Are They Fighting with Words or with Weapons?
Robbie, almost 6 years old, is obsessed with Abraham Lincoln. I think the fascination is because we saw a statue of Lincoln at the National Cathedral while Robbie was deep in his curious-about-death phase and just as he was getting interested in superheroes, so when he found out that Lincoln had been shot by a bad guy… bam. An obsession was born.
A few months after Robbie learned about Lincoln, his teachers taught his class about Martin Luther King. Robbie was only 4, so his recall of the lesson wasn’t great; when I asked him what MLK did, he replied confidently, “ He had a dream.” A dream about what? Robbie didn’t know. So we talked a bit about civil rights and racism and, on his own, Robbie connected MLK with Abraham Lincoln and the fight to ensure that all people, regardless of their skin color, are treated equally.
“But the fight has changed,” I told Robbie. “When Abraham Lincoln was alive, they fought a war about this.”
“A war with weapons?” Robbie asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “A war with weapons. And that war is over, but we still have to fight to make sure that white people and Black people are treated equally. It’s just that now we fight with words instead of with weapons, which is what Martin Luther King did, too.”
In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, I didn’t know what to tell my kids about what was happening. We didn’t have Hebrew school that Sunday, so Robbie didn’t pick up on anything until the next week. We were in the car listening to NPR and he perked up when he heard talk of violence. He asked me what was going on, and I explained that there was a war in Israel - that the Israelis and a group of people called the Palestinians were fighting.
“With words or with weapons?” he asked.
My breath caught behind my teeth. With my voice as steady as possible, I answered. “With weapons, sweetheart. People are dying.”
I don’t know how to tell my children about antisemitism. As we talked a little more about the war over the following weeks, I explained that most of the people who lived in Israel are Jewish and reminded Robbie that we sing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, at Boker Tov on Sundays. I explained, too, that the Palestinians aren’t Jewish, but I didn’t say anything about religion driving the conflict; perhaps cowardly, I just told him that the piece of land that is now Israel used to belong to the Palestinians and they want it back. I didn’t know how to tell him that some people hate us.
After Boker Tov last week, when parents decamped from the sanctuary to the synagogue library to have discussion group with the rabbis, we talked about how we were feeling about the war. About how it was reaching us here, even those of us who don’t have any immediate friends or family in Israel. I won’t - can’t - list out the violence that’s spilled into American streets or schools that you’ve read about on social media, but I will share this anecdote from Bess Kalb:
At [my four year old’s] school, someone took a can of spray paint and wrote words he cannot read and he walked over them with an orange shoe with a cat sticker on the right toe.
Some day soon, our sons will be able to read that graffiti. They’ll hear the words shouted from cars. They’ll know that the police stationed in front of our synagogue aren’t just there to help people abstractly - they’re there to protect us from concrete threats. They’ll understand that this war is being fought with weapons, too.
Other parents at that discussion group talked about pain. About fear. About grief and horror and rage. About the Holocaust. About the scars that millennia of persecution and pogroms have left on the Jewish psyche. About comforting their older children, who know more about what’s happening, over the last few weeks; reassuring them that the fight isn’t coming here. That they aren’t going to be bombed. That they’re not going to die.
I can’t imagine what it must feel like not to be able to offer that comfort to your children, whether Israeli or Palestinian. To know that the war is being fought with words and with weapons and that we might be casualties. I am grateful for that ignorance and then I feel guilty for being so lucky.
As I finish drafting this post, I can hear Jon coming home from daycare with Claire. It’s Shabbat tonight and we’re almost out of candles. Do we have a pair remaining we can light this evening or do I need to dig out some tea lights? The challah, made weeks ago and frozen for those Fridays when work won’t allow me to bake a fresh loaf, is thawing on the counter. Will my kids actually eat the dinner I’m planning on making?
Several Shabbats ago, I accidentally skipped a prayer: I slid straight from borei pre hagafen to the beginning of the blessing over the challah. “Mommy!” Robbie cried in distress. “You forgot the blessing over the children!” I apologized and placed my hand on his head. He smiled up at me, nestling the rounded top of his skull into my palm as I began reciting.
May the Lord bless you and keep you
May He watch over you with kindness
May He grant you a life of good health, justice, and peace
May God bless all of us together with the blessing of peace
Amen
