If you visited Simcha Sunday you saw that the library’s table was between two other CBA tables: the gift shop’s and one shared between USY (including its pop-corn machine.  The Nursery, the religious school and other CBA related materials. We were all tight a little bit, so when P’nina managed to come (after the morning’s religious school ended) it was a bit of a challenge to make space for the beautiful purses and bags she designed. But we did it ,at the end of the Library table, and she managed to make some sales. I would like to thank her for offering 50% of the proceeds to CBA. I wish I could have provided more space for her display.

I would like to thank Susan Goldstein who helped at the table from the the time we opened till we closed. Without her help I may not have been able to go and look around myself. I would also like to thank Dina, who helped in the first two hours. Sorry that I didn’t catch your last name, but I do remember that your child goes to the Nursery. I know you came to help CBA on behalf of the nursery, although you ended helping with the booksales. Thank you.

Most of all I would like thank  everyone who purchased a book or more from us at Simcha Sunday. I hope you will find them engaging and interesting. Your support of CBA is much appreciated.

These and the rest of the events are all set in Wyoming. Both the author, Esther Silverstein Blanc, and the illustrator, Tennessee Dixon grew up there. The loving care and attention to the details of the descriptive text and water paintings clearly reflect their affinity to the Great Plains region. I loved the paintings, but I regretted that only the cover one was in color, the rest was black and white. It set an unnecessarily melancholic tone for the mostly positive book.

The first half  of the book, covering the younger years of the horse, the narrator  and his siblings are truly idyllic and happy. The homesteader family doesn’t seem to have any problems; the horse is smart, friendly and splendid. Later, during the rough years, they have to move to town and sell the horse. As we learn at the end the horse eventually learns to live in the wild and that seems  to support its manifest destiny.

I borrowed this book from our, Jewish, library, so I was expecting it to have some Jewish content. My expectation was met, but it wasn’t a particularly Jewish book, besides the name of the horse, the mention of the Talmud once and the use of the word “chochim” once it could have been about any family. Well, maybe the fact that the father’s fallback work was being a tailer was a hint. Otherwise thought it was just a  book about a Midwest family, like many others.

The end of the backflap of the book says this about the publisher, “Volcano Press is a woman-owned company, publishing women-oriented books that seek to enlighten, liberate and delight.” The company’s home page has more detailed information about their admirable mission and history. Having read the above I realized that in the center of the book was the relationship between the matriarch of the family and the horse. It was a strong and defining bond in both directions. I recommend reading the book to observe that, the peaceful drawings, and the description of a simple life.

The book at Amazon.com

Our first planned event, a discussion with the older students of the religious school got postponed because of logistical reasons. The second one, story time with the second graders, started a little bit later than planned, because of their folk dancing class. The nine children and one madricha arrived to the library a few minutes after 11 AM and we read “It Could Always Be Worse” by Margot Zemach. They enjoyed the story and were active in the discussion about it, providing ideas how a situation could be worse or how the problem in the opening pages of the book could be solved.  Six of the children borrowed books after the reading, one for each. We had four more visitors in the library till we closed at 12.30, not counting the teachers, all of them parents. Two of them borrowed a book each.

At 1 PM USY started its first social action/Tikkun Olam event of the year in the large classroom of the campus, they made brown bag lunches for the Kid Street Learning Center. At 2 PM, I joined them and lead a discussion under the title of “Is Facebook God?” Fortunately, as I suspected, they were all on Facebook so I didn’t have to introduce it to them. We took Maimonides 13 attributes of God and attempted to compare it to Facebook or at least discover connections to it. Most of the nine teens and their group leader seemed to enjoy the conversation which lasted about 45 minutes. At the end they were all keen to take home a copy of the handout (PDF, 105 kb) that listed the attributes and provided one Facebook related idea and a suggestion for each. Rick Concoff, the Chaverim director, also joined us for most of event. Here they are the happy teens, after the discussion, and before I left so they could go on to start planning their next event.

To close the day we had an other presentation at 7 PM, this time on “Jewish Learning Online“. We started a few minutes late as setting up the projector and copying the handouts took slightly longer than expected. The slide presentation (PDF, 1 MB) consisted of  18 slides, including the cover and 7 screenshots of websites. The handout (PDF, 65 kb)  included all the URLs mentioned in the slideshow. The five people who showed up shared some of their favorite sites, particularly in the area that the presentation didn’t even attempt to cover: culture.

The day in numbers:

• 28 patrons (9 children, 1 madrich, 7 teens, 2 teen leaders, 4 parents, 5 adults)
• 8 borrowed items
• 3 events

Specifically we are open these days:

2010

• September: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 28
• October: 3, 5, 10, 12, 17, 19, 24, 26
• November: 2, 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 30
• December: 5, 7, 12, 14

2011

• January: 4, 9, 11, 23, 25, 30
• February: 1, 6, 8, 13, 15, 27
• March: 1, 6, 8, 13, 15, 29
• April: 3, 5, 10, 12, 17
• May: 1, 3, 10, 15, 17, 22

• Mary Lowenthal Felstiner: Out of Joint: A Private and Public Story of Arthritis
• Toobin Jeffrey: The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
• Rodger Kamenetz: Burnt Books: Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav and Franz Kafka (to be published in October 2010)
• Mitchell Kaplan: By Fire, By Water
• Greg Mortenson: Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Rachel Shukert: Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour
• Burton L. Visotzky: A Delightful Compendium of Consolation: A Fabulous Tale of Romance, Adventure and Faith in the Medieval Mediterranean

The following books got top votes and nine of them will make it to the bookclub’s program. The following table includes information about two additional criteria for our selection: whether the book is available in paperback and whether the public library has a copy of it or not.

Last year around Purim I mentioned on the library’s blog the popular anthology we have on the topic, our song collections and picture books. (If you are interested in these you can search the blog for “Purim” and you’ll find the post.) This year I would like to encourage fledgling and seasoned scholars alike to check out our commentaries on the scroll upon which the festival is built.

First, I would like to recommend Carey A. Moore‘s commentary, published in the prestigious Anchor Bible series in 1971. The 70-page introduction would satisfy the curiosity of any historian about issues such as the book’s “lack of religious elements, its absence at Qumran, its questionable historicity.”

Frederic Bush‘s commentaries on the books of Ruth and Esther were published in a single volume of the World Biblical Commentary series in 1996. Bush used his expertise in Near Eastern studies and analyzed the literary structure of the book to figure out the answer to the question, “Is it possible that a proto version of Esther was amended in the Massoretic Text to make a solid case for the popular feast of Purim?”

Getting closer to our own tradition (after all, the Anchor Bible is an interfaith effort, while the World Biblical Commentary has a Christian orientation,) the ArtScroll Tanach series volume on the Book of Esther deserves your attention. The 24-page introduction titled, “The Period and the Miracle” was written by Rabbi Nosson Scherman, while the book was translated and compiled by Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz. The extensive running commentary pulled from many rabbinical sources makes this edition invaluable. Also, these sources are listed and explained at the end, in the bibliography.

Finally, for the advanced scholar amongst you we have a precious copy of “The First Targum to Esther: According to the Ms. Paris Hebrew 110 of the Bibliotheque Nationale“, translated and annotated by Bernard Grossfeld. (Targum refers to translation of the Tanach to Aramaic, the spoken language of the Jews in the post-exilic period.) It is a truly academic volume, recommended only to the most dedicated. But if you manage to follow the book’s reasoning you will be awarded with a deeper understanding of how historical manuscripts relate to each other and how they are used to decipher history.

I am hoping that this short overview of intellectual texts awaken in you the thirst for learning that we, I am proud to say, have the resources to satisfy.

However, I also have an ambivalent relationship with this holiday. It is about celebrating trees and as a librarian I surround myself with fallen trees, in the form of books. I feel guilty because a large number of trees had to be cut down to create the books that fill our library. I console myself in two ways.

First, I hope that more trees are planted than the ones that were cut down. Israel is a leading force in this regard, their tree-planting programs were essential in turning the desert into a living and livable place. I also enjoy planting trees myself, but I admit not doing it as often as I wish or should!

Second, as there is nothing I can do for the trees that were already turned into the books in the library I want to make sure that their sacrifices were not in vain, but to try to interest you in reading these books. The more books you, dear readers, borrow and read the less guilty I have to feel. In this spirit let me recommend the four very different items we have on Tu B’Shevat itself.

Our 30-page picture book for toddlers and olders, titled Tu Bi-Sh’vot: The New Year’s Day for Trees, follows two children throughout their day of celebration at home with their family and in school with their classmates. We also offer two different Seders for the holiday to help you celebrate it. One of them–written by Appelman and Shapiro–is full of joyful illustrations and is geared for 8-11 year olds. The other, by Adam Fisher, is richer in content suitable for all ages. It contains more songs, blessings, stories, and poems for your pleasure.

Finally, if you really want to be engaged with Tu B’Shevat check out our thick (500 page long) anthology titled Trees, Earth, and Torah. Its three editors, Ari Elon, Naomi Mara Hyman and Arthur Waskow, did a superb job of selecting essays covering the holiday from every imaginable angle, including its growth in history, its roots in biblical and rabbinic Judaism, its connection to Kabbalah, Hasidism, Zionism and Israel and its development into eco-Judaism. The last third of the book has everything you would ever want to know on how to celebrate it and why.

Let me end now with the opening words of the introduction to Trees, Earth and Torah.

“I hope more than any other Jewish festival, Tu B’Shvat is the celebration of Becoming. There is no halakha, no legal structure, to define it. It springs wholly from the spiritual depth and growth of the Jewish people in relation with the One Who always beckons us to grow and in relation with the earth where all things grow.”

CLIPPED RESPONSE: Four years ago, as George W. Bush began his second term as president, retired printer Milt “Whitey” Sterman of Santa Rosa vowed not to cut his hair while there was still a Bush in the White House.

Whitey, 79, is pretty shaggy about now. He decided he wants to do some good while getting shorn.

So just before noon today at Congregation Beth Ami, members of the synagogue will donate money to a couple of causes, then help snip his Bush-y hair and shave him bald.