(RNS) — “Boy accidentally smashes 3,500-year-old jar on museum visit”

This brief, throwaway, human interest story, dateline Haifa, Israel, was probably intended to act as a palate cleanser from the BBC, which first reported it, squeezing it in between the bombardment of northern Israel from Lebanon and a new paroxysm of violence in the West Bank.

But like just about everything in Israel these days, even this little sidebar has existential implications. A 4-year-old accidentally breaks a priceless item 875 times older than he, an item as old as the Jewish people itself — at a museum in a country that treasures two things above all (with the possible exception of hummus): archaeology and children, one a testimonial to its past and the other a guarantor of its future.

But what is most jarring is not what happened to the jar. It’s what happened to the child. Or more precisely, what didn’t happen. Given the tensions that exist in Israel right now and given the priceless value of these ancient artifacts to the Israeli psyche, one might have expected the wrath of God to come down on him — or at least no ice cream for dessert that night?

Instead, the boy and his family were given a free tour of the museum.

Come again?

“There are instances where display items are intentionally damaged, and such cases are treated with great severity, including involving the police,” Lihi Laszlo from the museum told the BBC. “In this case, however, this was not the situation. The jar was accidentally damaged by a young child visiting the museum, and the response will be accordingly.”

The BBC story adds that a specialist in conservation has also been appointed to restore the jar, and it will be returned to its spot “in a short time.”

This undated image provided by the Hecht Museum of the University of Haifa shows a rare Bronze Age jar that was accidentally broken by a 4-year-old child during a visit in the museum in Haifa, Israel. (Photo courtesy of Hecht Museum)

I give the museum officials credit because I’m not sure I’d have been able to show such restraint, until I took a moment to realize what this child has been through for the past year — he and all Israeli and Palestinian children.

I’m not making any distinction between the children on either side, nor am I implying any equivalence in the degree to which they have suffered or the culpability of the parties who inflicted that pain. There is simply one fact here that cannot be denied — that the shattered psyches of these children will be much harder to glue together than that relic from eons ago.

This incident is a reminder that what matters most is not an old piece of pottery, or a piece of blood-soaked land, or an ancient building or the ruins of a building, however holy or strategic. It’s about living, breathing people. Especially children.

And children have been uppermost in our conversations lately.

There’s the “childless cat ladies” comment uttered by JD Vance, who seeks to foment a culture-war skirmish that only harms his own brand, as he attacks specific people who happen to not have biological children, like Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. According to The Forward, Vance said in 2021, “So many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids, trying to brainwash the minds of our children, and that really disorients me and it really disturbs me.”

For both the Republicans and Democrats, children — having them and caring for them — have been central to their messaging this year. The New York Times’ photo of Kamala Harris’ grandniece looking up at her giving her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention is destined to be one of the defining images of this entire campaign.

The smashed jar will be, for me, another metaphoric snapshot of the year, emblematic of the smashed dreams of Israelis and Palestinian children.

Which is why I find the Hecht Museum’s response to this mishap so uplifting. It showed that we’ve got to do a better job of protecting our children. We need to create for them oases of peace in our sanctuaries, schoolhouses, museums and town squares, filled with lambs and puppies and lollipops; a place to experience wonder, express curiosity and feel the warmth of kindness in the smiles on the faces of friends and strangers alike. To feel loved by the world around them.

The Book of Proverbs warned, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” But later rabbinic authorities understood this to be excessive, along with other outmoded laws such as Deuteronomy’s dictum to punish rebellious children by stoning them to death. If we did, we would have no teenagers left!

In the 12^th century, Maimonides ruled that aggressive acts against a child intended to cause harm or to embarrass are forbidden. He interpreted the “spare the rod” verse from Deuteronomy as calling on parents merely to fake anger, for the sake of the student’s character development, but to hold back from really showing it.

The 19^th century Hasidic leader, Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, made it clear that we should never hit children. More recent rabbinic authorities are stricter yet. One approach calls hitting children a violation of the Jewish legal principle of “Lifnei Iver” (causing another to sin) because it will likely cause them to sin by hitting the parent or teacher in return — or abusively disciplining their own children later on. 

We can protect kids from their own violent urges by protecting them from ours. How telling it is that while months of negotiations have not led to a cease-fire in Gaza, the violence stopped in a blink this week so that hundreds of thousands of children could be vaccinated for polio. There is a glimmer of hope in all that.

Now it’s time for our political leaders to declare a cease-fire on the childhood culture wars.  Obsess about other things. Kids should be off-limits. We should all agree to shield their innocence as best we can, for as long as we can.

Whenever a child, of any age, is making a little too much of a fuss, in services, a movie theater or when their father is accepting a nomination at the DNC, don’t give the frazzled parent a menacing stare. Take a hint from the Hecht Museum and respond to every child with a smile.  Or better yet, let them play with your cats (but maybe not with priceless Bronze Age jars). 

Let our kids feel all the love we can give.  Because sooner or later, we’re going to have to let them go out into a very scary world.

(Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is the author of “Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi” and “Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism That Takes the Holocaust Seriously.” See more of his writing at his Substack page, “In This Moment.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)