When we think of bilin­gual­ism, we most often think of lan­guage — the flu­en­cy to con­vey the same idea in mul­ti­ple lan­guages. Ask any par­ent, we all see being bilin­gual as an asset for our chil­dren in today’s glob­al­ized world. What I wouldn’t give for my own chil­dren to wake up one day hav­ing mas­tered Man­darin, Span­ish, Ara­bic, and Hebrew, let alone English. 

But is being bilin­gual lim­it­ed to language? 

As a pic­ture book writer, I inevitably think about the illus­tra­tions that match the words I use. As a Jew­ish pic­ture book author, I spend a lot of time think­ing about how — giv­en the medium’s lim­it­ed word count — Jew­ish sym­bols com­ple­ment the prose. 

There are, of course, com­mon and uni­ver­sal Jew­ish sym­bols, such as can­dles, that can stand in for Shab­bat. But do all can­dles look alike? While many Ashke­nazi house­holds use wax can­dles, many Sephardim use oil. Or take chal­lah, as anoth­er exam­ple. Must chal­lah always look braid­ed? Besides dur­ing the High Hol­i­days, when chal­lah is tra­di­tion­al­ly cir­cu­lar, many Jew­ish cul­tures enjoy round­ed or oth­er non-braid­ed chal­lah through­out the year. The same basic sym­bols can be visu­al­ized very dif­fer­ent­ly. What does it look like to be bilin­gual in not just decod­ing lan­guages, but also symbols? 

In a count­ing board book I recent­ly pub­lished, I picked ten sym­bols that, for me, rep­re­sent my iden­ti­ty. Those items were:

1. Hand
2. Can­dles
3. Drums
4. Hats
5. Books
6. Cups
7. Keys
8. Lamps
9. Cook­ies
10. Flow­ers 

By them­selves, those words might con­vey cer­tain images in your head. But in dif­fer­ent con­texts the words can take on dif­fer­ent mean­ings. What hap­pens when you think of the sym­bols through a specif­i­cal­ly Jew­ish lens? For exam­ple, what type of hat comes to mind now for the fourth sym­bol — A kip­pah? A shtreimel? A base­ball cap? 

The name of the book for which I chose the sym­bols is Uno Dos Tres: A Sephardic Count­ing Book. Does know­ing it’s a Sephardic book, with num­bers in Ladi­no, change how you view the sym­bols now? You might not auto­mat­i­cal­ly think of a fez when you see the word ​“hat,” but I’m hop­ing through my books that, one day, you — and your chil­dren — might. Here’s a look at how I paired the words above with the spe­cif­ic Sephardic sym­bols I want­ed to convey: 

1. Hand: A ham­sa, the five-fin­gered hand shape that is a tra­di­tion­al sym­bol of peace and pro­tec­tion that orig­i­nat­ed in the mid­dle east
2. Can­dles: Wicks float­ing in oil
3. Drums: Skinned tam­bourines, often used in fes­tive Sephardic music
4. Hats: Fezes, the tra­di­tion­al Ottoman head covering
5. Books: Those with titles in Ladi­no (did you know that Sephardic Jews intro­duced the print­ing press to the Jew­ish world?)
6. Cups: Fash­ioned in ornate Turk­ish glass, com­mon in Sephardic households
7. Keys: Shaped in the old skele­ton style, a reminder of the homes Sephardic fam­i­lies left behind in Spain when they were exiled
8. Lamps: Intri­cate and col­or­ful glass mosaics, fix­tures that hang in many Sephardic homes
9. Cook­ies: The icon­ic Sephardic bisko­cho
10. Flow­ers: Ros­es, a favorite ingre­di­ent in Sephardic cuisine

The book’s final spread shows the sym­bols as a col­lec­tion. Tak­en all togeth­er, I want these sym­bols to cre­ate a visu­al land­scape for the read­ers of any age to reimag­ine these seem­ing­ly com­mon words (hand! hat! cup!) in new, bilin­gual ways. 

The sym­bols I chose in Uno Dos Tres are clear exam­ples, but even in some of my oth­er books, (includ­ing my recent­ly pub­lished, Anya­da Bue­na, Shanah Tovah) I show bilin­gual­ism beyond the book’s Ladi­no and Hebrew title, in the images and text itself. 

Bless­ing new foods for the fall is a Rosh Hashanah cus­tom that many Jews across the globe prac­tice. And in Anya­da Bue­na, Shanah Tovah, an image of a seder plate is paired with my prose: ​“New fruits of fall? Yes! And eight foods that we bless.” While the prose doesn’t say the word ​“seder,” the sym­bol of the loaded plate is there to con­vey it.

A seder for Rosh Hashanah? Indeed! Many Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews have a spe­cial seder cer­e­mo­ny to bless spe­cif­ic foods that are bestowed with spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance for the new year. Pair­ing the sym­bol of a seder plate with words about Rosh Hashanah (not Passover!) estab­lish­es a bilin­gual way of read­ing what a seder plate can rep­re­sent. With min­i­mal words and sym­bols, we can add and change lay­ers of meaning. 

I believe that cre­at­ing bilin­gual pic­ture books is an impor­tant way we can teach fam­i­lies about the breadth of Jew­ish life. As a Sephardic children’s book author, the use of Ladi­no words and lan­guage con­cepts are cen­tral to my work. Beyond lan­guage, how­ev­er, I place equal import on how I want to con­vey sym­bol­ic bilingualism. 

If you’re a par­ent, ask your kids: ​“What are the ten sym­bols you would choose togeth­er to rep­re­sent your fam­i­ly?” For added fun, try draw­ing them, too!

In the same way that I dream of my chil­dren hav­ing flu­en­cy in Hebrew one day, I also want them to have facil­i­ty in read­ing Jew­ish sym­bols in mul­ti­ple ways. How can we help our chil­dren become more bilin­gual – and feel the Jew­ish pride that comes with that? Read­ing a vari­ety of Jew­ish children’s books, ones that reflect our own cul­tur­al tra­di­tions and those of oth­ers, is a great way to start.