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A visit to the Lower East Side’s Tenement Museum inspires a new picture book
(New York Jewish Week) — A new picture book set on the Lower East Side during the flu pandemic of 1918 is ostensibly about the values of education and community.
But “Rivka’s Presents” was not created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as you might expect. Instead, it was written 15 years ago, after author Laurie Wallmark made a visit to the Lower East Side’s Tenement Museum, a living history museum that highlights how immigrants lived in the neighborhood in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Wallmark first visited the museum around 18 years ago. At the time, she thought, “Someone would write a book about people who lived in these tenements,” Wallmark told the New York Jewish Week. When she returned a few years later for another tour, she had the same thought. This time, Wallmark decided to write the book herself.
Wallmark, who was working as a computer programmer at the time, thought “Rivka’s Presents” would be her first book. But life had other plans. After numerous publishers rejected the book, Wallmark went on to publish six biographies for children about women in STEM, including mathematician Grace Hopper and codebreaker Elizebeth Friedman, and a bedtime book, “Dino Pajama Party.”
And then, in 2021, Wallmark received a call from her agent saying that Random House wanted to publish “Rivka’s Presents.” The book, with illustrations by Adelina Lirius, was released on July 11.
“People always have a book of their heart,” Wallmark said. “This one was the book of my heart.”
The protagonist of the 40-page book, Rivka, is a young girl growing up on the Lower East Side. She is elated to start school — but when her father gets very sick from the flu and her mother has to work in a shirtwaist factory, Rivka must take care of her younger sister, Miriam. Despite the setback, Rivka is determined to learn, so she ventures out with her sister and offers to do chores for the tailor, the grocer and an elderly neighbor in return for lessons in reading and writing, math and American history.
Being a children’s book, there is a happy ending: Rivka’s neighbors surprise her with gifts to celebrate her love of learning. And, even better, her father recovers and she is able to start school.
“Rivka’s Presents” is Laurie Wallmark’s eighth picture book. (Images courtesy of Laurie Wallmark)
The book is a very personal one for Wallmark, whose grandparents all grew up on the Lower East Side around the same time that the book takes place. “I always heard stories about growing up there,” she said.
The characters, Wallmark said, are inspired by her family members: Wallmark’s grandmother worked in the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and served as inspiration for Rivka’s mother. Rivka’s excitement for learning, meanwhile, was inspired by Wallmark’s mother. The sprinkle of Yiddish words throughout the book — like bubbeleh (darling) and shayna maideleh (beautiful little girl) — is in honor of one of her grandfathers, who never learned English.
“Of course, whenever my parents did not want me to know what they were saying they would speak Yiddish,” Wallmark said, echoing a common refrain.
Other than the occasional Yiddish words, however, “Rivka’s Presents” is not explicitly Jewish in content — and that’s by design. “Where are the books where there’s a little kid who happens to be Jewish? Maybe [he] isn’t even the main character, but he’s wearing a kippah?” Wallmark said. “We also want diversity and inclusion [in children’s books] to include little Jewish boys and girls.”
An obvious value in “Rivka’s Presents” is education, and Wallmark says the story is ideal for children who might be afraid or not excited about attending school. “Here, they see this little girl who can’t wait to start school and can’t wait to learn,” Wallmark said. “[Readers] see that learning can be fun, can be something you want to do, not something you just have to do.”
“Rivka’s Presents” is a social and emotional learning book, which Wallmark credits as one reason why it was published now. These types of books that “help kids understand and cope with the challenges of living in today’s world” are in increasing demand, she explained.
Wallmark hopes that “Rivka’s Presents,” like her other books, will “inspire curiosity, help kids learn about the world around them, and enjoy different aspects of the world.”
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The post A visit to the Lower East Side’s Tenement Museum inspires a new picture book appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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