Just a few weeks ago, I “bagged” my first deer. Allow me to qualify that. No, I’m not a hunter; I had no intention of taking a deer in any fashion on that day. It was an entirely accidental event. Driving down my street on my way to shul, in the deep darkness just a few minutes before 6 a.m. – a daily modus operandi that permits me to learn for about half an hour before davening begins – a small deer darted in front of my car’s right side. No one, I am convinced, could have averted that deer collision. Still, an awful lot went through my mind as soon as it happened. I assured myself that I had not, chas v’shalom, struck a child; surely, it couldn’t have been a careless and unguarded child running into the street to catch a lost ball. Children simply aren’t out playing at 5:55 a.m., when the only background light is provided by streetlamps. The fact that I had seen a momentary flash of light brown as the collision occurred allowed me to take a first deep breath.

My next thought, while still on my minute-and-a-half ride to shul, was that selichos would be beginning the following week. If ever there was a wake-up call about how our lives hang in the balance, this was it. The notion of taking the life of a larger mammal was truly humbling and unsettling for me. And what is it that our people of yesteryear were supposed to be thinking when they offered a korban for a wrongdoing? That it could/should really have been me lying on the mizbe’ach giving up my life. For all its brevity, this collision surely was a most humbling experience and a kapparah of notable degree. With “only” an $800 car repair to go along with the experience, I must believe that I got off rather easily.

From the time our children were small up, until bar/bas mitzva age or so, we made it a point to develop Jewish themes for our family’s Purim costumes, where each of us had an essential role.  We felt that, while there is nothing wrong with a child dressing up as, say, Batman or a baseball player, Purim created an opportunity to have fun in a specifically Jewish way. Weeks in advance of Purim each year, we set to work on a Torah-related costume that called for the participation of everyone in our family of four (we, the parents, and our boy and girl twins).