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Tonight marks the first night of Passover, so I thought I’d share a bit about what the holiday celebrates and what it means to me. Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays of the year, and is probably the most observed Jewish holiday after Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur (despite what people think about Hanukah!).

Passover commemorates the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, as told in the old testament (or, if you’re the kind of person who waits for the movie to come out, as told in The Ten Commandments). According to the story, the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, until God, with the help of Moses, led them out of Egypt and into freedom.
Whether or not you believe in God or the Old Testament, the Passover story resonates. For me, one of the most meaningful parts of it is the acknowledgement of how truly terrible and traumatic slavery is: terrible enough that, although Jews were slaves many thousands of years ago, we still recall the experience in great detail every year. We even eat bitter herbs during the seder, the traditional Passover meal, so that the bitter taste of slavery is fresh on our tongues.

Unfortunately, slavery is not ancient history; in fact, it’s alive and well in many parts of the world. Whether enslaved by law, by force, or by poverty, many human beings living on earth today are not free. Passover is a time to really meditate on what that means – and, perhaps, on our part in it. What have I done to support or abolish slavery? Am I buying from companies with good labor practices? Am I aware of what’s happening in my own community? Are there sustainable ways of dismantling slavery that I can support?

Although slavery is a heavy subject, I actually think it’s one that young people can really understand deeply, and Passover is a great time to explore it together. Over at Pinterest, we’ve rounded up some books for children about Passover and/or freedom. These books are great ways to start a discussion with young readers about slavery, both ancient and modern.

Another resource I’ll be thinking about a lot this year is a documentary I saw last week called Girl Rising, by the organization 10 x 10. The documentary focuses on the stories of ten girls from around the world and shows that for many young women, the passage from slavery to freedom is an education. Definitely worth watching, and suitable for children 12 and up. Taking kids to a screening near you would be a great way to celebrate the holiday.

If you have other slavery/freedom related resources for young people, feel free to leave them in the comments. And to all those who are celebrating tonight, I wish you all a very happy (and meaningful) Passover!

Further Reading:

What does Ramadan celebrate?

What does Chinese New Year celebrate?

It's after sundown! Happy Pesach!

So, here's a song for today's poetry entry.

When Israel was in Egypt land,
Let my people go!
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
Let my people go!

Go down, Moses, way down in Egpyt land
Tell old Pharoah, to let my people go!

Thus saith the Lord, bold Moses said,
Let my people go!
If not I'll smite your firstborn dead,
Let my people go!

Go down, Moses, way down in Egpyt land
Tell old Pharoah, to let my people go!

No more shall they in bondage toil,
Let my people go!
Let them come out with Egypt's spoil,
Le my people go!

Go down, Moses, way down in Egpyt land
Tell old Pharoah, to let my people go!

Here's one of my favorite videos of the song, during the writer's strike:

For a few reasons, I am starting a new blog on WordPress. Please book mark me at http://redcrested.wordpress.com/ and come visit me over there. One of the main reasons is that I will be able to guest blog and have guests on my blog easily via triberr.com. Another reason has to do with links and other tech items. I will keep this blog for awhile and may try doing two blogs, as I know that many writers do.

Happy Easter, Happy Passover! Passover means I can buy Coke at the grocery store without corn products, it comes in bottles with a yellow cap, for a week. One week out of a year. I'm off to Albertson's. Then, on Monday it means 1/2 price chocolate at Walgreen's. That's what I learned from my friend Ginny several years ago. She always bought chocolate after Easter and after Halloween. I like those little individually wrapped Dove dark chocolates, and never buy them ... except after Easter and Halloween. I keep them in the freezer and have one after dinner. Now to write!

In case you missed it, on Pinterest this week we created a booklist of books with Passover themes:

Including, of course, Where on Earth is My Bagel?

Head on over and check it out. Even though Passover’s almost over, themes like freedom and gratitude deserve to be contemplated year-round.

SHOW NOTES: The final installment of interviews with publishers and authors from the show floor at Book Expo America 2009. This episode highlights Jewish books for kids and teens.

• Guardian Angel House by Kathy Clark from Second Story Press
• The White Space Between by Ami Sands Brodoff from Second Story Press
• Tell Me a Story, Tell Me the Truth by Gina Roitman from Second Story Press
• Shavua Tov by Michelle Abraham, illustrated by Ann Koffsky from URJ Press
• Baxter the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher by Laurel Snyder from Tricycle Press
• Hanukkah Lights by David Martin from Candlewick
• The House on the Roof by David Adler (being reprinted!) from Holiday House
  
• The Importance of Wings by Robin Friedman from Charlesbridge
  
• The Mysteries of Beethoven's Hair by Russell Martin from Charlesbridge
• How to Ruin Your Boyfriend's Repution by Simone Elkeles from Flux
• The Tushy Book by Fran Manushkin from Feiwel and Friends
• The Rabbi and the Twenty-Nine Witches by Marilyn Hirsh from Marshall Cavendish
• Clever Rachel by Debby Waldman from Orca Book Publishers
  
• untitled Passover book by Harriet Ziefert and Karla Gudeon from Blue Apple
  
• The Story of Lipman Pike: First professional Baseball Player and Jewish Home Run King by Richard Michelson from Sleeping Bear Press
• Hoppy Hanukkah by Linda Glaser from Albert Whitman & Co.
  
• Benjamin and the Silver Goblet and Miriam in the Desert by Jacqueline Jules from Kar-Ben
• Puppet by Eva Wiseman and Clay Man: The Golem of Prague by Irene Watts from Tundra
• Cures for Heartbreak and the Missing Persons series by Margo Rabb
• ...and just because they got mentioned so often by so many people, The PJ Library
  

CREDITS:

Produced by: Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel
Supported in part by: Association of Jewish Libraries
Theme music: The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band
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I thought it would be seasonally appropriate to share with you the starred review I wrote about The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah for School Library Journal. This is a delightful new Passover story, that I used successfully with several Kindergarten and first grade classes in our religious school recently. For more info about author Leslie Kimmelman and her books, see www.lesliekimmelman.net.


KIMMELMAN, Leslie. The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah. illus. by Paul Meisel. unpaged. glossary. CIP. Holiday House. Mar. 2010. Tr $16.95. ISBN 978-0-8234-1952-4. LC 2008048488.

PreS-Gr 3—This Yiddish-inflected retelling of "The Little Ren Hen" features a balabusta (good homemaker) who kvetches about her lazy no-goodnik friends who will not help her make matzah from wheat. When they show up at the Passover Seder, the hen scolds, "What chutzpah!" Ultimately, however, they repent and the hen forgives them because she is a mensch. All ends happily as they make up for their earlier bad behavior by doing the dishes. The droll ink, watercolor, and pastel cartoon illustrations have a friendly charm that makes a nice contrast with the story's wry humor. The Yiddish vocabulary and speech patterns will have Jewish adults rolling in the aisles, and children will enjoy the merging of familiar Passover and folktale elements. It's entertaining to those in the know, but readers unfamiliar with the holiday may be mystified by the humor, and they will gain little understanding of the traditions of Passover. An endnote on the holiday's history, a matzah recipe, and a glossary round out the package, but the book should be used in combination with more traditional tales or with audiences who already observe Passover. It's a must for Judaica collections and a solid choice for large general collections.—Heidi Estrin, Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel, Boca Raton, FL

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Books with a “This is the House that Jack Built” format often use the first line as the title of the book. However, the first line is just a starting point from which to build the actual story. “This is the house that Jack built,” is not about the house at all but about the community around the house. Similarly, The Matzah that Papa Brought Home, by Fran Manushkin, illustrated by Ned Bittinger, is not about matzah at all but about the Passover seder.

With tight and lyrical rhyme, Manushkin captures the high points of the Passover Seder from a child’s point of view. The narrator is clearly the child of the “Papa” who brought home the matzah. The child voice is unmistakable in the fourth spread into the story, when we read, “This is me standing tall and proud/ to ask the Four Questions nice and loud/ during the Passover Seder we shared/ to eat the feast that Mama made/ with the matzah that Papa brought home.” This passage reveals that the narrator is the youngest child in this family and the illustration portrays a sweet six-year-old girl who is glowing with the responsibilities of her question-asking task. My inner-child especially connected with the line, “This is “Dayenu,” a very long song/ that we sang with our stomachs growling along…”

Bittinger’s paintings are rendered in oil paint on linen using deep shadow and glowing light to intensify emotion and lead the eye of the viewer around the painting. From the feast, to clearing the table, to the child trying to sneak a bit of matzah, the images capture the chaos and order of a Passover Seder. My favorite image is of the narrator sitting on Papa’s lap, each of them taking pinkies full of wine to diminish their pleasure while reciting the plagues. The figures are bathed in light, the background a deep brown/black but in the middle values, frogs and locusts hop, and rains fall on enslaved Hebrew workers. This dreamy sequence allows two stories, Manushkin’s and the Exodus, to be told at the same time. www.franmanushkin.com/thematzahpapabroughthome.htm

The only issue I had with the book was the line, “This is the feast that Mama made with the matzah that Papa brought home.” I stumbled over this line when reading it aloud to my boys and we all looked at each other. My son said, “The roasted chicken [in the illustration] didn’t come from the matzah.” I agreed. Obviously, the feast was made to go along with the matzah but the syntax suggested that the whole feast was made from the matzah.

Scholastic published the book in 1995, and it is well worth the interlibrary loan. If you are looking to buy the book, it was reprinted in paperback in 2001 and should be available for order through your nearest Indie-bookshop. Happy Passover to all!

Multicultural adoptions have become so prevalent that an entire genre has emerged, for kids and parents alike. “One of the most frequent requests we have,” says Nicole Harvey of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, “is by adoptive parents of Asian kids looking for ways to orient their children to their birth culture.” She likes especially the complex and popular Cooper’s Lesson by Sun Ying Shin.

On our own PaperTigers, the genre is explored in a review of Three Names of Me and an interview with Cynthia Kadohata, Newbery award winner and an adoptive parent herself. Franki at A Year of Reading, also an adoptive parent, reviews Caroline Marsden’s When Heaven Fell. Scroll down for her interview with Rose Kent, author of Kimchi and Calamari, additionally reviewed and interviewed at PaperTigers. Cynthia Letich Smith’s blog Cynsations has a great list of books on multicultural adoption.

You don’t have to be an adoptee or adoptive parent to appreciate these books, of course. As our world becomes smaller and families more diverse, we all need inspiration and information from this vital field of children’s literature.

As the genre of books on multicultural adoption grows in popularity, lists of such books, with sub-genres, are also proliferating. The Comeunity site offers book lists for kids and adults, along with other resources for adopting families. The AdoptShoppe site offers books specifically for kids from China, Korea, and Russia. Adopt Korea has a list for Korean adoptees. Adopt Vietnam has lists for fiction and non-fiction. Here’s another resource for kids’ multicultural adoption books and one of multiracial adoption books from PACT. Adoption counselor and author Betty J. Lifton writes on the subject, for children and for adults.

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SHOW NOTES:

The Book of Life takes you on a virtual trip around the world for Passover!

> Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks discusses People of the Book, her fictional history of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

> Basya Schechter talks about her band Pharaoh's Daughter, which mixes world music and psychedelic rock with Middle Eastern sounds.

> Author Ilana Kurshan describes her compilation of translations, Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights? The Four Questions Around the World.

> If you like Ilana's book, you may also like 300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions from Zulu to Abkhaz by Murray Spiegel and Rickey Stein. It comes with a CD and a DVD to demonstrate the translations!

NEWS:

In our next episode we'll celebrate Israel@60! Don't miss it!

CREDITS:

Thanks to Dan Krimm for permission to use Ma Nishtana - The Blues Version! Our regular background music is provided by The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band.

Books and CD's mentioned on the show may be borrowed from the Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel. Browse our online catalog to reserve books, post a review, or just to look around!

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com!

In honor of Passover we have invited Irvin Unger, founder and CEO of antiquarian booksellers Historicana and publisher of the new edition of the Szyk Haggadah (which you will learn all about below), to tell us why this Haggadah is different from all the others.

Spring means renewal and, for Jews, around the world, it means Passover—the story of freedom. Specifically it recounts the Jews’ escape from the tyranny of the Pharaohs, but Passover speaks symbolically to the ongoing human need to control one’s own life. Jews use a book called the Haggadah to recount this story at a Passover dinner gathering—or Seder. There have been more than 3,000 Haggadahs created over the last millennium, reflecting the wide variety of countries and cultures that are home to the Jewish Diaspora.

As a former pulpit Rabbi who became a rare book dealer, I became aware of the art of Arthur Szyk (1894 -1951) nearly 20 years ago. Since then, I have been fascinated with this talented artist who devoted his life and his art to fighting injustice—first for the Jews of Europe and then for peoples all over the world. I first came to know Arthur Szyk’s work through his Haggadah. The original 48 water color and gouache images were done in his unique style of medieval illumination with deep colors and great detail and intensity.

Szyk was a Polish-Jewish artist, trained in Paris, who devoted a decade to creating his own Passover Haggadah during the time that Hitler rose to power. It wasn’t possible to have the books printed in Germany, but Szyk was able to secure a London-based printer and a noted Jewish-English scholar, Cecil Roth, to write a commentary on the book. Szyk settled in London in 1937, where he supervised the printing of the Haggadah.

Once the printing was complete, the Szyk’s family immigrated to Canada and then to New York, where Szyk became the most well known anti-Fascist political cartoonist in America, and perhaps the world. Having lived through the Holocaust, freedom was not merely an academic theory for Szyk—freedom was real, and he devoted his life’s work to supporting it. He said of his immense skills, “Art is not my aim, it is my means.”

I have spent the past two years securing the finest book artisans and materials available in the world to create and publish a new edition of The Szyk Haggadah. For the first time since its original printing in 1940, a new edition has been created using digital photography of the original artwork and digital printing to ensure that there are no intermediaries between the art and the printed page. This new technology has produced results that are stunning—colors are deep and true, edges are crisp and images leap off the page.

To do justice to the digital printing, I secured a world-renowned book binder to hand bind and edge the bindings with gilt, used Nigerian goat skins for the bindings, and had the gift box custom made and covered in Japanese rayon cloth. I am also working with a director to create a full length of documentary of the making of the Haggadah.

During this time, I have also worked with Jewish scholars to create a companion volume to The Haggadah containing essays that shed new light and nuance on the art and life of Arthur Szyk. It has been an honor and a labor of love to create this limited edition of The Szyk Haggadah, which will be delivered to the first subscribers in time for this year’s Passover celebration.

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Action on the floor, Originally uploaded to Flickr by wkpspier


SHOW NOTES:

What's new in Jewish picture books? Follow me around the 2008 Book Expo America conference to listen in on publishers and authors talking about their new and forthcoming titles! I gathered so much audio that I'll be posting it over four episodes. Part 2 will be books for children and teens, Part 3 will be adult books, and Part 4 will be books (for all ages) relating to the Holocaust.

Part 1, Jewish Picture Books:

Tricycle Press
The Yankee at the Seder by Elka Weber

Marshall Cavendish
Cakes and Miracles by Barbara Diamond Goldin
The Hanukkah Mice by Steven Kroll
The Rabbi and the 29 Witches by Marilyn Hirsh

Tanglewood Press
The Miracle Jar by Audrey Penn

Sleeping Bear Press
A is for Abraham by Richard Michelson

Kar-Ben Publishing
Jodie's Hanukkah Dig by Anna Levine
Harvest of Light by Allison Ofanansky
Engineer Ari and the Rosh Hashanah Ride by Deborah Bodin Cohen
Sammy Spider's First Day at School by Sylvia Rouss
Sarah Laughs, Benjamin and the Silver Goblet, Miriam in the Desert by Jacqueline Jules

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Built By Angels by Mark Podwal

Blue Apple Books
Hanukkah Haiku by Harriet Ziefert

Holiday House
The Mysterious Guests by Eric Kimmel

Yale Strom, author:
The Wedding That Saved a Town by Yale Strom (Kar-Ben)

AUDIO:

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CREDITS:

Thanks to Yale Strom for permission to record and podcast his violin performance at Book Expo. Our regular background music is provided by The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band.

Books mentioned on the show may be borrowed from the Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel. (Or if they're too new to be in the library now, they will be once they are published!) Browse our online catalog to reserve books, post a review, or just to look around!

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com! Or even better, if you know of any new Jewish picture books I missed seeing at Book Expo, please post a comment!

SHOW NOTES:

Yankee at the Seder by Elka Weber, illustrated by Adam Gustavson, is a picture book about a Yankee Jewish soldier who spends Passover with a Confederate Jewish family. It is historian Elka Weber's first book for children, and it's based on a kernel of true Civil War history.

AUDIO:

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NEWS:

If you are on Facebook, you can now receive posts about new Book of Life episodes on your wall by becoming a "Follower" through Networked Blogs at www.networkedblogs.com/blog/the_book_of_life!

CREDITS:

Our background music is provided by The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band.

Books and CD's mentioned on the show may be borrowed from the Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel. Browse our online catalog to reserve books, post a review, or just to look around!

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com!

I’m taking a blogging break in order to celebrate the Holiday of Passover.  Therefore, please accept my best wishes for a happy holiday if you’re celebrating one in the next week: Chag Sameach!  Happy Pesach! Posted in holiday, Passover Tagged: Easter

SHOW NOTES:

The Passover spoof Moses Is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah swept the Internet this spring. In this episode of The Book of Life we interview its creator, Carl Elkin, about the Haggadah and about another Facebook project dear to his heart, Yes We Conserve.

SPECIAL DEDICATION:

I'd like to dedicate this episode to the memory of my father-in-law, Stanley Estrin (z"l). Today is his yahrzeit, plus I know he would have gotten a big kick out of Facebook.

AUDIO:

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NEW!
If you'd like to place this audio interview on your own web site, please use this stand-alone player from Entertonement. Click the embed button and copy the code!

CREDITS:

Our background music is provided by The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band.

Books and CD's mentioned on the show may be borrowed from the Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel. Browse our online catalog to reserve books, post a review, or just to look around!

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com!

Today is a very holy day in both the Christian and Jewish faiths.