There is a dog in our neighborhood named Bruiser. He is not much of a Bruiser. He is an old dog and a small furry puff ball at that. To top it all off Bruiser is blind. My kids like to pet all the “petting doggies” in the neighborhood, so my preschoolers were introduced to the concept of disability. Although Bruiser cannot see, he does like kids and can find them by smell. Sometimes after petting Bruiser we talk about his blindness and I always mention that people can also be blind or have any number of disabilities.

Once we went to the Sharon Home, the local Jewish nursing home, and met a blind resident. Afterwards, I spoke to my children about the lady we had met and was happy to see that they had a framework for understanding her blindness. Their experiences with Bruiser served as practice for meeting someone disabled.

Just as when Av begins we decrease happiness, so too when Adar begins we increase happiness.

Taanit 29a

כשם שמשנכנס אב ממעטין בשמחה כך משנכנס אדר מרבין בשמחה.                    

תענית כט.

Adar and Av both come every year. That means when we are happy, we know we will be sad again and when we are sad we know we will be happy again. Even when things are going well, we know that we will encounter tragedy again. It would be very short-sighted to think that our kids are sheltered from thoughts of death and destruction. When I taught kindergarten sometimes death would come up in the parsha and every kid would have something to say. Just like we know that Tisha B’Av is on next year’s calendar, we know our children will have to encounter death. It is a scary reality but all we can do is practice for it.

When there is a death in the community that my children have any link to at all, I tell my children about it. I even take them to make shiva calls when appropriate. We always make sure to review appropriate behavior. My husband is a shul rabbi and our social circle is very large. Many of the deaths I tell my kids about could be hidden from them easily; and it might save them a little pain and sadness. But it would not teach them about the full cycle of life, nor prepare them for community life. Our children must practice this part of life just like any other.  My daughter made her first shiva call when the woman who passed away was the mother of a close friend and neighbor. My daughter was able to come and be menachem avel (comfort a mourner) for the first time when the death did not personally affect her.

Another time I took my kids on a shiva call before school. My daughter very gently and shyly gave one of the avelim (mourners) a hug. When I took my kids to school, I wrote them each a big mitzvah note. Very real catastrophe is incongruent with the bright cheery world of kindergarten and mitzvah notes. But, our kids are part of a wider world that includes terrible things.

Several months ago my husband’s Zayde died. He was my children’s great grandfather and a man they knew and loved. They were very sad and troubled by Zayde’s death. But I was so glad that they had encountered death before we returned to California for Zayde’s funeral and shiva. They were able to learn about death and the mechanics of proper shiva behavior when they were not sad. That practice allowed them to better handle the time after Zayde’s passing. They were at the shiva house the entire time and knew how to behave and give comfort to my mother-in-law. They were as prepared as they could be.

In this article, I wrote about the importance of teaching children to handle tragedy because we know terrible things do happen. But, conversely, even in the saddest moments we must know that joy will come. I bless us all that out of the depth of our despair comes great joy and many blessings.