Books target Jewish kids

At a Passover Seder years ago, Harold Grinspoon noticed with surprise that the younger attendees were absorbed in holiday children’s books.

A dinner that’s as much about reading as eating, Passover can sometimes be a bit tedious for young children. But these children, Grinspoon saw, were deeply engaged in books given to them by the hostess and asking their parents to read aloud parts of the story about the liberation of the Israelites from slavery.

The scene inspired Grinspoon, an 81-year-old real estate developer turned philanthropist, to begin a literacy program modeled after the Imagination Library – a program started by singer Dolly Parton – but through a Jewish prism.

The PJ Library – a reference to the pajamas young participants may wear while perusing their books – began by sending 500 books on Jewish religious and cultural identity to families in western Massachusetts.

Now, five years later, the program each month sends Jewish-themed bedtime stories, targeted at children ages 6 months to 8 years, to 65,000 families across the United States and Canada.

The PJ Library is a partnership between the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and local Jewish centers. They share the cost of sending the books, which are free to families.

In communities, like Spokane, which do not have an active PJ Library program, children can receive books through gift subscriptions that cost an annual $60 (see www.pjlibrary.org).

At a time when many Jews marry outside the faith and a significant percentage choose not to raise their children Jewish, Grinspoon said he felt the Jewish identity was being diluted.

“I see a crisis in the Jewish world, the Jewish American world,” he said.

He saw a way to reach children at a young age through Jewish-themed stories and positive memories of bedtime reading.

Children enrolled in the program receive 11 books and one CD a year. The packages include reading guides, conversation starters and activity suggestions.

The books are not all overtly religious. They may be about a religious holiday or ritual or about such broader values as being kind to someone or why helping out is good, she said.

Often, the parents themselves may not be very knowledgeable about Judaism and its various rituals, and the books can be a way for them to learn, along with their children, in the privacy of their own homes.

A survey commissioned by the PJ Library last year found that more than half the families had fewer than 10 Jewish books in their homes before joining the program.