Chil­dren’s

All About Us

Dina Rosen­feld; Pat­ti Argoff, illus.

  • Review
By – January 9, 2012

Hashem (God) cre­at­ed the world, but He want­ed peo­ple to learn His Torah and do mitzvos, so He cre­at­ed man and gave him dif­fer­ent body parts to do dif­fer­ent mitzvos. Feet can be used for walk­ing or danc­ing; hand can give tzedakah or light can­dles; a head can wear a yarmulke; ears can hear the sho­far, a mouth can say a brocha; eyes can find chametz, and a nose can smell the besomim at Hav­dalah. Final­ly, the heart can love fel­low Jews, the Torah and Hashem. The book con­cludes that that is why we have these body parts: to learn the Torah and do the mitzvos of Hashem with love.” A glos­sary is includ­ed at the end. This is a wel­come update to the 1989 ver­sion. The illus­tra­tions are full of col­or and ener­gy, and the most impor­tant aspect is that all the mitz­vah doers” are hap­py and enthu­si­as­tic. Some of the text is slight­ly changed, and all body parts have three mitzvos list­ed that they can do, except the nose, which only has one. While meant for Ortho­dox chil­dren, this book can be used in any Jew­ish library or class­room by itself or to spur dis­cus­sion of parts of the body or dif­fer­ent mitzvos. 

Kathe Pinchuck, M.L.I.S., is the librar­i­an of Con­gre­ga­tion Beth Sholom in Tea­neck, New Jer­sey. She is cur­rent­ly the chair of the Syd­ney Tay­lor Book Award Com­mit­tee of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries.

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