Holidays

Looking for a new way to enrich Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?

Apples & Honey Press has a strong and growing list of great books you can use for the High Holidays storybooks that also include many important social-emotional themes. 

Apples, Apples, All Year Round: A Celebration of Jewish Holidays

By Barbara Bietz and June Sobel; Illustrated by Ruth Waters

A colorful

Planning a seder? You'll need a haggadah.

Which haggadah you use makes a big difference in how participants experience the seder.

Consider who's on your guest list. Of course it also matters how long you want your seder to last and what tone you want (solemn, inquisitive, or with a touch of whimsy). 

Here's a guide to point you in the right direction.

The Heroes Haggadah: Lead the Way to Freedom

By Rabbi Kerry Olitzky and Rabbi Deborah Bodin Cohen

Perfect for:

• Intergenerational seders
• Those seeking a contemporary connection to the Exodus story
  

Coming for Passover 2024, a haggadah that recognizes the heroism in Jewish culture and its contribution to our world and the enduring story of freedom that began with the ancient Exodus.

Ask your local bookstore or library about Big Bad Wolf's Yom Kippur, or find it on:

• Amazon
• Bookshop.org
• IndieBound

Planning a seder? You'll need a haggadah.

Which haggadah you use makes a big difference in how participants experience the seder.

Consider who's on your guest list. Of course it also matters how long you want your seder to last and what tone you want (solemn, inquisitive, or with a touch of whimsy). 

Here's a guide to point you in the right direction.

Singing the Mah Nishtanah gives children a chance to participate in the Passover seder.

But there's more to the Four Questions than just a song.

As educators, we can prepare children for the holiday by building connections between the Mah Nishtanah and:

• Understanding that stories and knowledge spring from questions
• What it means to relive the transition from slavery to freedom
• Jewish values of fighting injustice and slavery

Through Passover we are providing you with three free lessons about Mah Nishtanah and the seder from Hebrew in Harmony - our innovative music-based prayer curriculum.

"With overtones of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (1963), this read-aloud brings a creative element to the holiday.  . . . Marine fun and fantasy make for a magical Passover celebration." -Kirkus Reviews

In Under the Sea Seder, by Ann D. Koffsky, Miri is having trouble focusing during her family's Passover seder. Her parents would like her to sit quietly and listen, but she just CAN'T. 

So Miri slips under the table where her spirited imagination can be free, and with her cat at her side imagines leading her own seder, under the sea, with some friendly, very colorful sea monsters as her guests. 

Miri sings the Four Questions and whirls and twirls in celebration with her new marine friends. And soon it is time to dance and sing above the

Passover offers so many opportunities for learning - about Jewish history, the importance of home and holiday observance, and the value of repetition. Here are some resources you can use with students to explore many aspects of the holiday. 

In Teach Them Diligently: A Midrash on the Jewish Educator’s Year, Bonnie Stevens describes the haggadah as "our greatest textbook, laying out the lesson plan for a class so important that every Jew must repeat it yearly - the seder." One of the lessons the haggadah teaches us is about the role of questions in learning.

The haggadah doesn't rely on children to devise questions on their own. The Four Questions, for example, are spelled out. Sometimes we may use the haggadah's techniques to prod students to ask questions. And we too are b

This year for Passover, Matilda's grandmother invites her to help make the matzah ball soup—a dish that’s essential to Jewish cuisine, especially for holiday meals.

Matilda Makes Matzah Balls, by Rhonda Cohen and illustrated by Francesca Galmozzi, tells the story of Matilda, who has always loved watching her grandmother make soup. Now she wants to try out some of her own ideas. Adding lemon and dill to the matzah balls seems like a great idea. But making one GIANT matzah ball is a giant mistake.

Yet Bubbe is encouraging. "The best part of experimenting is you can always try again," she tells Matilda. 

And so the grandmother-granddaughter cooking team continues the kitchen experiments, with some unusual (and unusually delicious!) results.

Matilda’s enthusiasm and her grandmother’s uncondi