Miracles
kid Heads

Rivka Barth, Shani Barth and Elizabeth Miller with
their snazzy new tzedakah boxes.

14

here once was an old woman who, lonely and poor, and she often went to merchants
more than anything in the world, wanted to beg for food.
Families at the event received a booklet with
a child.
Soon she met the Prophet Elijah, who gave at-home activities asking them to consider ways
her a date. The woman set the date on the win- in which they could help the hungry through Yad
dow. In the morning, she found it had turned Ezra, the kosher food bank. These included filling
into a tiny girl whom she named Katanya, "lit- a tzedakah box, volunteering, encouraging chil-
dren to donate some of their allowance to Yad
tle one."
A crowd of children sat quietly as Julia Ezra, and having a special shelf for food to be do-
Greenblatt told this story, a kind of "Jewish nated.
After the story, the children decorated tzedakah
Thumbelina," from The Diamond Tree by
Howard Schwartz and Barbara Rush, Tues- cans and made their own dolls representing char-
day night at the Jewish Community Center. acters in the "Katanya" story. They used fabric
The program, sponsored by My Jewish Dis- scraps and pens, and cotton for hair. C,
One little girl's "Katanya" had three eyes of var-
covery Place and Jewish Experiences For Fam-
ious sizes and purple hair. Her mother promptly
ilies, focused on Jewish fairy tales.
As the story began, the old woman was both pronounced it "absolutely beautiful." O