Review: There Was a Young Rabbi: A Hanukkah Tale
There Was a Young Rabbi: A Hanukkah Tale by Suzanne Wolfe, illustrated by Jeffrey Ebbeler Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org Liberal Judaism merits as many excellent religious female role models as it can muster, and Wolfe and Ebbeler tell and depict the story of an versatile and knowledgeable one in this tale that takes readers from the first night of Hanukkah to the last. The heroine is a young female rabbi who brings her family along through the joys of the holiday, in energetic rhyme that will have kids reading along with whomever is recounting it to them, or reading it aloud on their own. All the highlights of Hanukkah are here -- latkes flying above the rabbi's stove top in a four-latke flip; the menorah lit by the rabbi and her son and daughter (all in kippot, mind you); the rabbi's ten-pound-at-least kosher brisket coming out of the oven; dreidel victories; visits from the mishpocha; a brief history lesson; and even the rabbi leining a...