A folk­loric tale pre­sent­ed in bright, appeal­ing col­ors with warm, homey, invit­ing illus­tra­tions, Chal­lah from Heav­en tells the tale of an East­ern Euro­pean fam­i­ly hop­ing for a vis­it from the Gaon of Min­sk, a genius who can solve all prob­lems and who appears in a dif­fer­ent vil­lage before each Rosh Hashanah to spend Shab­bat with one lucky family.

Han­ni and her moth­er bake a spe­cial chal­lah in hon­or of the impend­ing vis­it and set it on the win­dow sill to cool. But when Han­ni looks again, the win­dow sill is emp­ty. The airy, deli­cious chal­lah is now float­ing in the sky above their heads, way out of reach. Soon, it can no longer be seen. Han­ni is deter­mined to find the spec­tac­u­lar chal­lah and bring it back home. As she jour­neys past the towns­peo­ple, she asks each of them if they have seen the way­ward chal­lah. They all have seen it float by, but none of them were able to catch it.

An old man sit­ting on a bench sug­gests that Han­ni ask the wind to help but the wind is not respon­sive to her pleas. Still, when she entreats the wind to trans­form into a gen­tle breeze, it com­plies and the chal­lah lands right in Han­ni’s out­stretched hands. She invites the old man to join the fam­i­ly for Shab­bat din­ner. The chal­lah from heav­en is deli­cious and the vis­i­tor enter­tains the fam­i­ly with won­der­ful sto­ries. Is the old man the Gaon for whom they have been wait­ing? Per­haps they were the lucky fam­i­ly, after all.

Chil­dren and their fam­i­lies will be charmed by this sen­si­tive and love­ly tale and will be eager to taste a heav­en­ly chal­lah of their own.