It’s so funny to reflect on the things that make us proud of ourselves these days. Yehuda came home yesterday with the assignment that he had to make a Dvar Torah on this week’s Parsha to deliver in front of his whole class. And when did he have to have it by? Today! Now, for many of our Torah educated friends, this is no big deal at all. They help the kid to do it, and within half an hour – voila.

When one of our kids comes home with this assignment, it’s another story. First of all, neither Josh nor I is particularly knowledgeable and able to just “whip something up” from the Parsha. Second of all – once we do come up with something brilliant – we have to translate it into Hebrew!

So, Josh usually undertakes this killer task, and often, they will venture over to a great neighbor, Yonatan, who helps us out when we get stuck with these types of tasks. However, Josh wasn’t feeling great last night and it became MY task to help.

Ok – breathe deeply…I actually came up with something clever enough to present (although it was probably on a first grade level of analysis. But hey, these were first graders that Yehuda was presenting to, so I thought it would be ok). Then, it was time to translate it. Matan, Yehuda and I all sat down together and worked our way through the translation. I wrote it and I was highly impressed that Yehuda could read my writing. Then, when I got stuck not knowing how to spell something, Yehuda or Matan would step in. Talk about learning humility, as I was constantly corrected by my third and first grade children.

We finished the speech, and I was darn proud of myself. I thought it was pretty good. I was just hoping that Yehuda would be able to read it all, because I didn’t want his teacher to see it! Who knows how many misspelled words I had written? Yehuda read it over and practiced it with us half a dozen times – and we were ready (we hoped!) I was as nervous as if I were delivering the speech myself as I watched Yehuda leave for school.

When he got home, Josh and I both jumped on top of him. Did he do well? Did everyone understand him?

Huge sigh of relief – we had succeeded!

Check that off as another day I passed on the Aliyah hurdle of life here!