We went to the Jerusalem Zoo on Friday (also known as the Biblical Zoo, though the section with Tanach-related animals is small in relation to the rest of the place). A number of people that we know have taken out yearly memberships for their families and go a few times a month. As Moshe (just turned two) loves his animal books and can now identify many animals (and the sounds that they make), we thought that he would enjoy it (and we could have a nice family outing at the same time).

I did not know what to expect when I went – however, once there I was very much impressed with what I saw. It was fairly large, there were lots of different animals, well-designed and clean exhibition areas, nice grass & shade and lots to see. We bought a membership (just 350 NIS for a year – it would cost over 80 shekels for two adults, so we start saving money on our fifth visit). We all had a great time and will hopefully be going back soon.

Moshe loved it. We stayed at my parent’s apartment with my mother and sister for Shabbat, and he was happy to go up to them and say “zoo…zoo…zoo…” excitedly (and then at our prompting start to make some of the animal sounds that he knows).

Fast forward to last night. Moshe was having trouble getting to bed (the air conditioner timer wasn’t working properly so I couldn’t turn it on until after Shabbat was over) and sometime around 9pm started calling for me to come into the room where he was sleeping. When I went in, I found him standing up in his pack-n-play crib, saying “zoo…zoo…zoo…”. I told him that if he would lie down, I would sit down next to him and tell him about the different animals that we saw in the zoo. He lay down, so I began: “We saw some monkeys, penguins, ducks, cheetahs, fish, turtles, elephants, kangaroos, you fed the goats, we saw more monkeys, groundhogs and a hippo.”

When I got through the list of animals, I thought that he might be sleeping. All of the sudden I hear him say “!חמור! חמור” (donkey! donkey!). Not only was he listening intently to the whole list, but he realized that I forgot to talk about the donkeys (and decided to remind me in hebrew). So I confirmed for him that we had indeed seen the חמורים at the zoo. He repeated it one more time and fell asleep for the night. (It was very cute).