Baruch dayan emet

My upstairs neighbor died.

My thoughts and prayers are with her daughter marquisedea, who doesn't deserve this.

Anna has had cancer for years now, and her death wasn't unexpected. But marquisedea is only nineteen, maybe twenty if I've missed her birthday. And she's had quite a bit more than her share of shit in the last couple years.

I have faith that Anna's okay. She has nothing further to worry about. But Sami's the one I worry about, because she has to live with it.

For Christians on my friends list: what do Christians do instead of sitting shiva? What is there I can do for Sami?

And, Sami, what is there Lis and I can do for you?

On a different note

I wanted to let you all know how cool my Hebrew School students are. So, I'm teaching the 5th/6th grade, and we split into halves for Hebrew, with me getting, theoretically, the kids who need more help.

I say "theoretically", because I don't. There is no measurable difference between the Hebrew knowledge on the kids in my group and the ones in Larry's, and, instead, I think the point is to give me the kids who are harder to control, because I'm better at dealing with them.

I have, of course, totally ignored the Hebrew textbook which we're supposed to be using, because I ignore textbooks. Don't like 'em. They give you, y'know, structure and rules and a tested and proven way to teach stuff, which makes things easier for the teacher. What's the challenge?

Instead, I'm photocopying things out of various large-print siddurim I have lying around my house (because I have learning disabilities, and have trouble reading out of normal-sized-print siddurim). With, y'know, Post-it-note tape blocking out any translations and transliterations that the book has. And then I also write out a sheet with translations of words which are in the prayer.

Then the kids have to read the prayer, translate it, and copy it out in script. Which is most of the skills we're trying to teach.

I wanted to share the translation of Modeh Ani which they came up with.

Modeh Ani is the prayer that you say in the morning when you wake up. In many families, it is one of the first prayers that small children are taught; in other families, people are entirely unaware of its existence. I like it for teaching purposes, partially because it doesn't have G-d's name in it, so I don't have to be super-careful about the sheets of paper.

Here's a fairly standard translation of the prayer:

I offer thanks before you, living and eternal King, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great.

Here's the translation my kids came up with:

I give thanks to your face, King who is life and forever, because you have given back to me my soul with compassion; there is lots of your faithfulness.

Can I just say that I really like "King who is life and forever" as a description of G-d? And they like "to your face" because they see that as the opposite of "behind your back". You're offering thanks to G-d directly, y'know -- you're saying it to Its face.

Which is correct and all, but the way they put it sounds better.

Also, when I asked them to explain what they felt the prayer was about, Julian came up with, "My grandfather says, every morning, 'Well, one more day above ground.' I think that's what the prayer is about."

Julian +1.

On why it's not always a good thing to live upstairs from one of your best friends

IAN: "Hey, Lis?"
LIS: "Yes?"
IAN: "Will you be the voice of adult reason?"
LIS: "Um, sure. . . what's going on?"
IAN: "No, you don't understand -- I'm not going to tell you unless you promise NOT to be the voice of adult reason."
LIS: "Is this something dangerous?"
IAN: "Um. . . not really. . . "
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