Randomness. That word sticks in my mind in the aftermath of the bombings near the Boston Marathon finish line.

The randomness of it all when it came to who was injured and who was not, who died and who survived. The randomness of who decided to watch the marathon that day and who chose instead to spend a day at a beach, a zoo, or Revolutionary War reenactments.

Yes, the attacks were intentional. But what strikes me as random is who happened to be where when. Any of us, especially those of who live in the Boston area, could have chosen to head toward the marathon and jostle our way as close as we could to watch runners at the finish.

I thought fleetingly of taking my 5-year-old son to downtown Boston that day, but instead opted for a day at Crane’s Beach. At home, unless my son is not around, my husband and I do not talk about the bombings. We do not want to shatter our little one’s innocence, though the innocence of so many young people was shattered on Monday. Already, the 9/11 attacks are not as fresh in our memories. Today’s fifth- and sixth-graders are not old enough to remember them. They are old enough to remember Monday.

Why write of randomness? Because as intentional as the terroristic act was, the attackers did not aim their bombs at particular people. The three dead victims are an 8-year-old boy, a 23-year-old graduate student at Boston University, and a 29-year-old woman originally from Medford. I didn’t know any of them, but two have connections to my communities. I teach part-time at BU, which is mourning the killed student Lingzi Lu and monitoring the progress of her friend who was injured. The mother of 29-year-old Krystle Campbell worked at Harvard Business School and is close friends with members of my temple in Lexington. I have no connection to 8-year-old Martin Richard, but it does not matter.

I heard the news about the bombings as I drove home from the beach with my son asleep in his booster seat in the back. Like so many others, I scrambled to find out if people I knew might be near the marathon site were ok. One was a college friend I just saw again for the first time in 25 years. She came to Boston to watch a runner friend. She had said she was going to the finish line. The other person was the daughter of another college friend. I thought, too, of my former Boston Globe colleagues who would be covering the marathon. All were fine. But what if?

It may seem self-serving to connect this terroristic attack to tragedies of my past. I do that just to make the point about the randomness of tragedy. One day, your family is whole; the next day, it is changed forever. My 23-year-old brother Kevin decided to drive all the way through from California to Colorado after a week’s vacation in 1986. At some point, he fell asleep at the wheel, and his jeep rolled over a cliff. He was killed of massive head injuries. If he had stopped for coffee somewhere, maybe the accident would never have happened. If he had been driving on a less curvy road, maybe his jeep would have just rolled into a ditch. When he was 16, he fell asleep at the wheel and woke up when his lime green Barracuda hit a fence post. He was unharmed.

A few years before, a driver blacked out and hit another car, instantly killing my Great-Aunt Bessie and severely injuring my Grandma Pearl. Grandma survived.  What if Bessie, who was driving, had chosen another road that day? What if that driver, who had a history of blackouts, had chosen to stay home?

On Monday near the finish line, the deaths and injuries happened at random. People standing near the victims survived. Runners finished at various times based on their particular performance that day. Some people who were there may have come on the spur of the moment. Others might have made a last-minute decision.

The number of casualties on Monday is lighter than other attacks in our country and elsewhere in recent years. I don’t call that lucky. I call it another example of randomness. There is nothing lucky about what happened in Boston this week. Maybe people who stood near the victims feel a sense of luck that they survived. But I wonder how many more feel guilty that the bombs took the person next to them and they were okay.

I wasn’t sure whether to write at all, but when something like this happens, I must write. It is my way, I guess, of catharsis. This isn’t my personal tragedy, but it is, in a sense, everyone’s heartache this week.

I used to work full-time as a journalist. If I were still working in a newsroom, I would have been helping in some way with the coverage. Instead, Monday was a day off from pre-school for my son Simon and one of our Mommy and Me days.

My husband posted some of his thoughts on Facebook that night. It is his last few lines that I loved. “Simon and I planted carrots that evening. I hope that is what he remembers.”

For those of us old enough to remember, it will be hard to shake away the images. We will remember the photos and video of people running away from the scene in terror and of medical responders running toward the victims. We will remember the pictures of severely injured people. We will remember, too, the photos of the victims when they were alive. The one that sticks with me the most is a photo of Martin Richard holding a poster he made in school. The words: “No more hurting people” and “peace.” Was he writing about Newtown? Was he writing about 9/11? Was he just writing his wish for the universe?

Why write about this and throw in the word randomness? Because it is random who was killed and who was spared. It is random who is now a mourner, and who is not. It is this randomness that haunts me. What if, what if, what if? Who cannot help but ask that question this week?

I felt uneasy driving into Boston on Tuesday to teach. It was a much different feeling than I had on Sept. 11, 2001, when I drove into downtown Dallas to my job as a reporter as most of the city evacuated to get away from the skyscrapers. The 9/11 attacks happened in another state. This one happened in my state and in the city where I work and often play. I was on Boylston Street right near the finish line over the weekend. I walked by hundreds of people laughing, talking. A street musician played Irish jigs on his fife.

Parents are writing on my hometown’s listserv that they will not take their children into Boston as planned this week. They do not want their young children to see the police presence and ask questions. I understand that worry. I don’t want my young child to think he should be afraid of just walking down a street. I don’t want him to know that this week, I had that feeling.

The panel moderator, a Sikh in a white turban, white tunic and white pants, did an informal poll. How many of us, he wondered, knew something about Christianity? Judaism? Islam? Sikhism?

Nearly everyone in the audience of roughly 100 knew something about Christianity. More than half knew something about Judaism. Perhaps half knew something about Islam. Only a handful knew something about Sikhism.

Most in the audience were students at Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall School in Waltham, a private high school that sponsored Wednesday night’s interfaith discussion about rebirth and renewal. I was one of perhaps a dozen adults at the public event. I came out of curiosity. I am working on a book about public schools’ efforts to teach students about the world’s religions.

(Note to blog followers: Beacon Press just awarded me a contract to do this book, which stems from a 2011 Boston Globe magazine piece I wrote about Wellesley Middle School’s class on world religions for sixth graders. The book, yet-to-be-titled, likely will be published in early 2015.)

This week’s event hammered in an important point: many of us know far too little about the basic beliefs of the world’s religions.
The moderator’s poll gives a superficial glimpse at our knowledge because he did not quiz us on what “something” meant for each of us. I did not raise my hand about Sikhism, a religion of which I know almost nothing. One of the panel speakers, a Sikh, said the religion draws from Islam and Hinduism, but Sikhs do not have a consensus on that point. I did raise my hand about the other religions, but my knowledge is superficial, gleaned from people I know, classes I have sat in as a journalist, and books. I know the most about my own faith, Judaism, but could not, as my temple’s senior rabbi did at this panel, give a lecture on what Jews believe when it comes to rebirth and renewal.

I would have made a guess that turned out to be right. Yom Kippur, the Jews’ day of atonement, serves as the time when we act as if we are reborn, when we ask for forgiveness for transgressions. We don’t like to use the word sin because Hebrew has no word for it. The word, as my rabbi said, is “chet,” which means to “miss the mark.”

The words of the Christian pastor, a minister at a mega-church in my suburban town, were familiar. He talked about Christians’ personal connection to God and the role Jesus plays. Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, is the holiday where Christians celebrate their own rebirth, the pastor said.

I knew too about the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Haj. I did not know what the Muslim chaplain told us. Before a Muslim goes to mecca, he or she first asks for forgiveness from people at home. Upon return, other Muslims celebrate their fellow Muslim’s trip to Mecca.
“It’s greater than being a doctor or even the president,” the chaplain told us.

But I had never heard of the Sikh holiday known as Bisaki Day, which happens this Sunday. The Sikh minister told us the story of this holiday, which first started in 1699. The story was long and somewhat spellbinding about how a famous guru of the Sikh religion called his congregation of some 80,000 followers to give themselves completely. Those there thought the guru meant that they would have to sacrifice their lives. Only five people volunteered. They were not killed, but went out of sight for a short period. “When they came back, they were dressed much like I am tonight, and the guru said, ‘They are now reborn,’ “ the minister told us. This Sunday, the minister told us, he and his fellow Sikhs will celebrate that moment and “what we are willing to sacrifice.”

In short time, any attentive listener could make a connection: Each of the religions set aside a day for introspection and repentance. Each day is different in approach, but the value is similar. As humans, we need to take time to think over what we might have done better in the previous year and how we could improve in the year to come.

The audience did not fill the high school’s common space, which used to be church chapel. It was hard to gauge how much of the talk interested the teens in attendance. Some hunched over in the wooden pews and played with their cell phones. Others stared ahead. Their attendance was required.

Were these teens bored? I had no idea because they left too quickly for me to ask their views. If they absorbed even a little of what was said, they might enter the grown-up world wiser than most of us. They will have a better understanding of the complexity of different religions as well as the differences and similarities.

The words of the Muslim chaplain, a female, stuck with me as the event ended. The woman, who wears a hijab, a head covering, talked about the difficulty of being a Muslim after the Sept. 11 attacks and of serving in the military.

“It’s been a double-edged sword being Muslim and an enemy of your country is of the same religion. It’s been like walking on eggshells with my colleagues,” said the woman. “It’s been difficult for many of us, the essence of not being trusted.”

Each speaker emphasized what all of us need to understand not just but about Muslims, but Jews, Christians, Sikhs, and followers of any religion. Each religion has multiple layers. None of us, even when we follow the same religion, are exactly alike in our beliefs. But on many levels, we seek the same kind of comfort and community from our religion – if we choose to follow one.

“Did you have a relative who died?” the librarian of my high school alma mater asked when she met me today.

“Yes, I did, my brother,” I said.

“I’ve seen a book given in memory of a Wertheimer,” she said.

Then, as I chatted with a student interested in journalism, the librarian hunted for that book. Before I left, she had put it on the counter, a book called a Treasury of Poems. I opened it, and my brother Kevin’s face stared out at me from a laminated copy of his obituary. The donor, a local photo store called the Photo Center, or perhaps the school itself had taped the obituary to the book’s inside cover. Kevin was just 18 years old in that picture, his high school graduation photo. He died six years later on March 1, 1986. I never knew anyone had donated a book to the library at our alma mater, Van Buren High School, just outside of Findlay, Ohio.

Kevin and his Ohio University graduation, 1985. He stuck his cap on my head in jest.

Some of my strongest memories of Kevin are from our years at Van Buren High. But when I first entered the school today, I wasn’t thinking of my brother. I was thinking of what I might say to the school’s journalism class. I was hoping to spark more interest in reporting. I didn’t realize someone’s old small gesture would immediately bring back so many memories of my big brother. Kevin was just two years older than I.

As I left the library, I remembered often seeing Kevin there. He hated reading because he struggled with it, but loved his stint as a library aide. He liked chatting with the librarian as he helped stack books or assisted students. That a photo store donated the book triggered more memories. Kevin was our school yearbook photographer. He and my father built a darkroom in our basement, and I learned a little about the magic of development even as I plugged my nose against the pungent smell.

I don’t know exactly when the photo store contributed the book, but I suspect it was not long after Kevin’s death. My parents moved away from Findlay, Ohio, in 1988. I have been back sporadically mostly to see the family of my brother’s best friend from high school. Today reminded me that there is a little bit of my brother in every place he lived, every place he walked, every place he laughed, every place he flashed that huge smile that teachers and friends alike thought was contagious.

None of my or my brother’s teachers still work at Van Buren, though a few alumni who were there during our time now work at Van Buren. That donor gave my family a gift by buying that book. He helped my brother’s memory live on. The obituary gives a slice of one person’s life to the children or teachers who open that book. They can see my brother’s famous smile. They can read about a young man who had a thirst for adventure and skiing on water and snow. They won’t find a huge list of accomplishments. Kevin was just 23 when he died. But those who see that book at least get a tiny sense that my brother simply loved life.

Maybe a child or teacher who sees that book hugs a loved one a little tighter afterward. Maybe they simply get joy from the poems in that book. It doesn’t matter what they get from the book, but I suspect they can’t help noticing the young man with the smile just inside the cover.

Seeing my brother again in our high school made him so alive again in my mind for a fleeting, precious moment.  Thank you, Photo Center, for your donation. A seemingly tiny gift can make a difference, even 27 years later.

I was a clothes-hanging machine. For several hours, I dug into bags and boxes of donated men’s clothes and hung up pants, button-down shirts, and suits on racks. My arms, arches, and lower back ached. Dust and the rank odor of moth balls plugged my nostrils and made my eyes itch. My fingers felt grimy after touching several jackets covered with traces of moths. Those jackets ended up in the trash.

Around me, people walked in and out of our suburban Boston temple donating items for a rummage sale. A volunteer, I mostly worked in the men’s clothing area and cared little about the clothes I sorted. Then, a woman, barely 5-feet tall with thinning, coiffed and dyed red-brown hair, came in juggling a dozen men’s shirts on wire hangers. I reached out to help her hang the shirts, and she began to cry.

“These were my husband’s,” said the woman whose wrinkled cheeks likely put her in her late 70s. “He died a few years ago, but I just couldn’t bear to part with them.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Not knowing what else to say, I put an arm around her shoulder. She smiled, her eyes still wet, then left. I thought she planned to return with more clothes, but never saw her again. The shirts she left behind looked like their neighbors, standard men’s dress shirts, button-down, some striped, some solid colors. They smelled sterile, as if just dry-cleaned.

I mentioned the encounter to another volunteer. Every piece of clothing could have a story, she said.

My brother’s Levi jacket

A day after my encounter with the widow, I went downstairs just to check. A stone-washed gray and blue Levi’s denim jacket, jammed in the middle of my summer clothes, still hung in the utility room closet. The jacket belonged to my brother Kevin. I gave it to him in June 1985 for his college graduation present. He died nine months later in a car accident. He was 23; I was 21. After Kevin’s death, my mother asked if I wanted any of his clothes. I took that jacket and a few of his favorite T-shirts.

In my first weeks of ownership of my brother’s clothes, I buried my nose in them, trying to smell a recognizable scent. Maybe if I sniffed long enough I could smell a whiff of the grape Hi-C he used to drink, or his shampoo. Was it Pert or Breck? I don’t remember. I remember that he washed his thick auburn hair every day when we were in high school and kept a comb at the ready in his jeans pocket. The jean jacket did not reveal familiar scents and soon smelled like must. I wore it several times in my 20s, but don’t wear it anymore. It no longer fits well. It would feel odd to wear it now.

In the early years of mourning, wearing my brother’s jacket gave me some comfort. It was as if he were with me. More than 25 years have passed since my brother’s death. Now, the jacket serves mostly as a trigger of memory.

That jacket also has its own story. On Memorial Day weekend in 1985, Kevin came to visit me at Northwestern, where I was studying journalism. We took the train downtown and strolled down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, staring at store windows and jostling for space among hundreds of people shopping and sightseeing on a nearly 80-degree day. We weaved around vendors trying to sell us hot dogs. Kevin halted in front of a store, then pointed at the Levi’s jacket in the window.

“I love that,” he said. To him, that jacket was the epitome of 1980s cool.

The jacket cost roughly $40, a lot of money for me at the time. But my brother longed for that jacket. He had splurged on presents for my parents and me. I splurged on him.

Maybe it’s weird to keep my brother’s Levi’s jacket. But it’s a piece of him that I’m not ready to give up. Funny, I had no problem giving away my brother’s last gift to me – a purple Lacoste shirt. It no longer fit. I do not associate any story with that shirt. By keeping the Levi’s jacket, I preserve a precious moment in time, a day when I could grant my brother exactly what he wanted. It was a moment I would never again get to repeat with my brother.

The button down shirts the widow brought in resembled dozens of others. As more shirts arrived, I jammed the clothing closer together. Maybe the widow should have kept a single shirt, one that reminded her of a particular moment with her husband. Or maybe it was just time to let go.

A talented writer I know, Katherine Ozment, wrote a provocative piece in this month’s Boston Magazine about a disturbing trend. Young people increasingly are growing up with no connection to any faith. She counts herself and her children among this group, nicknamed the “Nones” because they check the “none of the above” box when asked to give their religious affiliation.

I once belonged more to the “Nones” than anything else. I checked Jewish on the box, but that mark was more about a cultural than religious identity. In my teens and through most of my 20s, I felt disconnected from Judaism. I was a religious school dropout at 12.

Leading prayer during my 2006 bat mitzvah ceremony

But at age 41, I was in a much different place. I belatedly celebrated my bat mitzvah. Between my 20s and early 40s, I became more attached to my faith and took the time to learn more about Judaism. I found community among Jews, not just at temple, but in singles groups, outdoors groups, and Jewish choirs. I agree with many points Ozment and others make in her article. People can form a community in many ways. Theater groups, musical organization, and even the workplace provided me with communities over the years. But, during the last decade, no community has been more intimate and special than my Jewish one.

I’ve gone to services to mark the anniversary of my brother’s death. He died in 1986, and I never went to temple during the first 10 years after his death. Now, I make a point to hear my brother’s name read in our temple, and know, just by hearing other names read, that I’m not alone. It’s a ritual I have grown to treasure.

Ozment writes about her young children growing up with no particular faith, but with a strong set of values. As a child, my parents did almost nothing in the home related to religion, though they sent us to religious school.  Back then, that sent me the message that religion wasn’t that important in our home, which contributed to my lack of enthusiasm. My parents certainly instilled strong values in us.

By the time I became a mother, about five years ago, I was no longer a “none.” I was a connected Jew who loved the power of community and ritual organized religion could give. My husband and I, from the start, brought our son with us to temple services. Simon often asks us to take him to temple on Shabbat. He has grown to anticipate Jewish rituals we do in our home, like lighting Shabbat candles. He is more comfortable with clergy than I was as a child and eagerly exchanges hugs and high fives with our temple rabbis.

As a parent, my wish for my son is that he stay connected to the Jewish community through his childhood, through college, and adulthood. I want him to know how to find communal support from the Jewish community when he needs it – a lesson that comes with experience. I don’t want him to become a part of the demographic Ozment writes about when she says, “Some 35 percent of twenty-somethings now identify themselves as Nones.”

Religion left me with a bad taste in my mouth during childhood. I was bored in religious school. When my family moved from western New York State to a small town in Ohio, we were the only Jews in our school system. Other people’s religion was forced upon me in many settings, including my public school, where pastors came to lead assembles on Christmas and Easter. I wanted to hide the fact that I was Jewish more times than not. Religion provided no comfort. It brought ostracism, isolation, and pain.

So why do I find it disturbing that roughly a third of twenty-somethings don’t identify with a particular faith? Because when my brother died, I had no faith to turn to, no community to embrace me. I was a 20-something, finishing college. I had not yet established strong roots in a community and did not feel that attached to my hometown. Two decades later, I believe that it might have at least helped provide comfort if I were more connected to my faith and a congregation, if I had become accustomed to both celebrating life’s joys and sorrows using the rituals Jews wisely established centuries ago. Every religion has its rituals and community.  I’m less worried about young adults growing up with no values than I am about them having nowhere to turn when things get rougher than they ever could have anticipated. Values, they likely will get from their parents.

In her article, Ozment writes at one point, “I knew I’d rather read the Sunday paper on the couch with my kids than get everyone off to church.” I understand that. Finding a way to make religion work into life is not easy.  Making room for Judaism will only get tougher as our son grows older and becomes involved in sports or other activities. It would have been easier in the short term to stay more of a “None.” In the long term, though, I think my family’s life would have been harder.

Read the article.

Reader reaction: The piece drew more than 200 comments on the Motherlode blog and stirred debate about many aspects of the so-called December dilemma that many Jewish parents face.

Many parents talk about the need to hold their children extra close this week because of the 20 first-graders who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I don’t feel a sudden need to do that because a day never goes by that I do not want to hold my only child close.

I learned fairly early in life just how fast death can come. So did my parents and my oldest brother. My middle brother, Kevin, was killed in a car accident at age 23; I was 21. I’m not trying to compare my family’s loss to other families’ losses. But after at first deciding not to write something about the Newtown, Conn., tragedy, I found I had to – on behalf of the siblings who now will have to live the rest of their lives without a brother or a sister.

A group called The Compassionate Friends likes to refer to grieving siblings as the “forgotten mourners.” When parents lose a child, they are often so overcome that their surviving children’s grief becomes secondary or even overlooked. No one can fathom the kind of grief the parents of those 20 children – or the six adults killed in the same school shooting – will experience in the weeks, months, and years to come. No one, too, should try to second-guess how the tragedy will affect the victims’ siblings.

After my brother’s death, well-meaning comforters thought they knew exactly what to say.

“Be thankful you had another brother,” one said.

“The worst thing in the world is losing a child,” said another.

“Be strong for your parents,” others said.

I got the message. My grief should come in a distant second to my parents’ suffering. In fact, my role wasn’t really as a mourner. I was supposed to take care of my parents, a role I desperately wanted to assume. But I was still figuring out how to take care of myself.

Some comforters inadvertently made it seem as if siblings were interchangeable. I was the youngest of three, and Kevin, two years older, was the closest to me in age and friendship. In fact, he was my best friend.

My brother Kevin and I in 1983 on a ski vacation in Utah

I did try to be there for my parents after my brother’s death, and they tried their hardest to be there for me. We struggled to figure out how to help each other. No one gave us a pamphlet for families dealing with the loss of a child, and even if there were one, it probably could not cover everything that can come up.

My parents set up a scholarship in my brother’s memory at his alma mater, Ohio University.  It was a wonderful tribute. But it seemed like my parents’ tribute because they told me about it after the creation. I would have loved to have been part of the planning. My parents met with a rabbi to plan the funeral, but didn’t think to ask me along. We don’t know to this day why that occurred. What we know now: It’s important to include the surviving children in anything parents can.

My parents would ask how I was doing, and I often sugarcoated how awful I felt because I did not want to make them hurt worse than they did. It took years before we felt comfortable sharing some of the wonderful memories of Kevin or could speak openly about how his death affected each of us.

I was a young adult, though. The majority of the Sandy Hook victims were age 6 or 7, and many of their siblings, from what I’ve read, are also young children. They are living their grief in a public spotlight and may for years to come when reporters cover anniversaries of the school shootings. Still, like all bereaved siblings, the brothers and sisters of the Sandy Hook first-graders will probably have similar experiences.

They, like I have, will celebrate birthdays and graduations without a beloved brother or sister present. One day, maybe they will marry and wish more than anything else that their sibling was there to witness it. One of the most joyous days of my life was when I gave birth to Simon in 2008. One of the saddest was barely a month later when it was March 1^st, the 22^nd anniversary of my brother’s death. I went to temple with my husband and Simon to mark the yahrzeit, the anniversary of my brother’s death on the Jewish calendar. I sobbed more than I had in years. Joyful to hold my baby boy in my arms, I was torn apart with the realization that my brother Kevin would never meet his nephew.

Several news outlets published a eulogy read by an uncle at the funeral of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of the Newtown victims. Within his immediate family, Noah was survived by his parents, two older sisters, an older brother, and a twin sister, Arielle. One line in that eulogy shows that Noah’s family already is thinking of everyone affected: “He called Arielle his best friend, and she was — and always had been.”

As a parent, as a bereaved sister, I feel more than I could ever express in words for the mourners of the victims in the Newtown, Conn., shootings. My son Simon is now 4 ½ years old, barely two years younger than those first-graders. He starts kindergarten in the fall. He says, “I love you,” to both my husband and me with ease. He loves to give hugs and receive them. He’s silly, musical, and like any child his age, just curious about anything he sees or hears. He has heard nothing about what happened in Newtown and won’t from us unless he brings it up. He has the right to live his early childhood in innocence and mostly joy. So did the 20 Newtown first-graders. So did their brothers and sisters.

You may have noticed a new article of mine caused a bit of a stir during the last week. If not, check out my latest post on The New York Times Motherlode blog.

The title, “How to Be Jewish at Christmas.” My original title was not so pithy, but says a little more: “Preschooler Teaches Mom How to be Jew at Christmastime.” More than 100 people – and rising – have now commented on the piece, a story about how my Jewish son surprised me with his politeness and diplomacy when a stranger asked what Santa was bringing him.

Simon admires the candles on his and one of our family menorahs.

My son simply stated the truth: He doesn’t celebrate Christmas. He celebrates Hanukkah. He said it with a smile without a trace of anger or sarcasm. Of course, he’s 4. That could change, but my hope is he will always be respectful in such situations.

The debate on the site has been civil and thoughtful. Sure, a few people chalked up my musings to the whines of an overprotective mother. A few wondered why I did not also mention every other non-Christian religion in the world in my piece and also pay homage to atheists. But many people got the message. As a parent, I want my child to grow up secure enough in his own religious identity that he does not feel the need to hide it.

One of the more recent commenters wondered why no one has written a post called “How to be a Jew at Hanukkah.” I’ve written such articles before, though not in an instructive manner. All of us have to figure out what works best for our own families.

Simon helps me make noodle kugel, one of our traditions at Hanukkah.

In our home, we give Hanukkah and the more significant Jewish holidays a special place in our lives. We have taken pains to not turn Hanukkah into something more than it is. We don’t, as I’ve written in the past, shower our son with gifts. We give each night a theme and emphasize togetherness and Jewish ritual over commercialism.

Yes, our son gets some presents – a set of used books on book night; a wooden toy to paint on craft night; a book about giving to others on Tzedakah night; a CD of his favorite children’s artist on music night. But more importantly, he gets to spend time with friends and family on several of the nights.

Tonight, he proved that he has absorbed our message that Hanukkah isn’t mostly about gifts. Now big enough to do it himself, Simon lit the candles on his menorah while his dad lit candles on another. We sat in the living room talking and playing dreidel as the candles flickered. I had a small present for him – for “craft night.” Before I could pull out the gift, Simon asked, “Can we play dreidel?” He does not anticipate presents during Hanukkah nor do we ask him to make a wish list.

My son, by example, is showing me how to enjoy not just the lights of Hanukkah each night, but the lights we see dotting the trees all over our town. He is, as he did the other day in a Starbucks, teaching me so much about what it can mean to be a Jew in America.

Ps. I’d love to hear others’ stories about how you cope with being a religious minority during the Christmas season – as well as recommendations for books on Hanukkah or winter holidays that would work for a Jewish audience.

Some children’s books on Hanukkah – recently received as well as older ones – also help make Hanukkah a special time in our home. In no special order, here’s some of our favorites:
1. Chanukah Lights Everywhere, by Michael Rosen. (It has a subtle message about honoring all faiths.)
2. Mrs. Greenberg’s Messy Hanukkah. (An amusing tale about a young girl who just has to make latkes at a neighbor’s house. Keep the mop ready.)
3. Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, by Eric Kimmel. (Another funny tale about goblins that try to ruin Hanukkah in a small town.)
4. The Chanukah Guest, by Eric Kimmel. (Don’t want to give away the punchline in this one. Hint: A furry guest visits.)

Over dinner a few weeks ago, my husband and I quizzed our almost 5-year-old about what he had learned that day in a new pre-kindergarten Judaism program at our temple.

The teacher had acted out the story of Noah and the ark. Simon told us about how God created the flood, and then God made the wind and the sun that dried up the rain.

“So what is God?” I asked.

“God is the clouds,” he said.

Clouds reflect on the river in the Quechee Gorge. Photo by Linda K. Wertheimer

My husband and I smiled, then Simon dropped the subject and started chattering about animals in general. He was done with the story about the creatures that two by two on the ark. Simon did not ask us to explain our own views of God. Phew. I was not yet ready to have the “God” conversation with my son.

I went to religious school from age 5 to 12, then got permission from my parents to drop out. I was bored and unmoved by religious school and Bible stories. My parents never really spoke to me about God. My father, for as long as I can remember, has described himself as an agnostic. My mother has a stronger connection to Judaism, but did she believe in God? I have never asked.

Now, though I celebrated my adult bat mitzvah in 2006 after two years of study about Judaism, I don’t really know how to discuss God with my son. I’m not that definitive about my own beliefs when it comes to God. My husband is clearer on his stance. He’s an agnostic and self-defined cultural Jew. He likes the rituals and helps me frequently bring Shabbat to our home on Friday nights. We light the candles and say blessings over bread and sometimes wine or juice. My husband also likes going to temple with Simon and me. But the sense of community more than religiosity draws my husband toward Judaism.

I’m a mixed bag. I believe there is something non-human that gives me a sense of awe or comfort at times. Maybe it’s God. I’m not a blind believer, but I’m not an agnostic either. I’m something in between. I’m neither God-less nor God-ful.

I believe this thing called God rests in my heart when I sing with the chorus at our temple and start to feel goose bumps. I certainly felt something at the start of Rosh Hashanah this year when I stood on the bimah and sang solo verses of Mah Tovu to the congregation. The prayer means how good it is that we are all here together in this house of worship. I was nervous, yet found my comfort zone. Something deeper than humankind was in my heart as I sang. Maybe it was an adrenalin rush. Maybe it was my interpretation of God.

I believe something helped when I finally began going to temple services to say the Mourner’s Kaddish in memory of my brother. Religion could not comfort me when my 23-year-old brother Kevin died suddenly in a car accident in 1986. I was 21 and disconnected from my faith. But 20 years later, solace came from others when I recited the Jewish mourner’s prayer, a string of sentences which praises God. The act of saying the words, rather than the words themselves, provided the comfort. For in saying the prayer, I stood in solidarity with other mourners.

Sun and wind can dry a soaked earth. Weather patterns produce those. God, to me, is more of a sensation than an all-powerful entity.
We say “God” a lot in Jewish prayer, and Simon has recited the Hebrew word for God along with us on many prayers. But I have never told him that we are actually praising God. Those blessings are custom more than religious act in our home.

I will encourage Simon to learn everything he can about our Jewish faith, but also raise him in a most decidedly Jewish way. It’s okay to question what he’s told. It’s okay to believe what he chooses to believe. I want him to grow up comfortable with his Jewish identity. In our home, having mixed feelings about God comes with the territory.

But what will I say when my son asks me, “Mom, do you believe in God?” I suspect I will say what I know to be true. “I believe that there is something bigger than all of us, something that can give us comfort and hope. And when I was a child, about your age, I used to sit on my blue toy box and stare out the window at the sky and deliver my own form of prayers to God. I too thought God was up there in the clouds.” I just never thought God was the clouds.

One lesson from Yom Kippur lingers in our home, thanks to a children’s book about a kitten and a little boy named K’tonton.

This year, my son, who’s nearing 5, learned more than he ever has about what it means to seek forgiveness after he does something wrong.

For the first time, my husband and I took Simon to Kol Nidre this year. Simon sat through about an hour of the evening service heralding the start of Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days for Jews. He stayed long enough to get a taste of the haunting music and of the images of Jews gently pounding their heart to ask for forgiveness for all they may have done wrong in the last year and all they may do wrong in the next year. The list of sins we ask forgiveness for are complicated for a preschooler to understand. But a young child can grasp the concept of seeking forgiveness in a simple way, especially if a slurping kitten is involved.

Our rabbi, Howard Jaffe of Temple Isaiah, acted out the story, K’tonton’s Yom Kippur Kitten, a children’s book written by Sadie Rose Weilerstein, whose books first were published in the 1930s. K’tonton, who was born the size of a thumb, is a bit mischievous. The day after Rosh Hashanah, he and his mother heard a kitten as they were in the kitchen.

“Meow, meow,” the kitten said, and Rabbi Jaffe gave enthusiastic meows, echoed by the children in the sanctuary.

At K’tonton’s urging, the boy’s mother gave the kitten some milk. Rabbi Jaffe acted out a loud slurp, and my son slurped, too, and giggled. He leaned forward to hear how K’tonton was sitting on the kitchen table next to a cup of honey. K’tonton tasted the honey, leaned to reach more, and knocked the cup onto the floor. The kitten fled as K’tonton’s mother came in. The boy, rather than telling the truth, let his mother think that the kitten had spilled the honey. His parents banished the kitten from the house.

“Oh, how guilty K’tonton felt!” Weilerstein writes. … “Soon it would Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgment, and K’tonton had this sin on his heart.”

K’tonton goes to Yom Kippur services and grows guiltier. Finally, he tells his parents the truth about who knocked over the honey.
“Kitten, will you forgive me?” the boy asks the kitten, who is allowed back to slurp milk once more.

The kitten meows. K’tonton’s wrong was a sin of omission. He doesn’t feel better until he fesses up.

The story, centered on Yom Kippur, teaches a universal value. For the last few weeks, we’ve had the book at our house, and Simon has asked for it to be read several times. I asked Simon what he thought of K’tonton’s actions.

“K’tonton is a hero,” my son said. “He told the truth.”

The storybook character did not tell the truth right away, but eventually, he did the right thing. He also helped teach my son one of the underlying purposes of Yom Kippur, a holiday I used to think was outside a young child’s realm of understanding. One day a year, we look deep within ourselves and remember what we could have said or handled better. We don’t stop seeking forgiveness the rest of the year, but at least one day, we especially think about it.

Like any parent, I nudge my son to say he’s sorry when he shoves another child or budges instead of waits his turn. But I want him too to learn about asking for forgiveness as well. That’s a bit more complicated than saying “I’m sorry.”