Last week,abcnews.compostedan articleby famed co-sleeping expert Elizabeth Pantley about how to stop co-sleeping and get your kids out of your bed.
如果你读过my writingbefore, you know I’m a big proponent of co-sleeping. My husband, 3- and 6-year-old sons, and I share a gigantic family bed which consists of a king and a full futon pushed together on the floor, and I believe our co-sleeping will end when our family sees that it is time to end it. But it’s not my intention to tell you why co-sleeping is good and beneficial and natural and fun (my book which comes out in March devotes a whole chapter to that). I want to share two things that go on in our family bed that are specifically Jewish, because I don’t hear it spoken about very often.
Disclaimer: the things I describe can (and do) also occur in non co-sleeping families, but this is simply the experience of our family bed from a Jewish perspective.
1. Bedtime
Shema
. After teeth are brushed (Fred fighting the brushing with varying intensity on any given night), and everyone has gone to the bathroom one last time (ditto; he’s 3, it’s normal, right!?), we readbooks,Fred nurses, and we sing the first two lines of theShema. As a child, my parents recited theShemato me and just as it was technically my first full sentence as a toddler, it was our boys’ first as well.
Traditionally, the fullShemaas well as other blessings, psalms, and chants are recited, but we have started simply and our boys can now both sing along. TheShemaproclaims the Oneness of God/the Universe/Everything. It is elemental and elegant and even if you are unsure about a lot of things, the ideal of there being Oneness is, I think, fairly non-confrontational.
Some nights, I will let our sons hear me chant the other paragraphs of theShema(known in my Reform upbringing simply as the “V’ahavta”) and some of the chants as well. There is something magical to the language of希伯来语even if it is not yet fully comprehended and I like lulling our children to sleep with the rhythms, melodies, and “ch”s of the universal language of Jews everywhere.
My husbandwas not raised with a “ch” sound in his lexicon but he has acquired it since we met, and the sound of him singing theShema我们的男孩很感人,意义重大。对thousands of years Jews have recited this prayer in good times and bad, to announce so many joys and tragedies, and now it hovers over the bed of two little boys carrying our genes. It’s powerful.
2.Morning
Modeh Ani
. There’s a song we used to sing in Hebrew school calledModeh Aniwhich I now know is comprised of the第一句话,traditional Jews recite upon awakening. The words are loosely translated as: “Thank you God for returning my soul to me with compassion; Your faithfulness is vast.”
The act of waking up with my children is a gift I treasure, but I also love spreading the appreciation for all of our waking upat all. Of course our soul does not technically leave us in our sleep, and some skeptics might argue that there is no soul at all, but I was taught that every day is a miracle, no matter what it looks like. The sun coming up is a miracle. Opening our eyes is a miracle. And even if we feel grumpy, the fact that we are feeling anything at all and working to not be grumpy is also a miracle. I want our boys to appreciate good and bad days not so that they walk around with smiles plastered to their faces or have an unrealistic picture of the world, but I want them to be conscious of existing, and that’s one of the things I like about traditions like this one.
I have set the lyrics ofModeh Anito the melody for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star/The ABC song and it fits really nicely with just one repetition of the second to last word (rabah). Now that I am teaching Miles Hebrew, he was so excited that, after learning up to the letter “nun,” he can now read the phrase “Modeh Ani” in Hebrew!
As a Jew who has taken on more observance as an adult, I enjoy finding pleasure and meaning in things like these prayers which used to be merely familiar songs with lovely melodies from希伯来语school. Now they are lessons and expressions of love and time together that we share in our family bed. It’s a family bed like so many (all of the fellow bed-sharers and co-sleepers), a select many (Jewish bed-sharers and co-sleepers), and no one else in the world, because we are the only four who inhabit this sacred space together.Laila tov.
