The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

The Ninth Night of Hanukkah by Erica S. Perl, illustrated by Shahar Kober Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer   Buy at Bookshop.org The Ninth Night of Hanukkah by Erica Perl celebrates not just Hanukkah, but neighborliness and the importance of traditions both old and new. A family has just moved into their new home and can’t find the box with their Judaica items. As the nights pass without the box turning up, siblings Max and Rachel ask an array of neighbors from different backgrounds for help, borrowing candles, eating French fries instead of latkes, making do with chocolate chips instead of chocolate gelt, and so on. Each night ends with the child-pleasing refrain, “It was nice… but it didn’t feel quite like Hanukkah.” The final night of Hanukkah passes without the box, but the children decide to invite the neighbors over for a ninth night of Hanukkah, representing the shamash, the helper candle. Perl explicitly makes the connection between the shamash helping t...

The Passover Mouse by Joy Nelkin Wieder, illustrated by Shahar Kober Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Gigi Perlman Pagliarulo An esoteric yet entertaining Talmudic conundrum is this basis for this lively, insightful and ultimately uplifting Passover story. Lonely widow Rivka has just finished fastidiously sweeping her home clean of chometz when a mischievous mouse steals a piece of bread from the pile of crumbs to be burnt and escapes. Thus ensues a wild and silly chase across the village and through houses, worrying frustrated villagers that there is ever more hidden chometz in their homes to clean before sundown. The wise town Rabbi consults the Talmud and returns a characteristically cryptic answer: “the matter is not decided,” so the townspeople must clean their homes once again to be sure. As they band together to clean and cook for the Seder, a sense of community spirit, forgiveness and togetherness draws all to Rivka’s usually empty home to celebrate Passover in friends...