Does God have a back?

From Melissa:

With the beginning of the new cycle of Torah readings, I have started telling Tani stories from the Torah, starting with the first day of creation. We are fostering a culture of love for Torah, including serving him tofu Torahs and cheddar cheese Torahs (I have a cookie cutter that my parents had when I was a kid). Tani came from home from school the other day and announced that he had eaten his tofu Torah. I began my story with chanting the first line of the Torah, "bereishit bara..." in the beginning, when God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was tohu vavohu and there was darkness everywhere and water and God's spirit/ ruah sweeping upon the water. And God was lonely and in the dark and so God decided to create light. So God said, "yehi or" Let there be light! and there was light, and God saw that it was good. It was also very, very bright, like being out on a sunny day walking with the sun in your eyes, in all directions-- it was a little too bright, so God created a beautiful treasure chest to store the light, in order to separate the light from the darkness. (During various tellings of the story, Tani would mention the moon, and I would tell him that we have to wait until the 4th day of creation for the moon-- we were still on the first day. Tani loves the moon-- we have the book Harold and the Purple Crayon, which was a gift to me from Heather years ago, where Harold takes a walk with the moon and it follows him. Tani noticed tonight that the moon was following us--the full moon which I'm convinced made Tani a bit devilish all day, from the moment he woke up this morning). Back to creation...I told Tani an adaptation of the kabbalistic myth about this first light--how the light was so powerful inside the treasure chest that it exploded and bits of this light went everywhere-- there's some hidden in each of us, waiting to be discovered. The first time I told it, he was curious about this idea, but yesterday he got upset by the idea that this light is in him, even when I said that it's good light...I'm not quite sure what this reaction is about, but perhaps Lurianic kabbalah is not meant for two-year-olds. I'm also realizing that it would be helpful for me to look up the original source to get a better sense of how the light is described and what the process of returning the light to source might look like.

Back to bedtime tonight. When Tani says the shema by himself, it's a blend of the first few words of the shema and then the candlelighting blessing. So then we say it together. He recites some of the words with a bit of attitude--not sure what that's about--months ago, I tried to work with him on saying it more respectfully, but for now, I think it's better to ignore his playfulness when saying shema. I tried chanting v'ahavta, which he didn't want, and we started talking about how God loves us-- how God loves Tani and Mommy Malka (and he immediately added Mommy Neysa) and then Grandmas and Grandpas and Uncle Mitch and Aunt Val and Aunt Shari and Cousin Max. He had such a big smile as we said each person's name.

We were at a program for young children today where the presenter referred to God as a "he", which I don't like. So tonight I also mentioned that God is not a he or a she. Why? Tani asked (which he asks often!). Because God doesn't have a body-- God is not a person, God is not separate the way we are (and yet I found myself wanting to offer something about what God is, not just what God is not, even though Maimonides would argue that all we can say about God is statements about what God is not...I'm revisiting what I learned in rabbinical school and what I really believe as Tani and I begin our first encounters with these rich and deep questions.) A little later, Tani asks: Does God have a mouth? No, I said. Does God have a back? Not really, although we can imagine that God does (I say, recalling the story of Moshe seeing God's back). Does God have a bed? No, but we can imagine that God has one, but God doesn't need to sleep the way we do (and yet, what about Shabbat? When we get to the seventh day, God will need rest!) A few minutes later, Tani put his head on me and fell fast asleep. Good night! Laila Tov!