cheerfulI am not immune to "Music Man" syndrom here. My child, of course, was utterly adorable in his white shirt and blue pants, paper glittery chanukah candle on his head, and big plastic dreidl placard. Awwwwww....... And, as those who have heard him say Adon Olam in shul will understand, he was certainly audible. Seems he has inherited his father's lungs and lack of stage fright.
Interestingly enough, I had never considered how integral such things are to proper cultural indoctrination. There is nothing like reenacting the sacrifice of Hannah and her children to the applause of parents and approval of teachers to reenforce cultural attitudes on the importance of our religion and that it is worth dying for. Then kicking the heck out of the Greeks to demonstrate that, while martydom is good, victory is better.
Good. For $10K a year, I should bloody well get indoctrination out the eyeballs. If he isn't completely programmed to stay religious and marry a Jewish girl by graduation I'm gonna demand a refund.
Afterwards, we went back to Aaron's class room because Aaron's teacher makes a big deal out of giving the children their first Chumash (just as they had a big "siddur party" last year for the first siddur. More indoctrination.)
The school pushes "ivrit b'ivrit", "Hebrew in Hebrew," so the entire Chanukah play was in Hebrew, as was most of the presentation of the chumashim in class. While Becky's and my Hebrew is up to following along at a second grade level, it did make me wonder about the parents who do not speak Hebrew. My mother, for example, could not have understood a word of what was going on. Happily, I suppose, one need not understand the script to beam admiringly at my adorable child.