everything sounds like a joke. They are the Bert and Ernie of languages. There’s Bert, wound too tight, worrying about his bottle-cap collection. And then there’s happy-go-lucky Ernie getting the bottle-caps out of order, scaring off the pigeons and just generally driving Bert nuts.

”Like I do to you daddy?”

This is a kid who is ready for Yiddish.

So, without further ado, here is “Who knows one” in Yiddish. It should be sung with great fervor. Because Yiddish was the Ebonics of its day, there are few hard rules about pronunciation and you can make up any tune that suits you. (I will spare the world my own rendition.)

Chorus:

Mah ah noymair
Mah ah debair

Oy vey ny ny na ny ny

Vair ken raidin
Vair ken tsailin

Vos is ____ bah dye
Vos is ____ bah dye

1. Ainer is gutt un gutt is ainer un veiter is kainer
2. Zvei zenen dee luchus
3. Drei zenen dee footers
4. Fear zenen dee mooters
5. Finif zenen dee chumushin
6. Zex zenen dee mishnayes
7. Zeben zenen dee taic frum vuch
8. Acht zenen dee brit meilah
9. Nine zenen dee moonaten
10. Tzen zenen dee dibrayes
11. Elef zenen dee shtairen
12. Zvelf zenen dee shevawteem
13. Dreitzen zenen dee ashawreem

Sippy Cup Smugglers

Another dad and I were talking about flying with kids. I was cursing the shoebomber who made it a requirement that we take off our shoes when going through airport security. When managing a couple of kids and all of the six hundred items necessary to amuse and soothe them on a cross country flight - the last thing anyone needs is to be tying their shoes. I can't bend over to tie my shoes since the backpack I wear on flights is filled with a compressed stuffed animals safari (CSAS to the military-parental complex) in case the kids need comforting on the plane. So I have to kick our bags around the airport till we find a good spot to sit down, while my wife drives the stroller and carries my son in her mouth by the scruff of his neck.

My friend assured me that this was nothing. I haven't flown lately, but the restrictions on liquids are impossible, since a pack of small kids requires require constant infusions of various beverages, medicines, and ointments. Apparently things have gotten so bad that parents are taking a page from the drug cartels and ingesting needed substances in prophylactics.

They are putting the mule back into formula.

Home Decor

With our kitchen done, my very sweet out-of-state sister-in-law gushed, "Oh, your house must be so beautiful now!"

I answered, "The kitchen and bathrooms look good. But the rest of the house still looks like Geoffrey, the Toys "backwards R" Us giraffe, threw up."

Tough Explanations

Weekend before last was a Jewish holiday called Purim. Purim has evolved into a party holiday - adults are encouraged to drink and children wear costumes and get candy. The story behind Purim, like many Jewish holidays is simply "They tried to kill us, they failed. Let's eat."

In the case of Purim, the merriment thinly conceals real terror. Consider this popular Purim song which begins:

Oh, once there was a wicked, wicked man
And Hamen was his name sir,
He would have murdered all the Jews,
Though they were not to blame sir

and ends

The guest of honor he shall be
This clever Mr. Smarty.
And high above us he shall swing,
At a little hanging party.

Adults come to terms with this dichotomy. But this is a holiday for little kids. How do you explain mass murder to a three year old? This comes up frequently in other contexts. My kids see the front page of the newspaper, graced by Zarqawi or Zawahiri (al-Qaeda, brought to you by the letter Z) or the monster of the moment and my daughter says, "He's not nice."

"That's right," I tell her, "He has issues."

So on Purim my daughter tells me, "Haman has issues."

When my son and I discuss the Battle of Trafalgar (I am raising him to be a Trivial Pursuit champion) I quiz, "Why did Horatio Nelson have to stop Napoleon from taking over Europe?"

"Because Napoleon had issues."

Back Country

Speaking of doctors...

My back is sort of an unknown territory to me, like Newfoundland but without the dogs. I've never really been there, so I don't think about it much. My wife however frets over it and keeps me updated on various happenings. The geology of this region apparently very exciting. Formations change, new features erupt. I listen to her descriptions the way I listen to her updates on office politics - just enough to make polite chit-chat.

Finally, she prevailed on me to go the doctor and have it looked at. When she sends me on errands, knowing that I am absent-minded and writing blog entries in my head, she sends along written instructions. But, since I can't see my back, sterner measures had to be taken.

At the doctor's, as instructed, I de-shirted. I am always embarrassed about this since I have the body of a sourdough roll (lumpy and flour colored) and my doctor is a striking woman. (I didn't pick her because she was cute, I didn't even know she was a woman. I mostly picked her because she has a funny name. I vote that way too.)

The doctor looked at me and asked, "Why are numbers and arrows written in magic marker all over your back?"

"Because the Post-It notes kept falling off."

Then, handing her a stack of note cards, I added "I almost forgot, here's the legend."

Home HMOs

My daughter has been playing doctor lately. She'll look at me and announce, "You sick, I a doctor!" Then she puts her purple socks on her hands. (She is obsessed with a magazine ad for plastic surgery in which the doctors wear purple gloves. This has been a boon for potty training. We sit her down with the magazine and she concentrates.)

"No be nervous." She announces as she comes over with the "Lil Builder" tool chest. Then she gets out the hammer and starts whacking me.

"Doctor, what do I have that you need to hit me with a hammer."

"Be quiet. Take your medicine," she says sternly, "You sick!"

Then she gets out the drill...

When it is all over, she puts her hand out and says, "Copay!" It is usually a cookie, although if she has to give me a medicine (using her plastic watering can) it is two cookies. The care isn't great, but the price is right and I never have to wait for an appointment.

The other day my son got into the game. He said, "Daddy, let's play doctor. But let's pretend that we are bad doctors and when people come in for help, we just wrestle them."

The three of us saw patients all afternoon. Then mommy made us take naps.