2006-01-29—Batman and Noah |
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However, this last weekend we were lucky. Shor had a
sleepover at Grandma's and Grandpa's in conjunction with Friday evening Shabbat
services and Pre-School and Torah School dinner at Tifereth Israel Synagogue in
San Diego. Attacking some of the clutter, Nancy found a shirt that she had
purchased in 2002 in the Cayman Islands for Shor, that just fits him today. It
was one of those T-shirts that when exposed to the sun changes colors. The
design on the shirt shows animals crowded onto Noah's Ark. After reading the story to Shor, we explained that Noah's Ark was a biblical tale known around the entire world. Next, I queued up a videotape of Fantasia 2000, by the good folks of Disney, to show Shor an animated version of the story in which Donald Duck is Noah's "helper." Somehow, he and Daisy Duck are separated on the Ark, each thinking the other has been left behind. All this is animated to the rhythm of "Pomp and Circumstances" in a performance of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine. While we watched the video, I remembered that Nancy had
put away a children's book that we had purchased in Bermuda in 1999 called The
Flood, which was adapted, designed and illustrated by Daron Lowe. This was
purchased in the year preceding the marriage of Shor's parents, Sandi
and Shahar
Masori, and two years
before his birth. Talk about contingency planning! I was wondering how I would explain how God could do such a
thing, when we
came upon a later page, which seemed to do the trick: "God gave the people
a last chance to escape the flood but they only laughed. 'It has never rained on
the earth before. Noah is just an old fool,' they said." Shor and I examined a globe, and then an atlas, to see where the Cayman Islands and Bermuda are. We also took note that the book and play mat kit had been created in Columbus, Ohio, and printed in China. So we went back to the map and globe to see where they are. When Nancy joined our conversation, Shor recounted the story of Noah to her. He explained that there were bad people on the earth, and that they were purple, and that they died in the flood, and went to heaven, where after God lectured them, He let their spirits return to earth to become good people. Shor's idea about "purple people" came from his perception of the illustrations in the book from Bermuda. As for that round trip from earth to heaven for the souls of those wicked people, I'll admit to offering our grandson just a little bit of "midrash" to deal with his anticipated questions. It seemed like a reasonable thing for God to do, and I challenge anyone to prove that it couldn't have happened that way. Anyway, said Shor, continuing the narration for his Grandma, after a white bird that looks like a pigeon
brought an olive branch back to the Ark. So they landed on a mountain and the
animals got to go back on the land. While Nancy and I reflected on how educational all those lay-away items turned out to be, Shor went to play with the toy animals and the little Ark in the other room. "Vrooom-vroom," we heard him say. A couple of the animals were inside the Ark, which he now had converted into a rocket ship to take them on other adventures. There was one thing that I particularly liked about the Ark being—in Shor's word—"transformed" into a rocket ship, in the manner of Ms Frizzle's Magic School Bus. At least he didn't turn the Ark into the Batmobile. |