Delicious Passovers in The Village
Izzy Abrahmson’s THE VILLAGE FEASTS warms the heart
Ten tasty tales adults and children of all ages will enjoy again and again. Delightful and amusing.
THE VILLAGE FEASTS is the follow-up collection to WINTER BLESSINGS by National Jewish Book Award For Family Literature nominee Izzy Abrahmson
- Mrs. Chaipul refuses to cook.
- The Gold family can’t afford matzah (unleavened bread).
- Reb Stein, the baker wants to set a world record.
- But why would anyone eat matzah made from cabbage?
Izzy Abrahmson’s THE VILLAGE FEASTS is rich with the kind of misadventures and ingenous solutions to problems that can only come from residents of The Village. The stories dance with a traditional feel around contemporary issues.
“The eight days of Passover mark the transition between dark icy cold and warm sunshine,” Izzy explains. “The streets turn to mud, the weather is inconsistent, and for a whole week you’re not allowed to eat bread, only matzah. This is never easy, and so the villagers do their best to laugh and smile and complain, while they gather together to celebrate.”
You’ll learn why Mrs. Chaipul’s lead sinker matzah balls are a favorite. And discover what was “The Last Temptation of Rabbi Kibbitz”?
“The Village is snuggled in an indeterminate past that never was but certainly should have been, a past filled with love, humor, adventures and more than occasional misadventures. And when you go, be sure to bring the kids.”
– The Times of Israel
THE VILLAGE FEASTS includes ten Passover stories perfect for adults and families with children. As always, you don’t need to be Jewish to enjoy stories from The Village.
The audiobook is narrated by Audie-award nominated storyteller Mark Binder.
This is a book that you and your family will read and listen to again and again.
Abrahmson invites readers into the Chelm fold with vivid accounts of its inhabitants drooling at the delicious aromas of Seder, getting lost in the Black Forest with the Chiriboms and Chiribims, and feeling their jaws ache as they try to chew through leaden Matzah balls. Not merely comic figures, Abrahmson’s characters develop and reveal personalities over short snippets of text, though they’re given to much amusing hyperbole: “Moishe argued for six hours that if the pyramids in Egypt had only been built from his wife’s matzah balls, then they would still be standing.”
The only disappointment is that it’s all over so quickly, at about a hundred pages. (Fortunately, the characters overlap with the other books in the series.) Abrahmson’s prose savvily mixes the homey and the surreal, and he’s a master of the cozy bedtime story. The Village Feasts, with its often silly phrasing and emphasis on ritual and community, demands to be read out loud, shared at a gathering or relished by little ones before bedtime, when sleepy eyelids are beginning to droop. A glossary in the endmatter is both helpful and comic.
Takeaway: These sprightly comic Passover tales set in the village of Chelm are warm and engaging.
Great for fans of: Seymour Rossel’s The Wise Folk of Chelm, Solomon Simon’s The Wise Men of Helm and Their Merry Tales.
Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A-
Editing: B+
Marketing copy: A
