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Showing posts from May, 2016

Jewish Book Carnival, May / Iyyar 2016 Edition!

Welcome to this month’s Jewish Book Carnival, brought to you by the concept, from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, that “Whoever is able to write a book and does not, it is as if he has lost a child.” As a writer, I know how much creating a book, creating any text, is like giving birth.  And as a reader, how marvellous it is to be handed someone else’s precious and fragile thoughts and words.  May we as a people never lose our fascination with books or our drive to keep creating them. This carnival has been going on continuously since August of 2010.  The Jewish Book Carnival is headquartered at the Association of Jewish Libraries’ site here .  Stop by for information on past editions or to sign up to host a future issue. Last month’s carnival (April 2016) was hosted by The Book of Life . Next month’s carnival (June 2016) will be hosted by Barbara Krasner at The Whole Megillah And for now, you’re right here… at Adventures in Mamaland! Read on for the roundup… and if you’re featured i

Breathing Lessons for the Canadian diaspora

Growing up as a hyphenated Jewish-Canadian, I admit, the “Canadian” part didn't really matter much.  It was just a word for everybody around me, including me, but mainly everybody else. These days, being Canadian usually comes up when Israelis ask me, "What part of America are you from?" The answer, of course, is NONE. Sure, I could get by on a technicality, since I'm from North America just like United Statesians are.  And Cubans, Barbadians, and many other people.  Heck, even if I was from South America, it's all still America, right? But that's not what they mean. What they mean is which state, which major American city?  Am I from LA, New York, one of the handful of other places in the U.S. that a typical Israeli has heard of? Nope.  I'm from Canada.  Oh, Canada.  Great.  They nod.  They've heard of it.  "Isn't it cold there?" Canada… is the cold bit, the hat America wears to protect itself from the arctic.

Yom Ha’Atzmaut 5776: Celebrating Israel with a Free Kids’ Chapter Book Excerpt!

Yom Ha-what???  Yeah, I admit, we never really did anything special for Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel Independence Day, before moving to Israel.  And neither did most of the Jews around me.  Sure, some years we had a flag, maybe even a car flag, but really, that was the extent of it. It’s so incredible celebrating every single yom tov and chag here in Israel… but especially Yom Ha’Atzmaut.  It just makes sense, but I never gave it much thought before we made aliyah.  Indeed, huge swathes of the Jewish world as I knew it outside of Israel didn’t really celebrate Yom Ha’Atzmaut at all… and that, I’m convinced, is a shame. And when it comes to Israel, there’s no better way to study its history than by studying its STORIES, the stories of the people who built this incredible place. The history of modern Israel is inseparable from the story of the life of Naomi Shemer. Born in 1930, she grew up as the country became more mature and established, and became an adult exactly as the country was b