Chil­dren’s

Time for Torah

Devo­rah Schwebel; Tova Katz, illus.
  • Review
By – September 1, 2011
A rhymed pic­ture sto­ry about the ben­e­fits, plea­sures, and inspi­ra­tion dif­fer­ent peo­ple of all ages and stages and employ­ment, gain from study­ing Torah. There is always time for Torah some place in one’s day, espe­cial­ly in this neigh­bor­hood. A young boy notes how his neigh­bor, his doc­tor, and the store­keep­er, among oth­ers find time with­in their day to study. Since the book is for the pic­ture book crowd, it pre­pares chil­dren for this prac­tice which is spread­ing from strict­ly frum com­mu­ni­ties to the broad­er Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion. The pause and con­cen­tra­tion need­ed for the study of Torah is shown to make peo­ple hap­py and able to be accom­mo­dat­ed in var­i­ous ways. The pages of this book are coat­ed and imper­vi­ous to dam­age or dirt. Col­or­ful illus­tra­tions by Tova Katz are quite sophis­ti­cat­ed and well exe­cut­ed. Torah study is shown as a male pur­suit here, mak­ing the book par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able for the Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ty. For ages 5 – 9.
Mar­ci Lavine Bloch earned her MLS from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, a BA from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and an MA in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture from Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty. She has worked in syn­a­gogue and day school libraries and is cur­rent­ly fin­ish­ing her term on the Syd­ney Tay­lor Book Award Committee.

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