Kirjahaku

Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of this book possible: Stanley and Marcia Katz; Members of the Levine and Frankel families.Acclaimed storyteller and Jewish scholar Ellen Frankel has masterfully tailored fifty-three Bible stories that will both delight and educate today's young readers. Using the 1985 JPS translation (NJPS) of the Hebrew Bible as her foundation, Frankel retains much of the Bible's original wording and simple narrative style as she incorporates her own exceptional storytelling technique, free of personal interpretation or commentary. Included in the volume is an; "Author's Notebook"; in which Frankel shares with rabbis, parents, and educators the challenges she faced in translating and adapting these stories for children, such as how she deals with adult language in the original Bible text and themes inappropriate for most young readers. With enticing, full-page color illustrations of each Bible story, award-winning artist Avi Katz ignites readers' imaginations. His brush captures the vivid personalities and many dramatic moments in this extraordinary collection. Avi Katz and JPS are grateful to TaL AM for granting permission to reprint three illustrations from the TaL AM Tora Breshit Notebook series. Ages 5 and up.

Three hundred Jewish tales in this extraordinary volume span three continents and four millennia. Culled from traditional sources—the Bible, Talmud, Midrash, hasidic texts, and oral folklore—and retold in modern English by Ellen Frankel, these stories represent the brightest jewels in the vast treasure chest of Jewish lore. Beautifully clothed in contemporary language, these classic tales sparkle with the gentle and insightful humor of the Jewish folk imagination. And like so much of Jewish literature, these stories abound in allusions to classic Jewish texts. Biblical cadences, phrases from the prayer book, and ideas from Jewish proverbs and heroic legends resonate in the air when these tales are read or told aloud. In The Classic Tales, history sheds its dust to become as intimate as family memory. While the breadth and depth of this book make it completely unique, three special features also help distinguish it: God appears without gender (though certainly not without personality); women characters, so often nameless in the original biblical text, wear their midrashic names (e.g., Noah's wife Naamah, Abraham's mother Amitlai, Lot's wife Edith); and many tales of Sephardic origin have been included to correct the common American bias toward Eastern European sources. What's more, this volume has been uniquely designed to be of use to educators, rabbis, parents, and students. It features a chronological table of contents as well as six separate indexes?arranged by Jewish holidays, Torah and Haftorah readings, character types, symbols, topics, and proper names and places—to make the tales easily referenced in a wide variety of ways. Anyone who needs a story to inspire a child, to illustrate a point, to develop a sermon, or just to uplift his or her own thirsting soul will find just the right one in The Classic Tales.

"Prince Siddhartha, raised behind palace walls and showered with every extravagance, abandoned his protected life to embark on a spiritual journey. He ultimately reached enlightenment and became known as the Buddha, which means "one who is awake." He then spent his life teaching that all have the potential to awaken..."Meet Syd Arthur Living in the cloistered world of suburbia, Syd is a middle-aged Jewish woman who is "potentially" awake, but likes to start her day with a strong cup of coffee, just in case. Her daughter has just left for college and her diet is once again off track. While for most of her life she's been convinced that happiness can be attained by a magic number on the bathroom scale or a really great shopping day at Bloomingdale's she finds herself in the grocery store with an empty cart wondering if there just might be something more.When East unexpectedly meets West, Syd embarks on a journey as a spiritual seeker. Soon she's in over her chakras as her search takes her from yoga studio to meditation hall to ashram gift store to the pages of "Zensational" catalogue. Her Mah Jongg group insists it's merely a midlife crisis. But nothing's going to stop Syd's journey toward Nirvana not even the hottest sale at Nordstrom's. Follow Syd as she finds her bliss and discovers a richness that rivals a Godiva truffle, making for one delicious enlightenment.