In accordance with an ancient Jewish custom, Aryeh Yehuda received his first haircut on his third birthday. This page attempts to capture the highlights of the day and explain some of the more interesting events.
6:30am Aryeh Yehuda wakes up in a very excited state. He gets dressed quickly and starts running around the house singing loudly (like, even more loudly than usual). He has been looking forward to this day for some time. Breakfast is conducted in a moderately usual manner, with the exception of the addition of a few birthday treats.
9:00am Auntie Esther Malka takes Aryeh Yehuda to playgroup as usual. This playgroup is run by Debbie Weisbart and has around eight children at any one time. Aryeh Yehuda has been going there for about nine months and absolutely loves it. The morning's activities are the usual round of singing, davening, playing and so on until ...
11:00am Mummy arrives at playgroup armed with a plastic bag full of goodies. Auntie Debbie (or Undle Debbie as Aryeh Yehuda often calls her) announces that all of the children should come to the birthday house. This is a model house (made from a cardboard box) with many doors and windows. Aryeh Yehuda opens each door and window in turn and finds sweets, pretzels and so on hidden behind each one. Auntie Debbie collects them all in a special peckle. When he has collected them all, Aryeh Yehuda takes the plastic bag from Mummy and hands out his own pecklech to the other children. He insists on giving one to Auntie Debbie and saving one for Daddy and one for Great Grandma.
Normal Thursday activities include Shabbos dancing and making challos (they do not have playgroup on a Friday). Due to the excessive amount of sweet stuff around, they did not make challos this week. As it is his birthday, Aryeh Yehuda gets to start the Shabbos dancing. He stands in the middle of a circle whilst all of the other children and Auntie Debbie dance around him singing Shabbos songs, ending up with "Aryeh Yehuda please choose me".He then chooses someone else to go into the middle instead of him and the dancing continues until everyone has had a go.
12:30pm Tired but happy he goes home with Mummy.
2:00pm Daddy arrives home from work and sings songs with Aryeh Yehuda. Then Aryeh Yehuda opens some birthday presents, which include several new jigsaws (one of his current favourite activities). The two of them sit down to a good old-fashioned afternoon of jigsaw assembly.
3:30pm Daddy and Aryeh Yehuda go to school to pick up Nechoma Bryna. On their return home, the scissors appear. Aryeh Yehuda stands on a small stool in the middle of the living room floor and giggles as Daddy takes the first snip. When the hair is waved in front of his face, he breaks out into manic laughter (this in itself is nothing unusual, it's just even more manic than usual). Daddy then has a few more snips before turning the job over to Mummy who has a much more professional approach to cutting hair.
4:15pm Most of Aryeh Yehuda's hair is now in a plastic bag. We all sing and dance around him for a little while and play some games before supper. After supper, Mummy carries in his birthday cake, shaped like a tallis kotton with tzitzis made of icing and three candles. Aryeh Yehuda makes the first cut (assisted by Daddy) and cake is distributed to all.
5:15pm Totally enveloped in Daddy's tallis, Aryeh Yehuda is placed in the car and taken to see Rabbi Pollak. Tradition has it that after the boy's first haircut, he goes to see a Rebbe who gives him a brocho and gives him a book/piece of paper/etc with Hebrew letters covered in honey. The boy licks off the honey and is instructed in his first Aleph-Beis lesson. The point of the honey is that the words of Torah should always be as sweet to him as the honey.
The original intention at this point was to take Aryeh Yehuda to see Rabbi Pollak in one of the local yeshivos. The atmosphere there would have made a deep impression on him. Unfortunately, due to Rabbi Pollak being ill with flu, this was impractical and we went to his house instead. Still wrapped in Daddy's tallis, Aryeh Yehuda sat next to Rabbi Pollak and spent a few minutes learning Aleph-Beis from a large chumash. After this, he received some chocolate and a brocho.
6:00pm Very tired but even happier, Aryeh Yehuda arrives home. After a little more singing and dancing, it is bedtime for the little chap. All in all he has had one of his best days ever and falls quickly asleep.
It is our fervent prayer to Hashem that Aryeh Yehuda is always as excited about learning Torah as he was on that day.
Postscript - Directly after Pesach, Alan (who is Aryeh Yehuda's Daddy for those of you who have been asleep until now) left his place of employment and started life in a yeshiva. The school which Aryeh Yehuda now attends is only about 200 yards down the road from the yeshiva and both finish at 12:30pm on a Friday. We have taken advantage of this fact and Aryeh Yehuda now "learns" with his Daddy in yeshiva for about 20 minutes on a Friday before going home. This is one of the high points of his week and he gets very excited when the time draws close. He learns Aleph-Beis and mishnayos. He has managed to memorise most of the first mishna in shass very well.
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