This week marked a first for Bernice and myself. We ran a mini Kaytanat Savta. Just how mini I will explain shortly, but first some of you not steeped in Israeli culture may need a word of explanation about Kaytanat Savta. This translates basically as Grandma’s (or, in our case, Nana’s) summer school. To help working parents cope with the two-month summer break from school and kindergarten, a range of summer activities is organised for, mostly younger, children. These range from summer schooling activities held on school premises, through usually day (in other words, not sleepover) summer camps organised by local authorities, youth movements, enterprising teenagers and others, to rotating day activities organised by a group of parents for their children and hosted every day by a different parent.

For some reason, these organised activities all take place in July, and the month of August looms horrifyingly large for many parents. Even if the family have a week’s summer holiday somewhere, and each of the parents takes a second week of leave to stay at home with the children, this still leaves a week or more of loose end.

Enter the grandparents, who will often volunteer, or sometimes be volunteered, to take the grandchild(ren) for half a week or a week. It is into this group that we have just been initiated.

A brief note. Not for nothing, at least in our case, is this called Kaytanat Savta, rather than Kaytanat Savta v’Saba. I fully acknowledge that the partner with the training, qualification and experience in early childhood and nursery education is the one carrying the load here. The rest of us am along for the ride, to a large extent.

Esther, Maayan and Raphael are due to move within Zichron, from their current three-room house into a four-room flat on Thursday this week. Esther is due to start a new job on the same date, and had managed to finish off all of her other work commitments by Monday lunchtime this week. This means that there is just a chance they have enough time to pack up their house, move, and unpack essentials, before the new job/new year at gan/back to work of next Sunday. Our repeated offers to help in any way they wanted were negotiated down to taking Raphael back home with us on Sunday and keeping him overnight.

Raphael is, of course, coming up to two-and-a-half. He has never spent a night away from his parents, although he is used to staying in other people’s houses, and is very familiar with his ‘bed’ at our house (a mattress at the foot of his parents’ bed). When Esther and Maayan first broached the subject of him staying overnight at our house without them, he was very keen. Indeed, every time we see him or speak to him over the last couple of weeks he has wanted to “go to stay at Nana and Grandpa’s house today”.

When we drove up to Zichron on Sunday morning, as soon as we arrived he wanted us to leave with him. Even so, none of us was sure how he would react when we actually abducted him. I don’t know what we were worried about. After an early lunch, and several carefully repeated explanations of exactly which of us were and which of us weren’t going to be going back to Ma’ale Adumim, Raphael was totally undaunted. Even after he had hugged Mummy and Ima goodbye, and, accompanied only by Storm (his octopus) and Tiger (his tiger), been strapped into his seat in our car, he was unperturbed.

On the 100-minute journey back to Ma’ale Adumim, he slept for most of the way. When he woke up, he was his usual animated self, commenting on every lorry, bus, motorbike, emergency vehicle and piece of construction equipment we passed on the way. For the next 28 hours, he was disturbingly undisturbed, not once asking for his parents. As Bernice explained to Esther afterwards, this is a demonstration of the confidence that he has, that they have given him, in them. It is, of course, also a mark of the bond that he has forged with us (but especially with Bernice) over his short life.

We had a fairly flexible brief from Ground Control in Houston/Zichron. We were not required to make any complicated efforts in terms of activities; Raphael is a child who takes delight in life’s simple pleasures. We already knew full well that we needed to make sure the pantry, and especially the fruit bowl, were well-stocked. ‘Children’s coffee’ (which is actually almond milk, but please don’t tell Raphael) had to be strictly limited to two very small glasses at breakfast. And so forth.

On Sunday, we stayed close to home, going to our closest park for some climbing, sliding, swinging and seesawing. Later, we filled the paddling pool and Raphael cooled off and splashed around. The rest of the day was filled with eating, listening to stories, and playing games. Bernice took an exhausted little boy up to bed fairly early, and he slept, undisturbed, from 7:45 until 6:45 the following morning (which meant that I got to say hello/goodbye to him before I went to shul).

After breakfast, we drove to the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, where we spent a very hot but very enjoyable two-and-a-half hours. It struck me that if an alien were sent to earth to seek out the most intelligent local species, and if that alien happened to land at the zoo on an August morning, he would never select humans. As we made our way round, it was clear that the animals were far smarter. The monkeys lay back along the boughs of trees, listlessly grooming each other. An elderly chimp sat on a ledge, carefully peeling a mango. The lions broke their langorous reclining only to yawn extravagantly. The bears refused to emerge from their dark house at all. Only the humans raced from enclosure to enclosure, in the ever-hotter August sun,

However, Raphael took everything in, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. He particularly liked the penguins (who, naturally, were fairly animated in their air-conditioned enclosure), but also was taken with the browsing giraffes. In a masterstroke of accidental timing, we arrived at Noah’s Ark (at the very end of the zoo), just as the children’s train arrived, and so we were able to ride back to the entrance in style.

The 25-minute sleep Raphael enjoyed on the drive back to our house meant that he couldn’t manage to drop off for his midday nap at home. So, the afternoon passed with more games and stories, and then it was time for us to take the bus to the Jerusalem railway station, where Esther took over. I hope she wasn’t too offended by the fact that Raphael seemed much more excited at the prospect of going home by train than he was at seeing Esther. When she explained that they would, in fact, be taking two trains, I thought he would burst with anticipatory excitement.

He was slightly disappointed that we wouldn’t be travelling back to Zichron with them, but I reminded him that, when we next came, we would be visiting them in their new home.

I suspect that the first edition of Kaytanat Savta may prove not to be the last. Providing that we always manage to get sufficient time to recover between sessions, that will be absolutely fine with us.