And they all lived Jewishly ever after
by Raphael Ahren
Haaretz
September 18, 2009
When Dolly Parton, the granddaughter of a Pentecostal preacher, created a program giving out free books to underprivileged children in East Tennessee, she probably never imagined her idea would one day be transplanted to Northern Israel. Yet, a Massachusetts-based foundation inspired by the country superstar's idea is now taking its program for Jewish children to the communities of Afula, Gilboa and Upper Nazareth.
Starting this school year, "Sifriyat Pijama" (Pajama library) will donate a book a month for nine months to more than 3,000 kindergarteners in the country's north. The original PJ Library - created by U.S. philanthropist Harold Grinspoon three years ago - sends 52,000 Jewish books containing bedtime stories monthly to families in more than 110 communities across North America.
"I think it is important for children in both America and Israel to learn about Jewish values," said Grinspoon, a real estate entrepreneur whose foundation supports numerous Jewish and Israeli institutions, such as Hadassah, Hillel and Birthright Israel. "It just seemed right that children in Israel, not only in America, should benefit from the program."
Although Israeli children often know more about Jewish holy days than their American counterparts, they are often unaware of Judaism's take on universal values, Grinspoon said. Israeli teachers also routinely lament the scarcity of books in the homes of their pupils, especially in Israel's periphery, he added.
Get them while they're young
While the idea of giving out books might come from Dolly Parton, Grinspoon's desire to use his gift to inculcate Jewish values in children was born when he read a sociological study, said Sifriyat Pijama director Galina Vromen.
"The study said that the Jewish identity of a family is often determined in a short time frame, from birth until he or she is about five years old. That's when the parents decide whether the child is going to be raised Jewish, whether they'll send him to a Jewish day school and whether they'll join a synagogue. When Grinspoon read this, he really got interested in creating a program that would give young families a sense of their Jewishness and a desire to think of themselves as Jewish."
Vromen adds that Grinspoon is not interested whether the parents are Reform, Conservative or Orthodox, as long as they are practicing in a way that makes sense to them.
Indeed, at first glance some of the books do not necessarily seem very Jewish. But each story teaches universal values, which the young readers are encouraged to view through a Jewish lens, Vromen told Anglo File.
The chosen books - by authors such as Chaim Nachman Bialik, Shlomo Abbas and Niri Aluma - have been reprinted in special Sifriyat Pijama editions containing suggestions for parents on discussions and activities to do with their child that bring out the Jewish values, she explained.
She said a five-member selection committee reviewed all the candidates to be included in the book collection, discarding those deemed "too pedantic or heavy-handed, or just not fun to read."
Besides teaching about values, Sifriyat Pijama also aims to familiarize children with a Jewish way of talking, she added. "Judaism has an expression for encouraging people to visit the sick," she said.
"It's not 'visiting someone in the hospital,' it's called 'bikkur holim.' A lot of kids don't know there's a Jewish term for that. We want children to be comfortable with that kind of language, whether they're religious or not. It's their tradition."