Blessing My Daughter And Bletchley Park, Part 2

Bletchley Park

Yesterday I started the story about the Friday Night Blessing I give my daughter every week right after lighting the Shabbat candles. You can read it here. I wrote about how I arrived at this particular blessing and about the friend who gave it to me. This friend has always been into doing the cryptic crosswords in the paper and enjoys a regular weekly scabble game with friends. In short, she's a word puzzle person. So it was no shock to learn that her father had been one of the codebreakers at Bletchley Park during WW2.

A matza picnic in the drizzle

Jump back (or should that be forward?) to Easter Sunday in rainy London. DD and I were staying with my sister and her family for the Passover holiday. As Monday was a bank holiday, that was the day we were going on our Matza Ramble. In the old days this meant a ramble in the countryside including a matza picnic (as we only eat matza instead of bread for the week of Passover). We tend to go with other families so that the children (and we) have friends to play with. And over the years, we've become less rambling and more National Trust. In recent years we've gone to Greenwich, Hatfield House, and Knebworth.

It was almost cancelled this year as the weather forecast was heavy rain throughout the day. As phonecalls were exchanged, bowling and a movie were suggested. DD is three so I was seeing our day out with the family rapidly disappear. Another suggestion was everyone come over with board games and we'd have a games day. I couldn't see DD playing Risk somehow. Luckily someone came up with the idea of Bletchley Park - lots of indoor interest and a bit of outdoors if the sun came out.

I was so excited. I wanted to look up my friend's Dad. We have a personal connection to him after all. When we arrived, I realised that I only had his surname and there were two Goldbergs listed. I happened to have my friend's daughter's number in my phone so I texted her in Israel: At Bletchley Park, what's ur Grandpa's name? Two minutes later I got my answer: Joshua David Goldberg. He's in the Japanese Room.

Joshua David Goldberg standing centre

After securing some babysitting, I ran to find the Japanese Room. It was in Block B where we'd come in, upstairs. Reader I found him in the middle of a group photo. They were amazing these men. They were given six months of intensive Japanese and then they had to crack codes in it. Even to read it was a challenge because, as they showed, the written pictograms bore scant resemblance to the printed words.

I stood and looked at the photograph. I wanted to tell him that we use his blessing and that my daughter shares his birthday. I wanted to tell him that it worked as both his daughter and his granddaughter grew up to be good big girls. Instead I told the man and his son who were standing next to me, "I know his daughter." They were (or acted) suitably impressed. I felt a bit silly.

While I was upstairs in B Block I went to look at the WW2 kitchen and living room at the end of the corridor. I love things like that. I also liked the 1940s Post Office, the corner shop, and the vintage toy, clothing and household goods exhibition.

The older children enjoyed a children's guided tour. The vintage cars and other wartime vehicles we also a hit. Some of the adults got engrossed in the stories about the various spies. DD chased a cat and liked the playground.

The main attraction is the Enigma machine itself. The first computer, that took up a whole room, was fascinating. I know it was fascinating because everyone disappeared inside while DD and I ran around in the rain and waited for half an hour for them to gradually and reluctantly emerge - and that was only because the place was closing.

Blessing My Daughter And Bletchley Park, Part 1

There is a connection I promise. First I have to explain about the custom of blessing the children on Friday night at the beginning of the Sabbath (Shabbat). The parent places their hands on each child's head and says the official blessing, often following it up with a personal message of their own.

So, having become a parent with a child old enough to enjoy the whole Friday night thing (candles, songs, blessings, grape-juice, breaking the bread, dinner, grace after, etc...) I decided to look up the official blessings (we never did it at home for some reason). The blessing for boys is actually very nice. You ask God to make your son like Ephraim and Menashe. In the Bible, these two sons of Joseph were blessed by their gandfather, Jacob, before he died and before he blessed his own sons. The reason they were favoured in this way was that they are the first set of brothers mentioned where there is no sibling rivalry. (Think about it - Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau). Very nice.

Then we come to the blessing for the girls. May God make you like Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel. The explanations of why, apart from being the founding mothers of Judaism (by dint of being married to the patriarchs) are less than satisfactory and not what I would necessarily wish for my daughter. One (orthodox) website puts it like this:

 As matriarchs of the Jewish people Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah each posses qualities that make them worthy role models. According to Jewish tradition they were strong women who kept faith with God during tough times. Between the lot of them, they endured marital troubles, infertility, abduction, envy from other women and the task of raising difficult children. But whatever hardships came their way these women put God and family first, eventually succeeding in building the Jewish people.

If, God forbid, my daughter should have to endure any of the "tough times" mentioned above, I should indeed like her to cope admirably. However, it's not the blessing I choose to give her when I could just as easily ask God to bless her with a much easier life. Another (orthodox) website puts it like this:

Each one lived in recognition that the ultimate in fulfillment is enabling others to realize their potentials as individuals and as members of the Jewish people. The Torah is filled with accounts of these women, recording their insight, their giving nature, and their sensitivity, leadership, and special ability to inspire others. Beyond this, all of the matriarchs were great, righteous women, who hailed from the homes of wicked people ― what we call today " a bad environment."

Seriously? You should grow up to enable others? And what are "wicked people" and "a bad environment"? Could it possibly be people who have different beliefs to one's own? No, no, no, not in my house!

So we'll be sticking with the blessing I used to say to DD when I was pregnant. After lighting the Shabbat candles I would gently rub my bump and say, "God bless you and make you a good big girl."

Bletchley Park

I got this from my friend who, I noticed, after blessing her own daughter, would whisper something extra in her ear. When I asked what she said, she told me these words and said they were what her own father had said to her every week when she was a child. I liked it so I adopted it myself. Also because my friend is a single mother of a daughter and I look to her as a shining example of how to do it right.

When DD was born I told my friend that I'd adopted her blessing for DD. "Remind me of her birthday?" she asked. I gave the date and my friend said, "Ooh, I've got shivers up my spine. That was my late father's birthday."

There is a connection to Bletchley Park but this post is long enough already. The story is continued in Part 2.