Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

We are in the enchanted world of the Wishniak, a shtetl, where dybbuk’s can wreak havoc, wonder rabbis perform miracles, or—as it happens in Moishe’s Miracle by Laura Krauss Melmed—frying pans can produce unlimited amount of latkes, potato pancakes, for Hunakkah. The catch: only Moishe, the generous milkman can use the new pan effectively. When it is used for free to feed the whole villages it works great. When his wife sets out to earn a few kopeks it fails miserable. The final outcome however is shalom habayit, peace in the house. That’s worth of not having free latkes, isn’t it?

The whole book is bursting with energy and humor. David Slonim‘s oilpaintings and Al Cetta‘s gorgeous typography round up the user experience to pure pleasure. The penultimate page includes the almost unavoidable summary of what Hanukkah is about and the last page contains a short glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew words used in the book. There were a few I was not familiar with myself.