The Birthday of the World

When the kids were little, I signed up for a wonderful program called PJ Library that sends free Jewish-themed kids books once a month. They often correspond to a specific holiday or time of year, like the latke contest story at Chanukah or the Appleseed story at Tu B'shvat. 

Tonight at bedtime, it was Daniel's turn to choose a story and he picked a very pretty book called "Today Is the Birthday of the World". It's a Rosh Hashanah book  dealing with themes of reflection on the year that's passed and striving to always do and be the best you can be. 

So we settled in to read the book and I sat down on the floor as I always do and opened it to the first page and read, "Today is the birthday of the world. Today all of God's creatures pass before God, and God asks ..." And at this point Caroline popped her head up and asked, "Who's God?"

So what do I say to THAT?

The kids know they're Jewish, but clearly they don't know what that means in any depth. They know they go to Jewish singing class and that we light candles for Chanukah and they get presents. This past year they put on costumes for their first Purim Carnival and went to their first Passover Seder. But none of that explains "who is God?"

And, besides, I don't really want to give a definitive answer and make it something they have to believe or feel like they're rebelling against. It's their decision what they believe, which I grant you is a little lofty for not-quite-four year olds, but I'd rather start out with that belief than have to backtrack later. 

So, I turned to Caroline and said, "Well, a lot of people believe that God created all of the people and the animals and the whole world and everything in it." 

She chewed on that for a bit and then asked, "Why did He make the world?" It's funny, I had been really careful not to use any gender pronouns in my explanation, but she jumped to God is a He. I'll think more about that later, at this moment, I had a question to answer. 

Why DID God make the world?  She was looking at me very intently and, warning, this is where I get super sappy on you, I said, "He made it so that I could meet you, of course!"

And she thought about that for a second and said, "Well that's a good idea then."

And then Daniel asked to see the picture and Max reminded me to turn the page and we were on to the rest of the story.