Days of Awe: Stories for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

Three traditional stories deal with the power of charity, a shepherd's prayers, and a beggar's forgiveness

Grade 3-6-- Kimmel gracefully explains the holidays for general readers, and then offers three tales charmingly adapted from traditional sources. Accompanied by Weihs's luminous paintings, each selection is preceded by a brief paragraph that provides some background and insight. In "The Samovar," the wife of a poor glovemaker is visited by the prophet Elijah, who asks that she care for his samovar until his return. The samovar's tarnish, which had not yielded to energetic polishing, brightens after each of her acts of charity. "The Shepherd: A Story about Prayer," which appears in Barbara Cohen's Yussel's Prayer (Lothrop, 1981), illustrates how God values prayers that come from the heart more than those of learned, but less pious, men. "Rabbi Eleazar and the Beggar" demonstrates that "to err is human; to forgive, divine." --Marcia Posner, Federation of New York and the Jewish Book Council, New York City
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Three well-crafted retellings focus on the pillars of the Jewish High Holidays: charity, prayer, and repentance. A samovar left with Rivka by the prophet Elijah begins to shine as she performs her ordinary acts of charity; she and her husband realize that their good fortune is a blessing that allows them to help others. A shepherd's simple but heartfelt prayers are silenced by a scholar who deplores their informality, but God sends an angel to show the shepherd that his prayers resound in Heaven. A famed rabbi unthinkingly offends a beggar who then refuses to forgive him; the rabbi's gentle daughter convinces the beggar that forgiveness will lift his burden of bitterness. Weaving these universal tales about approaches to God with just a few, well-chosen words, Kimmel deftly uses wise but humble characters to convey his message and sets them in various locales: a shtetl, C¢rdoba in Moorish Spain, the Holy Land. The characters' simple lives are effectively depicted in Weihs's folk-inspired art, though there are some discrepancies between the details and text. A fine addition to the body of Jewish folklore. Introduction on the significance of the High Holidays; notes to the stories. (Folklore. 8-12) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.