Holidays

3 Chanukah Books to Share With Your Kids

Posted on December 07, 2012 - 01:30:00 by

I like to think of myself as a respectable Jew – we don’t allow a Christmas tree in our house like many of our other friends who are members of the tribe do, we go to synagogue…um, like twice a year. But for the BIG holidays that count. And I went to Hebrew school – I was bat mitzvahed. Oh yea, and we eat matzoh on Passover (not to replace bread…but we eat it and it’s symbolic). Ok, you get the point.

So I was pretty proud of myself after I was singing the praises of Chanukah to my 7-year-old son and my 3-year-old daughter – I mean, I SOLD it. We told him it was better than Christmas because you had 8 nights of presents, there was nobody looking over your shoulder to make a ruling on whether you were naughty or nice and you got to play with fire i.e. light the menorah.

And then things backfired. My kids started asking questions. Ones that I couldn’t answer– all having to do with the story behind Chanukah.

So I did what any self respecting Jewish mother would do. I bought a bunch of children’s Chanukah books to educate myself. Sort of like CliffsNotes for bad Jewish parents. And it worked! I was able to dupe my son yet again into believing that I knew what I was talking about. Ain’t parenting grand?

Here are some of the books I recommend for anyone in the same boat:

New Shalom Sesame #2: Chanukah - The Missing Menorah