GIVING EVIL A BAD NAME

Passover can be a tough one for parents of young children

Passover is in two weeks, and Bea is coming home from school with a lot of information about blood and boils and the slaying of first-borns. The burning bush, the Nile running scarlet, livestock evisceration and Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea are all being laid out on the kitchen table, usually in construction paper and popsicle sticks.

“Mommy, do you know the Pharaoh?”

Passover can be a tough one for parents of young children: the traditional Passover text is often so violent, the God so punishing. Of course you can turn your own Passover seder into “a celebration of freedom” or “a commentary on slavery,” but with the four- year- olds, it’s always going to bounce back to the 10 plagues and blood getting into everything, from door frames to river water.

“Yes, Bea, I know t he Pharaoh. He is the Egyptian king who kept the Jews as slaves. The Jews needed to make gigantic pyramids, carrying huge bricks, stones as big as cars, on their backs.”

“So the Pharaoh is like Antiochus?”

Honestly? I cannot believe Antiochus is still in the house. In terms of the Jewish holiday calendar, Antiochus is ancient news, a player from December, the crazed king in the Hanukkah story — a violent Hellenizer who outlawed Judaism. As official, teacher- sanctioned Enemy To The Jews, he is the first big- time “bad guy” my daughter Bea ever came into contact with.

I have something to do with this. I believe in the power of stories, and have probably been a bit too restrictive with Bea. She hasn’t seen too many movies or any TV that isn’t as anodyne as Peppa Pig. She’s never seen a show with superheroes, and I tend to shy away from books that might scare her.

So I suppose she has not had much exposure to a wide variety of dark- side archetypes. In the “evil” category, she doesn’t know Voldemort or Darth Vader or Cruella de Vil yet. So as soon as someone gave evil a name, her brain seized on it. The name just happened to be that of a Greco- Syrian BCE king whose name happens to rhyme with tuchus.

“Mommy, you know Mr. McGregor in Peter Rabbit?” “Yes.” “Is he really Antiochus?” Bea has also asked me if the hunter who kills Babar’s mother is Antiochus, and whether the harrumphing father having a midlife crisis in Mary Poppins is Antiochus. In March, I took her to a children’s theatre production of Little Red Riding Hood. During the pre- show, the kids in the audience were asked who the meanie in the story was. All the girls and boys yelled out “the big bad wolf!” while my child, not yet familiar with the oeuvre of t he Brothers Grimm, yelled out “ANTIOCHUS!”

When I told Mike this story he was not happy.

“It doesn’t help that it rhymes with tuchus?” “No. That makes it worse.” When it comes to lessons of the Life sort, Mike wants us to teach Bea before school does. He says that a lot. And in terms of parenting, he is one of those throw-the- baby-in- the- snow- to- make- it-stronger types. His Moscow-born grandfather was like that too; a wiry man who skied until he was 90 and regularly took a whole onion to work. He’d eat the onion at lunchtime like an apple, along with a lump of cheese that he’d cut with his own pocket knife, like a little Russian-Jewish Hemingway.

So regarding our children, Mike has said things like: “A little rope burn is a great thing.”

And: “Sometimes it’s better if they are a bit hungry.”

I tell him that in his machismo, he’s like a sadistic boarding school headmaster insisting on scratchy sweaters and cold baths so that nobody gets too comfortable, while he thinks I am turning our children into soft-footed Care Bears, living their lives under permanently unfurled rainbow umbrellas.

But with Bea it’s hard to help. As a child I was easily spooked, and I see her as the same sort. A few months back, Mike put Bea in front of a film he liked as a child, a swampy Disney cartoon called The Rescuers. I was in the living room, and she was watching in the dining room. Bea came screaming into the living room.

“A witch came out of the wall! A black witch! Came out of the wall! Mommy this movie, turn it off, turn it off now!”

She was so freaked out, I couldn’t even make a joke about Antiochus. Post- Rescuers, it’s only recently that Bea doesn’t need an escort up the stairs at night. And I was exactly the same after watching The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid.

I remember it: I thought the Wicked Witch was following me up the stairs, on her broomstick.

So in the face of that kind of mirroring, sophistication loses out. I will mollycoddle. Even if it means Bea thinks Satan’s true name is something she learned in a holiday song that also includes a verse about potato pancakes.

Although lately, I have caught Mike trying to toughen her up again, playing her Star Wars on his phone when he thinks I am out of ear range.

“See Bea, here is Darth Vader. He’s the very, very bad guy in this story.”

“Is he a king, Daddy, is that why he is wearing that cape? Because I know kings who are bad guys, Daddy. Have you ever heard of the Pharaoh? He wouldn’t let the Jews go, so God killed all his animals and made it rain frogs and things. Mommy says he is different than Antiochus, but I still think all these kings are the same.”