This
holiday
season,
let us
do the
cooking,
and
you do the
celebrating,

GUIDE 09

The Greatest Story
Ever Told

Children's Bible features
familiar tales that are abridged,
but not changed.

• Banquet rooms
available

Ellen Frankel I Jewish Telegraphic Agency

• Party trays
to go

W

37646 West 12 Mile • Farmington Hills

(in Halsted Village) •

www.antoniosrestaurants.com

248 - 994 - 4000

LIFE HAS
ITS MOMENTS...

Streit nt...

...MAKE THEM
UNFORGETTABLE

I: kiCr.VNTS WiTti

E' C.C);

PANDORA"

UNFORGETTABLE MOMENTS

GMCPYIS

Creative Jewelers

30975 Orchard Lake Road • Famington Hills
1/4 Mile S. of Fourteen Mile Road
248.855.0433
emeryscreative@sbcglobal.net

Holiday Hours: Mon-Thurs 10am-8pm • Fri & Sat 10am-5:45pm • Sunday 12-5

GG48 November

26 . 2009

hen I was growing up, no
one told me the differ-
ence between the Torah
and midrash. So, like many other Jews,
I thought the Hebrew Bible included
the legends of Lilith, Abraham smash-
ing his father's idols and Elijah's visits
to my seder table. It wasn't until much
later that I learned what was in and
out of the sacred canon.
My chief aim in writing the JPS

which itself tried to capture the idi-
omatic nuances of biblical Hebrew.
The stories in my book are
abridged, but not improved or mod-
ernized. I want readers and listeners to
appreciate the simple narrative style of
the Bible: sentences anchored in active
subjects and verbs, few adjectives or
adverbs, only rare editorializing by the
narrator. All the familiar techniques
of good storytelling — suspense,
dramatic irony, repeti-
tion, word play, stock
characters, etc. — are
present in these stories,
but the specific ways
that these techniques
play out are unique to
the Hebrew Bible.
So, too, are the
names of people and
places, of holy days
and sacred acts. I made
many judgment calls
as I worked — about
vocabulary, translation,
editorial intervention,
censorship and gen-
dered language. I tried
to be mindful of young
readers' reading level,
cultural literacy and
lien Friiileel
Rifoldb
developmental maturi-
fed by Avi Katz
ty. But I also wanted to
give children a feel for
the special language
Ellen Frankel, author of the JPS Illustrated
that characterizes
Children's Bible, most recently served as the
sacred texts.
CEO and editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication
I selected 53 stories
Society and is now the publisher's editor emerita.
to include in the book.
My choices were guid-
Illustrated Children's Bible (Jewish
ed mainly by my sense of what makes
Publication Society; $35) was to teach
a good story for children. Some stories
children this important distinction,
I excluded as being inappropriate for
to present the Hebrew Bible on its
young readers, but I felt obliged to
own terms, without interpretation or
include a few troubling stories because
embellishment. I also wanted to repro- they are pivotal to understanding the
duce the unique texture and rhythm
Jewish national story.
of biblical language, using as my guide
Perhaps no Bible story is more
the 1985 JPS English Translation,
Greatest Story on page GG50