The Good News: I’m posting at my regular Wednesday time!
The Bad News: I skipped the last two weeks, even though Passover was over.
The Good News: Glixman in a Fix is officially for sale! Continue reading
kids
Orthodox Women Talk: Roundtable about media consumption
Hi, everyone! I know I pretty much never post twice in a day, but I’m hosting this month’s Orthodox Women Talk. Our panelists include:
- Tali Simon
- Melissa Amster
- Ruchi Koval
- Rivki Silver
- Keshet Starr
- Estee Lavitt
- and yours truly.
This month’s question is this:
How much do you engage in popular music, movies and other forms of entertainment? What factors have contributed to that choice?
Wow! We’ve got a lot of variety in responses. Let’s see what our roundtable panelists have to say... Continue reading
Telling kids about storytelling
I’m very excited to be visiting one of the local day schools tomorrow. For a change, I won’t be doing a read-aloud of Raizy. Raizy may not even come up, due to the age of the kids involved. Instead I’ll be talking about “Storytelling,” to coincide with the current unit the students are studying in school.
Fishing for a few stories on this fine morning
Breaking down storytelling in forty-five minutes will be challenging, especially at the upper-elementary school level. After a little intro, I plan on making an extended metaphor connecting storytellers to fishermen. I’m hoping it will be both instructive and age-appropriate. I’ve spent quite a bit of time preparing and concocted a whole series of visuals, and the like.
How is a good storyteller like a fisherman?
The truth is, everyone is a storyteller. Continue reading
4 Questions for author Tamar Ansh about her new Passover cookbook
I recently conversed via email with the enormously popular author, Tamar Ansh, about her new cookbook. Let My Children Cook! is her first cookbook for kids, and it tackles a particularly pertinent area of Kosher cuisine for this time of year: Passover.
Tamar Ansh’s latest cookbook, out in time for Passover!
4 Questions:
Rebecca:
What made you want to write a cookbook for children this time? And why specifically one for Passover?
Tamar:
For this book, Let My Children Cook!, Hashem sent me the inspiration from a totally unexpected angle. Continue reading
My completely unsolicited review of “Megillas Lester”
After all my recent ranting and raving about Esther in pop culture, I watched a video this afternoon with the husband and kids that made me feel better. I’d first heard about it on Tablet, then on the OU’s website.
Megillas Lester–a hilarious film in the Purim Spiel tradition.
Kolrom media, who has produced a lot of music videos and shorts for the Orthodox audience (like the video for the song “Ana Avda” and a hilarious bit on Aish.com called “Sicko” about how NOT to do the mitzvah of visiting the sick), has just released a video about Purim that refers to all the midrashim and commentaries I talked about in my rant. And it’s funny. Although Esther doesn’t make an appearance. Even Mordechai barely shows up.
That’s because “Megillas Lester” is about a boy, Lester, who dreams he has messed up the Purim story so much that Esther doesn’t have a chance to become queen. And Mordechai doesn’t get a chance to save the king. So who will save the Jewish people from Haman’s evil plot? Continue reading
My thoughts on Tablet’s article “Do Jewish Children’s Books Have a Problem with Gender?”
Emily Sigalow, in Tablet this week, published an article entitled “Do Jewish Children’s Books Have a Problem with Gender?”
While she does make one point I agree with, that awards committee’s tend to favor Jewish picture books with male lead characters and that the females tend to be engaged in traditional roles, she seems to learn from that that Jewish children’s books as a whole have a problem.
I have to disagree with the overall picture Sigalow paints, though.
You can see my comments on the article if you visit Tablet (scroll to the bottom of the page), but I’d like to make a few more thoughts.
Jewish children’s books do have problems. Actually, many secular books have the same problems. Continue reading
Rebecca Klempner 