On Uniforms and Costumes

The boys' school is part of a... chain of schools? Is that what you call an organization that has a bunch of schools in a bunch of different cities? Anyway, FF's class went to Yerushalayim yesterday, for a chain-wide Chumash party for first-graders. Included in the program was an address by Rav Amar. Here's a picture of the Rav, taken at yesterday's event:

Last night, Husbinator mentioned to FF that Rav Amar wears special clothing because he is a former Rishon L'Tzion (Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel). FF responded matter-of-factly, "Oh, I thought he was dressed up as Rav Mordechai Eliyahu." For your reference, below is a photo of Rav Mordechai Eliyahu TZ"L, also a former Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel.

Learning Something New

A while ago, Husbinator picked up a (free second-hand) halacha book he thought the kids would like, and the kids liked it so well that we ended up buying the entire set. The series is called פניני הלכה לילדים: it's a kids' version of פניני הלכה, a halachic series written for adults. (Here's a link to the English version for adults, available as physical copies for purchase or free online.) I like the books because they lay out halacha clearly and logically, with a clear explanation, and the kids say they like the amusing illustrations.

Both BSM and FF read the books for pleasure: BSM reads them himself, and FF with Husbinator. Or so I thought. I mean, I know that BSM has read the books more than once, and I know that FF has been consistently asking Husbinator to read him a few pages before bed, and they're on their second volume. HOWEVER. It turns out that FF has gone rogue.

You see, in the summer, Shabbos finishes so late that we often have one or more of the kids go to sleep while it's still light out, and to appease the child/ren, we let him make his own havdalah on Sunday morning. Well, two weeks ago, FF informed me that the free ride is over. 

This time around, when I told FF it was bedtime, he complained. Naturally, his defense of choice was it not being fair that he'd miss havdalah. Full of confidence and years of experience, I calmly told FF that he'd make his own havdalah tomorrow morning, now go upstairs.

But FF threw me: he did not yell, he did not insist that he wasn't tired, he didn't even complain that he didn't want to be the first kid to go to sleep. Instead, he countered with making havdalah on Sunday is lame because... if you make havdalah on Sunday, you only use wine or grape juice, with no candle or spices. 

Um?

Well, that certainly worked as a stalling tactic, as I stopped telling the boy to go to bed, and instead asked him to show me the source for that one. Because he didn't sound whiny, he sounded educated. And I have never heard of that one.

So FF did, in fact, go upstairs immediately, though he just as quickly came back down with this:

And I flipped through the book with FF until we got to this page:

Here, let me zoom in there for you.

Exactly as FF stated: sure, you can make havdalah after Saturday night, but if you make havdalah on Sunday through Tuesday, havdalah is a prayer over wine or grape juice only, with no fire-playing or spice-smelling. Well, I know better than to argue with a book that I trust, so I put FF to bed on my authority as a parent only, without trying to convince him that havdalah would be fine. 

But still, after I put FF to bed, I pulled a copy mishna berurah. Yup, really straightforward.

And here are the Shulchan Aruch and Rema in readable text format:

שכח ולא הבדיל במוצאי שבת מבדיל עד סוף יום ג' וי"א שאינו מבדיל אלא כל יום ראשון ולא יותר ודוקא בפה"ג ומבדיל בין קודש לחול אבל על נר ובשמים אינו מברך אלא במוצאי שבת ויש מי שאומר דהא דקי"ל טעם מבדיל ה"מ היכא דהבדיל בליל מו"ש אבל אם לא הבדיל בלילה כיון שטעם שוב אינו מבדיל: הגה והעיקר כסברא הראשונה ומי שמתענה ג' ימים וג' לילות ישמע הבדלה מאחרים ואם אין אחרים אצלו יכול להבדיל בשבת מבעוד יום ולשתות ולקבל אח"כ התענית עליו. [ת"ה סי' קנ"ט] עיין סי' תקנ"ג:

With a bit of Mishna Berurah:

(יח) אבל על הנר וכו' - דברכת על האור משום דבמו"ש הוא זמן בריאתו ועל הבשמים נמי משום כדי להשיב נפש הכואבת ביציאת נשמה יתירה וכ"ז לא שייך ממו"ש ואילך [עו"ש]:

So FF taught me something.

Know Your Audience

Baruch Hashem, I'm pregnant, due in early June. This means that for months now, in addition to taking my daily Famotidine, I've been swigging Maalox as-needed. When I went to the US with just a carry-on recently, I brought 3 little TSA-friendly bottles with Maalox, and I also ordered a bottle of Gaviscon from Wal-Mart to wait for me at Ema and Abba's.

(I intend to blog about that trip eventually: for now, know that it was a 4-day trip of Just Me, with Husbinator home in Israel with the three boys. I came to the US to take the USPTO Bar Exam, which I passed.)

Speaking of Gaviscon, it is ickier than Maalox. Also speaking of Gaviscon, the Directions include a line that I do not remember seeing before. See the bottom-left of the below photo.

Yes, that's right: "dispense product only by spoon or other measuring device": it's like they know. I guess it's not just me and Grandpa who figured out that measuring cups are a waste of time, and this stuff calls for some straight-from-the-bottle drinking.

Shorashim

This post is from way back in March.

FF wanted to know what "וַיֵּבְךְּ" means, and he was not impressed with my translation of "and he cried." So I offered an alternative explanation of "וְהוּא בָּכָה," and FF was totally fine with that. 

Being a little puzzled about why FF was happy to accept a modern Hebrew translation of the Biblical word, but not an English translation, I started to explain that in a shoresh [linguistic root of a word], the letters כּ and כ are interchangeable... Seeing his slightly blank look, I asked FF if he was at all familiar with the concept of shorashim. He was not. 

So I gave FF a bunch of different forms of the word "cry," (he cried, they will cry, to cry, the act of crying, a cry...) and pointed out that all of those "crying" words have a ב or בּ and a כ or כּ in them, so we know those 2 letters are in the shoresh. Before I could get to the point, which is that if we see a word with those 2 letters in that order, that word is probably related to crying, BSM jumped in, saying he has a nice easy trick to figure out the shoresh of any word. 

And with great aplomb, BSM told FF to just take the word in question and say "he did that word yesterday," and whatever pops out of FF's mouth when he does that trick will be the shoresh. Without waiting for a reaction, BSM continued that usually there will be three letters in the shoresh, but sometimes there will be four letters (e.g, גלגל), and sometimes there will be only two  letters (e.g., רץ). And that's all there is to it! And FF was perfectly satisfied.

Whoa. So much for the non-native-Hebrew-speaker trick of taking a word and peeling off all of the prefix-, suffix-, and conjugation-specific letters to see what you're left with, and then adding back any letters that have a tendency fall off of shorashim (I'm looking at you, א, ה, ו, י, נ and anyone else I may have forgotten).

It reminds me of that time years ago and a city away that I asked my manager if the word משפחתון (playgroup) is masculine or feminine, and she very kindly taught me a Useful Trick. "Just take that word and say 'a big noun,'" she explained, "And whichever gender of 'big' you use is the gender of the noun!" I then had to explain to my manager that as someone who didn't learn the language as a child, the whole reason I'm asking for the noun's gender is that I want to know which gender of adjective to pick, and I have no way of magically forcing the correct gender of adjective to just instinctively pop out.

And all of this nerdy talk reminds me of a joke YC told me the other day:

איך מבחינים בין ציפור לציפורה? 

הציפור רץ והציפורה רצה. 

[How do you tell the difference between a male bird and a female bird?

The male bird runs (v., m., pres., sing.), and the female bird runs (v., f., pres., sing.).]

Granted, it's a nerdy joke, but it's funny!

A Poem

A week or two ago, Husbinator told me he had an epic battle with a massive cockroach in our bathroom. Last night, I sent him this--unfortunately true--first-person poem.

***

"After the Battle"

I really hope
that I left a gift for you
on the floor of the shower. 

Cuz if I didn't, then I totally gassed our bathroom, and the roach still escaped. 

In related news,
we could use a can
of stronger bug spray
in our bathroom. 

***

For those more interested in facts than poetry, I rush to assure you that yes, Husbinator did indeed find the size L gift I left on the floor, along with a size S gift that I had no idea was even there to get caught in the cross-fire. He then bravely flushed the gifts, making me feel much better.

Also, yes, eventually I will post about the actually post-worthy stuff, like cute kid stories, and Observations on Israelis and Hebrew, and Pesach, and passing my USPTO licensing exam. But for now, the poem.