Not everybody’s most embarrassing moment gets blabbed to a giant radio audience. But when you’re a rabbi’s child expected to uphold a certain spiritual standard, there can be risks.

Like the time CBC/Radio-Canada, the country’s national public broadcaster, decided to collect stories about preachers’ kids. The articulate Avi Rose, the oldest of five offspring of Winnipeg residents Rabbi Neal Rose and Carol Rose, couldn’t resist sharing.

His story involved his next-eldest sibling, Rabbi Carnie Shalom Rose, currently senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai Amoona here.

As a child, Carnie had been crying nonstop in one room while his parents hosted guests, or tried to, for one of the Jewish holidays. When Carnie joined them, his father lovingly asked: “Oh, honey, what’s wrong? You’ve got a boo-boo. Let me kiss it. Show me where it hurts.”

At which point, the sobbing youngster pointed to his private parts, providing his dad with what Rabbi Carnie Rose now labels “one of those great moments of being a symbolic exemplar.” Rabbi Neal Rose responded swiftly, kissing his own hand and with it, touching his son’s sore spot.

In honor of Father’s Day Sunday, the Jewish Light herewith explores what it means to be a rabbi’s offspring.

Sivya Smason, 20, and the sixth of nine children, remembers lying to her parents about going with one of her sisters to study at a friend’s. Mind you, the threesome’s escapade would involve hearing a rock band on a snowy night in downtown St. Louis.

Since the next day had been declared a “snow day” from school, Sivya was sure the lack-of-study part wouldn’t bother her folks, Rabbi Ze’ev Smason and his wife, Chani. Rabbi Smason is the spiritual leader of Nusach Hari B’nai Zion in Olivette.

But worried about his daughter driving in inclement weather, the rabbi telephoned the friend’s house repeatedly that evening. No calls were returned. When the Smason girls arrived home about 2 a.m., their parents awaited them. Again, Sivya tried her “studying at a friend’s” line. Eventually, she ‘fessed up. It wasn’t so much that someone might have seen the two sisters and snitched, she now says. What came to worry her most was that if it became known the Smason girls had been downtown, where “our parents probably wouldn’t have let us go ourselves,” the act would reflect poorly on the rabbi and his wife.

Now, following a year’s study in Israel, Sivya is a psychology and business-management student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. For the first time in her academic life, she finds herself unrecognized, a Jew among mostly non-Jews.

If people have heard of her, it’s invariably for what they regard as her hard-to-say first name, pronounced SIV-ya. Still, she feels a rabbi’s kid’s sense of responsibility.

Growing up, she could ask her dad any question, large or small. “Very important part of Judaism is having your questions answered,” she says. Now, she attempts to do the same for others.

One of her newest and best friends on campus is “a hard-core Christian, very religious.” The two women recently spent three hours discussing similarities and differences between their religions.

When Sivya doesn’t have answers, she asks her dad, then shares the knowledge.

Among other rabbis’ kids, however, drawing a line between a parent’s rabbinic and non-rabbinic functions proves vital. Michelle Bennett, nearly 16, is the daughter of Rabbi James M. Bennett, senior rabbi of Congregation Shaare Emeth.

Much of the time, she tends not to regard her father as a rabbi. “I just think of him as dad. At temple, it’s like, oh yeah, that’s just his job,” says Michelle, a junior this fall at Parkway Central High School.

Her friends here of longest standing help reinforce the separation. Those she met in early elementary school, when the Bennetts and their three children relocated from Charlotte, N.C., call her father “Jim” and her mom “Amy.”

She likewise addresses their parents by first names.

For her ongoing interest in temple youth group, she credits early exposure to her parents’ involvement with the Jewish community. Like her older brother and sister before her, Michelle is active in Shaare Emeth’s chapter of NFTY, or the North American Federation of Temple Youth. A board member of her temple’s youth group, she is on the cabinet for the regional group

Her values, she’s convinced, have nothing to do with her dad being a rabbi. She wouldn’t be a lackadaisical student or inappropriate dresser, she says, because “I want to keep up a good image just for myself personally.

“Hopefully, we (family members) would all have the same morals,” she adds, “even if he wasn’t a rabbi.”

Yet as rabbis’ children age, the impact of upbringings sometimes deepens. Sure, they felt at least occasionally exposed, as if living in a fish bowl. And of course, with their bar and bat mitzvah invitations routinely printed in the synagogue bulletin, they had to chant and recite not only before relatives and friends, but for an entire congregation of well-wishers.

But after surviving these ordeals, a different kind of legacy may endure. Rabbi Carnie Rose’s father, Rabbi Neal Rose, is director of spiritual care for a Jewish home for the aged in Canada and continues a psychotherapy practice with his wife.

Of the elder Roses’ five offspring, their daughter is married to a rabbi. Three sons are rabbis and the eldest son, who shared the story of his brother’s private parts, is a psychologist and Jewish educator in Jerusalem.

It’s their parents’ achievements that inspire Rabbi Carnie Rose most. “It’s taken five of us to kind of do what our parents seem to do organically and naturally, what they’ve accomplished in their years of service, both to the Jewish community and the human family,” he says.

“I was always enamored, always impressed, always deeply and profoundly touched by the way in which they walk in the world, and always wanted to do the best I could to walk in similar fashion.”

Perhaps that’s the real meaning of being a rabbi’s kid.