It is worth noting that in the morning, after acknowledging our physical nature, our spiritual nature, and the wisdom to utilize them together; the very next bracha is "shelo asani goy" -- "Who did not make me a non-Jew". Why not just say, "Who made me a Jew"? There are really two aspects to this bracha. First, it is important to appreciate the beautiful gift we have been given -- the gift of simply not being a goy! The mishna in avos 3:18 says: beloved is yisrael who are called children of HaShem. There is also a second, more subtle point. HaShem has not only made us "not a goy", but He has also given us the opportunity to make ourselves into "yisrael". By working to make ourselves into "yisrael" and not just being created that way, our experience of Olam HaBa will be with the richness and depth of an earned relationship and not just gift for nothing.
My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class. It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner. I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her. She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver. When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find. (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it. Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא. It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aruch HaRav that referred to the noise of תקתוק
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