By a Lubavitcher mother

It was 7 am, but I was up since 4:30. Who could sleep after hearing the awful news? I knew I only had a few minutes to gather my thoughts and talk to my kids before they ran off to school and would likely hear the news from others.

I gathered my kids and asked them if they knew how Rabbi Akiva passed away. One of them knew. I spared them the grisly details of how he was skinned alive, but told them that before he passed away Al Kiddush Hashem, he comforted his students and told them that he had waited all his life for the opportunity to pass away Al Kiddush Hashem!

I told them that last night, there were people in Australia who had the opportunity to pass away Al Kiddush Hashem. They are very special and heiligeh neshamos. I told my kids they are called Kedoshim, and if they possibly had an aveira, they are all wiped away as if they didn’t exist.

I asked my kids if they knew what a Kadosh was. Two of my kids were excited to tell me the story of Reb Yosef HaGanav HaKadosh. He was a Jew who had gone astray and became a robber. Once, he was caught stealing from a church, and they told him: Convert or die! He proudly chose to die, and one of my kids finished off by saying that they burned him alive.

I was struck by how calmly and proudly she said it. No anxiety. No fears. It was as if it was natural for her that, of course, a Jew would rather die a painful death than be forced to convert. That a Jew who sanctifies Hashem’s name by dying solely because of his Jewishness is something to look up to. To admire.

Wow! I thought to myself. Here is a child who hears the news and it strengthens her Yiddishkeit! We complicated adults need time to work out our thoughts and emotions. But the kids are alright.

A short time later, I received the messages going around of how to talk to your children, with such lines as “reassure your kids that this is a rare and isolated occurrence” and that “we will have extra security around the school.” I understand this is a logical message to try to reduce anxiety in our children, and maybe this was enough some years ago. But nowadays, when the Jew hatred has reached illogical levels, and the next attack seems to be a matter of “when,” it isn’t enough.

More importantly, such talk is missing the Yiddishe perspective. These attempts to pacify our fears appeal to our natural self, our teva. But we are Yidden, and we have the ability to rise above our human instinct.

Besides, will mollycuddling our kids and protecting them from hearing stories that they will find out in school anyway prepare them for real life? Or is part of Chinuch to give our kids perspective on how to navigate and react to challenging times? Perhaps we ought to reduce our kids’ anxiety by teaching them that Mesiras Nefesh is a proud part of living as a Yid?

Our libraries, schools, and bookstores are full of fantasy books about Jewish children fighting imaginary villains and who knows what else. But we have a rich history of both kids and adults fighting real villains! There’s no need to make up stories. I decided it’s time to pull out Machanayim books, The Storyteller, and Rabbi Burston’s stories for my younger children, and books about Chassidim in Russia, stories of Tzadikim, and Holocaust books, for my older children.

I stopped to read one of the Holocaust memoirs, and read the memoir of a young girl describing how her older brother got sick and said he would rather die in the ghetto than eat treife horse meat. They were proud to be Jewish and proud to die for being Jewish.

Last night, as we sat around the Chanukah Menorah, we read a story about a kid who stood up to Antiochus’s soldiers and proudly refused to eat non-kosher food. The book ‘Chanan and His Violin’ has 8 stories of Mesiras Nefesh related to Chanukah, spanning Jewish history, one for each night of Chanukah.

How beautiful to sit at the Menorah, the ultimate symbol of Jewish self-sacrifice and Mesiras Nefesh, and share our rich heritage of Mesiras Nefesh with our children. When our children are proud to both live and die as Jews, they will not be anxious about the news. They will be proud to be another link in the long chain of Jews.