"I do," she replied.

I recall the first time Elisheva asked me to say a blessing. At age 2, she took her silver kiddush cup into the bathtub. Raising the cup, full of bathwater, she announced, "I hold my wine up. Mommy, say a blessing over it!" So I sang the one-line kiddush.

"Now I take a finger taste!" She dipped her finger into the "wine" and tasted it, just as she tastes Abba's [her father's] wine most Friday nights. She drank the bathwater from the cup and continued, "My wine all gone. Look like need more!"

She refilled the cup and we repeated the whole sequence several more times.

My journal entry the following Wednesday reads, "Tonight at dinner she asked for grape juice. We didn't have any because she drank so much of it Friday night. So we gave her apple juice. She insisted on drinking it from her kiddush cup. During dinner, she held up her cup and sang the one-line kiddush fairly accurately in Hebrew."

Today, Elisheva invited me to a pretend picnic. She served me a Tinkertoy lollipop and a plastic ice cream cone.

"May I eat now?" I asked.

"No," she replied. "You have to say the blessing first." Frankly, I'd never thought about the proper blessing for either lollipops or ice cream.

I wish all Jewish mothers such blessings.