Reflections by Rabbi Karen Martin
God Takes Pity on Kindergarten Children by Yehuda Amichai1
God takes pity on kindergarten children.
Less on school children.
On grown-ups, He won’t take pity anymore.
He leaves them alone.
Sometimes, they have to crawl on all fours
In the blazing hot sand,
To get to the first-aid station
Dripping blood.
Maybe on those who love in truth
He will give mercy, pity and cast shade
As a tree on someone sleeping on the bench
On a public street.
Maybe we too will offer them
The last coins of our compassion
Mother bequeathed us,
So their bliss will protect us
Now and in other days.
I recently rediscovered “God Takes Pity on Kindergarten Children,” by Yehuda Amichai, which first appeared in his 1955 collection Now and In Other Days, its title taken from the last line of the poem.
In the poem, Amichai plays with the Hebrew word for mercy, raḥem, which shares the same root and is closely related to the word for womb, reḥem. He reflects that as we grow older—further from the womb—God has less and less mercy for us, until as adults, that mercy becomes almost inconceivable. This idea is sharpened by his image of a person crawling on all fours and, like an infant, covered in blood—imagery that evokes birth, yet is stripped of a mother’s nurturing presence.
Yet the second and third stanza offer us some hope. Amichai suggests that perhaps those who love in truth, or truly love, still receive a portion of God’s mercy. Not the grand kind that small children receive, but the blessing of shade: a small kindness in a harsh world, but a blessing, nevertheless, bestowed by God through (Mother) Nature.
In the final stanza, it is our hands that bestow the last coins of our compassion—perhaps compassion bestowed upon us, or taught to us, by our earthly mother, or perhaps by our Mother (hear the echoes here of raḥem/reḥem).
In this poem, I hear the echoes of Eilu D’varim, a passage from our morning liturgy, which teaches us that there is no limit to the number of acts we must perform. The rewards for these acts are experienced both in this world and in the world to come. Included in that list are “honoring one’s father and mother,” “engaging in deeds of compassion,” and “providing for the wedding couple.”
In Amichai’s poem, these values are treated with ambiguity and challenge. Do we honor Avinu Shebashamayim, our Heavenly Father, and/or our earthly mother? How is compassion limitless when we offer our final coins? Or when God’s mercy itself seemingly has limits? When we give what we have to those who love in truth, how can their happiness protect us?
Yehudah Amichai wrote “God Takes Pity on Kindergarten Children” in the years between the conflicts in 1948-49 and 1956, a period when Israel was beset by conflicts and struggling to absorb millions of refugees and immigrants. Life was difficult and draining; youthful idealism was tempered by the brutal realities of nation-building.
We are in a different place and time, yet on a visceral level, I empathize. In Psalm 118, we read
מִן הַמֵּצַר קָרָאתִי יָהּ
“From the straits I called to the Eternal” (Ps 118:5).
We call because in times of difficulty, when we want to curl into a defensive ball, God can feel hard to find. Compassion, too, can feel distant. Sometimes, just being kind to another can feel like scraping the bottom of our emotional reserves. And yet, Amichai reminds us, small blessings matter. We may not see dramatic gestures or immediate outcomes, but we cannot know the downstream effects of an act of kindness. Perhaps we can make a cruel world a gentler, more loving place. When we care for others and increase the joy of another, we may bring more joy into the world and feel more joy within ourselves. When the world feels like too much, we must look to those small acts, those small blessings, to protect us from the weight of the world.
It may feel too small, too little, but when we love truly, when we love each other, our children, our parents, and our neighbors, may we share that love. Let us show kindness, and recognize and sanctify the small kindnesses shown to us. When we do so, we call out to God from a narrow place. And, as the Psalmist tells us:
עָנָנִי בַּמֶּרְחַב יָהּ
God answered me from the wide-open space.
We will find our way to more openness, more compassion, and more mercy. That, Amichai tells us, is how we survive this moment, and whatever hard moments life brings our way.
1 Adapted from trans. Benjamin and Barbara Harshav, in The Poetry of Yehudah Amichai edited by Robert Alter (2015).
2 I found the poem in Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry (JPS, 2025) by Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler, which is excellent and I highly recommend it.
3 הָאוֹהֲבִים-בֶּאֱמֶת
4 Eilu D’varim draws from Mishnah (Peah 1:1) and Talmud (Shabbat 127a), and is recited after the blessing for Torah study.
5 Olam HaBa, the Jewish afterlife/redemptive age.
6 Mishkan Tefilah translation.