Jewish

The White Ram: A Story Of Abraham And Isaac

Made on the sixth day of Creation, a white ram waits patiently in the Garden of Eden. The other animals leave one by one, but the ram waits and waits until he is needed to fulfill God’s will. Running to the aid of Abraham, the ram must prevail over many temptations in order to save a child. In this lyrically told and beautifully illustrated story, a white ram sacrifices himself to save a boy’s life. It is a book that will be adored by readers of all faiths and ages, and will be of special interest during the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

In The Days Of Sand And Stars

Take out your time telescope, wipe the dust and cobwebs from its lens, tilt it upwards, and find a twinkling speck of light. Now look behind it … way back, to the days of sand and stars. Here are the Midrash stories of famous women whose names you may know, but whose daily lives and human thoughts have been ignored for far too long. From Eve to Emzera, from Sarah to Rebecca, they are presented here with humor and affection as they face a new and changing world where miracles and customs shape their destiny. Midrash tales are what-if stories built around the grains of information the Bible offers, and author Marlee Pinsker excels as she imbues these legendary women with warmth and spirit.

The Song Of The Whales

Michael’s grandfather has a secret—a secret that’s almost too strange to share . . . When Michael moves to Israel, he leaves loneliness behind and steps into the light of his grandfather’s magic. Like a sorcerer’s apprentice, Michael learns how to blur the lines between dreams and reality when his grandfather hands down the most precious of gifts—a gift that allows Michael passage into his grandfather’s dreams. Written with a quiet simplicity that wins the reader over at once Uri Orlev writes in a style so sure and yet so unassuming that it is certain to linger in reader’s minds long after turning the last page.

Terezin

Through inmates’ own voices and artwork, Terezin explores the lives of Jewish people in one of the most infamous of the Nazi transit camps. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany turned the small town of Terezin, Czechoslovakia, into a ghetto, and then into a transit camp for thousands of Jewish people. It was a “show” camp, where inmates were forced to use their artistic talents to fool the world about the truth of gas chambers and horrific living conditions for imprisoned Jews. Here is their story, told through the firsthand accounts of those who were there. In this accessible, meticulously researched book, Ruth Thomson allows the inmates to speak for themselves through secret diary entries, artwork, and excerpts from memoirs and recordings narrated after the war. Terezin: Voices from the Holocaust is a moving portrait that shows the strength of the human will to endure, to create, and to survive.

Anya’s War

In 1937, the privileged and relatively carefee life of a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl, whose family emigrated from Odessa, Ukraine, to Shanghai, China, comes to an end when she finds an abandoned baby, her hero, Amelia Earhart, goes missing, and war breaks out with Japan. Based on the author’s family history.

Onions and Garlic

The youngest of a merchant’s three sons proves that he is not as foolish as he was thought to be when he trades a sackful of onions for a fortune in diamonds.

Nosh, Schlep, Shluff

Learning—and using—Yiddish is fun for the whole family, from the youngest mamaleh to the oldest bubbe and zaideh. Introduced to America as the mother tongue of millions of Jewish immigrants, Yiddish has made its way into everyday English. The sprightly, rhyming text follows a toddler through a busy day and is peppered from beginning to end with Yiddish words. Oy!—will everybody kvell when they hear their little ones spouting words from this most expressive of languages.

Gathering Sparks

A grandfather introduces his grandson to the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, a centuries-old concept which proposes that everyone must do their part in order to improve the world.