Adventures in Mama-Land

I want to tell you about a little girl I knew once. A baby, really, and whenever she would sit and eat in her high chair, whatever it was – rice cakes, Cheerios, cookies, whatever – she would insist on having two of them. One for each hand. A very smart girl: she wouldn’t start eating until she knew where her next meal was coming from. Even then, she was planning for the future: one rice cake in each fist. There is no crazy twist ending – that girl was, of course, this sweet, amazing Elisheva Chaya, who has somehow gone and grown up. I don’t know how this happens. Perhaps those of you who have known Shraggie all along are similarly surprised at how this could have happened, right under our noses. No, I’m not going to start singing “Sunrise, Sunset,” but you all know I could at any moment. Over the last few weeks in the parsha, we have been reading the story of Yosef, a story which is all about grasping the present while planning for the future: planning for famine, planning for geulah ...

How are parsha books like popcorn?  You can’t have just one!  If you’re anything like our family, you already have a preponderance of parsha books.  But it’s impossible to have “enough,” isn’t it?  Especially when it comes to finding great kids’ parsha books that are both appealing to kids and reflect your family’s hashkafa (religious outlook).  And especially if the author isn’t afraid to do something a little different.  So when the chance to review a new parsha book that combines words and pictures in an innovative new format came along, I got a bit excited.  There’s a good chance that this book may be just right for your family. For my review, I received free from the publisher both the hardcover Every Picture Tells a Story Volume One:  Bereishis (Menorah Books: 2014) and the accompanying softcover colouring book : Aren’t those great covers?  They’re bilingual!  And they tell you exactly what you’re going to get inside....

This is a basic overview of the parsha story in a format that can be adapted for a wide range of ages. Sources include parsha text, commentaries and midrash.  When introducing midrash or other non-pshat elements, I  use the words “some people think” or something similar ( find out why ).  If you find these overviews helpful, or if there’s a typo, or something is confusing you or your kids, I’d love to hear from you.  Pretty please, with sugar on top? Images this week ( taken from here ) are by Sweet Publishing , freely shared under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Welcome back!!! Bereishis means in the beginning … but because we never start OR finish learning Torah, we just carry on what we’ve been learning so far. It’s a brand-new story, about a brand-new world, but it’s important to remember where the story leads – to Har Sinai, to the Torah, and then to eretz Yisrael. But all of that is hundreds of years away n...

Ted has begun his parsha comic project with not one but TWO comics for Bereishis… check them out on his blog, over here .

בראשית / Bereishit / Bereishis / Genesis 1:1-6:8   Our mother brought us presents, Back from the presents store. She said, “Don’t look, don’t touch… You know what they’re for.” We knew our birthdays were coming, We hoped we’d see them then; But still, we wanted them right NOW, “Just to see if it’s a pen.” The presents were stored way up high, Teetering up on the shelf. “Don’t touch them or you will get hurt,” she said. But I did it all by myself. And look, we did it safely! Neither of us was in pain. I pulled down one of the presents, And climbed on the chair once again. This time I wasn’t afraid at all, I knew I wouldn’t fall down. We knew that our mother was wrong about that And now she had gone out downtown. The second present tumbled down, With a boom and a crash from above. Wrapped in little hearts paper, This gift from our mother with love. “Let’s look at this one first,” you said, So I climbed down to take a look; To peek...