When they ask about…the tooth fairy

It’s distracting and discombobulating to have a loose tooth in your mouth (or two, as can sometimes happen), getting wobblier by the day until it’s only being tethered by a fragile thread. I remember that sensation still, so many decades later. Years pass and now it’s your child insistently wobbling a tooth back and forth with their finger. Sooner or later, out it comes, accompanied by a small wash of blood and a brief moment of shock on their face. 

By this point, most parents will have explained to their child why it happens that ‘baby’ or milk teeth are replaced by adult ones, along with the reminder to care for them well, as the new set needs to last a lifetime.  

But what to do with the tooth itself that is now being proudly presented? We could discard it, as we do nail clippings and hair trimmings. More likely, given the child’s pride in it and looking to honour the moment as a stepping stone to adulthood, we will turn to a form of ritual. Many and varied are the rituals around the world associated with losing a baby tooth, from burying, burning or throwing it over the roof.  

There’s no particular Jewish ritual for this lifecycle moment, although on the occasion of the first tooth a child loses, some families might recite shehechiyanu (the blessing that is said when something happens for the first time). In 21st century western culture, by far the most prevalent ritual is for the child to place their tooth carefully under the pillow, accompanied by a polite note to the tooth fairy, and to wake up to find it ‘magically’ gone and replaced by a coin.  

‘Jewish or not Jewish?’, as Lenny Bruce would have asked. 

I didn’t think too much about the cultural appropriateness of this practice when my children were losing their teeth. Somehow the tooth fairy seemed welcome to visit our home, whereas the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus would definitely not be stopping by. I was happy to allow for one form of magical thinking, but not others.