Enough with the Jewish stuff already, I know, but this was too good not to share

"How many of you feel God in your daily lives," the rabbi asked the assembled congregation of preschoolers and their parents at Tot Shabbat this morning. Not one person, parent or child, responded. "Raise your hand if you feel God sometimes," she encouraged. I was thinking how notable it was that the adults' hands were all firmly clenched at their sides when I suddenly saw two hands snake into the air. Julia and her friend Abbey, who were seated together in the row in front of me, had both raised their hands. They were the only ones in the room to do so.

The rabbi glowed with pleasure as she walked over to the girls. "When do you feel God," she asked Abbey. "There's no way she's going to be able to answer this," her mother hissed in my ear, but Abbey spoke up clearly and confidently. "At night," she replied. "What a wonderful time to feel God," the rabbi encouraged her. Then she turned to Julia. "Did you have your hand up, too?" Julia nodded. "When do you feel God," the rabbi asked. "In the morning," Julia predictably replied. Everybody beamed... the adults at the sweet little curly haired girls in the front row who apparently felt the presence of a higher power in their lives on a regular basis, the rabbi who now had the perfect lead-in for a discussion about how God is always with us, and the girls who knew they'd done well with their answers. Only Abbey's mother and I missed out on the joy, so busy were we looking quizzically at each other and wondering where in the world those answers had come from.

"Well, I suppose she hears the word 'God' a good half dozen times on an average morning -- maybe a dozen or more if we're running really late or I spill something," I muttered under my breath. And just in time, as our daughters turned around to see our approval, we were smiling too.