Can’t Start Passover without the Bread by Leba Lieder and Israel Drazin; © 2013; ISBN 9781481-995467; 30 pages, available via Amazon.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Our columnist, Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin, and his schoolteacher daughter Leba Lieder, created this storybook for children between the ages of 4 and 8. It is a mash-up of the pre-Passover custom of searching for chametz, the seder song Chad Gadya (One Little Goat), and a tale with the moral that one can have special talents and unique worth no matter what one may look like.
Moti the mouse has very large ears and a short tail, just the opposite from his long-tailed, small-eared family members, who make fun of him. What his family members don’t know is that having big ears enabled Moti to hear conversations that others could not. And having a short tail meant could hide in places that might be too difficult for other mice to access.
Moti’s family lives beneath the Goldberg family home. The mouse family silently observes and imitates the Goldbergs. Just as the Goldberg family celebrates Passover, so too does Moti’s family.
A crisis for both families occurred during the annual search for chametz (leavened food products). As part of the ceremony for making the home entirely devoid of leavening in time for the onset of Passover, the Goldbergs had the custom of hiding small pieces of bread. When the children returned all the bread to their parents, then and only then could Passover begin.
However, on the approach of this particular Passover, the bread was nowhere to be found and as the clock ticked toward the onset of the holiday, the Goldberg children began quarreling among themselves about who was responsible for the disappearance of the bread. In fact, it was none of them. A pet goat figured the bread would make a great munchy treat. Moti then saw a cat try to take the bread away from the goat, whereupon a dog tried to grab the bread from the cat. A neighbor with a stick tried to separate the dog from the cat, but when that didn’t work, the neighbor poured water on his stick …. Chad Gadya! Chad Gadya!
In the ensuing melee, Moti used his big ears to tickle the goat’s nose, prompting the goat to sneeze and drop the pieces of bread. Moti scampered down from the goat, picked up the pieces of bread, and put them where the Goldbergs could easily find them. Sure enough, there was a shout of triumph, the bread was removed from the house, and the Goldbergs—and Moti’s family too—thus were able to begin Passover on time. Moti was too polite to boast about his accomplishments, but he knew in his heart that he had done a great mitzvah.
The fanciful illustrations for this tale were done by “MIND,” identified in the book as a graduate of McMaser University, Capilano College and the Canadian Film Centre.
All in all, it’s a picture book that your young children will enjoy reading or having read to them.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com