Once, there were no custom sheitels, kosher cookbooks, and seminaries. These pioneers changed that
The Jews may have been the People of the Book for generations, but it’s only a few decades since we’ve become the People of the Children’s Book.
In a previous, more wholesome era, secular media was far more innocent, and even families with the highest chinuch standards were often comfortable in public libraries. Jewish schools read what the public schools read.
Yaffa Ganz and her husband made aliyah from Chicago over 60 years ago and are now the great-grandparents of a growing clan. “When people refer to me as part of the ‘founding generation’ of Jewish juvenile authors, it makes me feel like a dinosaur! I usually feel pretty young, but I must admit that the publishing world ⸺ and the world at large ⸺ has undergone massive changes since I first entered the field.”
When Mrs. Ganz brought her first Savta Simcha manuscript to Feldheim Publisher’s Jerusalem office, it was a novelty they didn’t quite know what to do with. They returned the favor by asking if she’d review a five-foot stack of juvenile submissions that had been gathering dust in their back rooms for years.
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