Roxanne is a child with a very sharp memory and a relentless thirst for information. She is also smart enough to know that her father is occasionally wrong for either humorous effect or, God forbid, out of true error. So over Chanukah I told her about the letters on the dreidel, and that the dreidels in Israel have different letters - it's nun gimmel hay shin in the diaspora, and nun gimmel hay pey in Israel, spelling out (respectively) "a great miracle happened there" or "a great miracle happened here." She took this in soberly and seriously, and without comment.
Last week my arrival home (often greeted with truly charming laughter, dancing, shrieking and general goofy daddy-related enthusiasm) was greeted by Roxanne's breathless shouts of "look, look, daddy!" What I saw was this:
You may or may not recognize or be able to see the orange pey on the dreidel, but trust me, it is there.
Roxanne continued: "Daddy, Lilly brought these for our whole class from Israel. It has a pey on it. daddy, you were right! You were really right!"
My colleagues with teenagers who hear this story keep telling me to enjoy this now. Honestly though, they didn't need to tell to enjoy it.
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