Neal Milner: A (Possibly) Momentous Pronouncement By My 3-Year-Old Granddaughter

What to make of a little girl telling her dad she is “Jewisher” than he is, eight years later?

Sometimes, a moment in time is truly momentous. It has life-changing consequences lasting forever. Like the moment a spark ignited the Lahaina fire.

Religions stress those big, profound, life-changing moments: visions, conversion, redemption and renewal. Seeing the light, falling into darkness.

Even fire — the Burning Bush, the gates of hell.

And of course, miracles, the hand of God.

Hundreds of Lahaina residents believe that divine intervention kept sacred sites from being destroyed. Whether you believe that or not, it’s a common, powerful story.

I recently had a religious moment in time. It was not momentous at all, even though people with strong religious beliefs and others for that matter would love that moment and expect transforming consequences.

And yet in a way I still don’t understand there was something mysteriously miraculous about it, just not the kind you’d expect. Not a spiritual awakening, rather a puzzle about an earlier moment involving a chatty 3-year-old and her dad.

A little less than a month ago, my wife, Joy, and I boarded an Amtrak train taking us cross-country from Milwaukee to Portland, Oregon, where we would spend a couple of days with our children.

We left Milwaukee on Sept. 23. The date is important because Yom Kippur began at sundown the next day while we were on the train somewhere in North Dakota.

Yom Kippur is one of the Jewish High Holy Days. Beginning at sundown, observant Jews fast for 24 hours and spend many of those hours at synagogues praying.

You don’t need to know more than that to know Joy and I were not observing. We could have fasted on the train but did not. We should have spent many hours in a synagogue instead of a berth on the Empire Builder.

After the Lahaina fire, Father Kuriakose Nadooparambil was amazed to see the interior of the church survived almost intact. (Courtesy Father Kuriakose Nadooparambil)

This was not our first fastless Yom Kippur. We had begun to travel on the Holidays and had stopped going to religious services.

We weren’t rebelling or resisting. Nothing dramatic had happened, no lapse, crisis or open rejection, not even a deviation. More like a haphazard wandering away, a drift rather than a march.

My son and granddaughter Viv were still at Yom Kippur services when we arrived at their Portland home. (My daughter-in-law was in Europe.)

For the first nine years of Viv’s life, they had lived in a Brooklyn neighborhood where you could fall out your door and land in a Jewish place of worship, but they had not gotten involved until they moved to Portland. This was Viv’s first Yom Kippur service, her first full-on service of any kind really.

“Grandpa,” she said. “We’re going to go back for the closing service. Come with us.”

Really? What a moment! Of course, I said yes.

Now, let’s stop right here and return to moments in time. It’s easy to imagine — probably some of you have fantasized this already — that this grandpa-granddaughter thing becomes a momentous moment in time.

Being with his beloved granddaughter who’s beginning the arc toward observant Judaism inspires grandpa to find the path again as he shares his knowledge about ancient rituals. A long-distance grandfather bonding through an ancient ritual with the grandchild he too seldom sees. Spiritual awakening and reawakening. It makes you swell with pride, “kvell” in Yiddish.

There is so much Jewish lore in that scenario. In fact, so much lore among all sorts of families regardless of religion. Ohana, kupuna, keiki. Sharing mana’o, passing it on.

Sweet story, but it didn’t happen.

The service was fine. I sang and prayed. The music was memorable, as in good memories, but it didn’t tap into anything deeper, no yearning to return. Nice to be back, thank you and goodbye.

Viv sat between her father and me for a while, then moved to be closer to the front. She was interested and never once complained about being bored, which she’s never reluctant to do if she feels that way any time, anywhere. She was curious, but science-project curious, not spirit-curious.

Afterward, she and I did not talk about that final hour. It never came up again.

But then I step back and think about it in the context of a much earlier event in Viv’s life, when there was an out-of-the-blue moment that was more mysterious, spiritual, eerie and just maybe momentous.

One day, when Viv was no older than 3, she said to her dad, “You’re Jewish, but I’m Jewisher.”

No one has any idea where this came from. Judaism was not a regular conversation and not something a 3-year-old who’s busy playing with her little stethoscope and tiny orthopedic hammer would bother with.

So, where did Viv’s statement come from? The easiest answer is, “Who the heck knows? Kids say the darnedest things.” That’s a cop-out.

The Waiola Churchyard, where Queen Keopuolani and King Kaumualii were buried together, survived the flames. (Kirstin Downey/Civil Beat/2017)

A more professional explanation would be that kids learn through observation. True, but observation of what, exactly?

Maybe what 3-year-old Vivienne said was historical memory, somehow the voices of her ancestors moving from generation to generation in order to speak to her.

How, though? Historical memory is not about genetics. It’s about culture and folklore. It’s spiritual, not empirical.

Or maybe, as those believers in Lahaina might see it, it’s the hand of God starting her on a spiritual journey before she even knew what that is.

Maybe what she said at 3 was a divination that turns out to be a momentous moment in time for her.

Maybe it will start a fire but in a good way.

And maybe not. Who knows?

Yet those words to her dad that she said over eight years ago still intrigue me, still make me wonder.

Do I believe in miracles? I’m not the best person to ask. I ate blueberry cheesecake in a train rolling through the prairie on Yom Kippur.

But miracles are things that can’t be explained, and I definitely believe there are plenty of those.

Is Vivienne miraculous? Oh please. That’s grandpa brag talk.

Is she part of an inexplicable process that’s so much like religious mysticism?

Could be.

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