religion

Since Z was born Pere and I have sung the first two lines of theSh'ma with her everynight before bed.

After the Sh'ma Z asks God to bless everyone in her family and our cats and her grandma's cats. When her grandmother's cat Charlie died Z didn't want to take him out of the blessing. Last spring her great-grandfather died and she didn't want to take him out either. Altogether she blesses 16 people and 6 cats. Sometimes she adds people that we have seen that day.

I taught her to do this and my grandmother taught me. My blessing list was very long when I was a kid - it included every single person in my extended family as well as all my friends and every kid in my class, even if I didn't like them. I figured that is what God would have wanted. *grin*

Then I say a prayer over her thanking God for our day. Then she says a prayer with Pere thanking God for our basic things like food and shelter and health - we started this the night of her third birthday. It is kind of like a verbal gratitude journal. Then they add whatever else they are grateful for that day.

Z also knows the prayers we say on Shabbat (Friday night to Saturday at sunset) over the candles, the wine and the challah.

She used to go to a Jewish preschool and that year she celebrated all the many Jewish holidays. On our own we often don't get around to doing them all.

She also has a CD of songs in Hebrew and English that are for Shabbat and the holidays and she knows all of them.

She has about 40 jewish children's books, books for the holidays, Jewish folktales, biblical tales, etc. She loves to read these. But now wants to read from the adult Torah instead of her children's Torah stories book so I have been letting her.

We used Jewish religious terms for everyday things too. Like instead of doing "charity" we do Tzedakah.

She used to know the Hebrew alpabet but we haven't done it in a long time so she probably forgot.

There is more to it than that. We talk about God and how we percieve it/him a lot. Basically I say that we don't know anything about God and that I believe that God is not like a person and that God is unknowable. Z has believed in reincarnation since she was three and I support her in that but I also let her know that I don't really have any beliefs about the afterlife.

This would be the year that she would normally start religious school and Pere and I are looking for the right one. Pere had a good experience at his but there is so much that goes into it. First of all the presentation of the concepts would be for regular 5 year olds thus too easy and simple for Z. Also the behavior and attitude of the other kids will effect her as well as the teacher's reaction to her. *sigh* I really want her to have a "spiritual" experience at religious school, if you know what I mean...