This beau­ti­ful­ly spun tale pro­vides a wealth of teach­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties by recount­ing a family’s devo­tion to a sin­gle lemon tree and the effect it has had on the five gen­er­a­tions that fol­lowed. Through the great-great-grandson’s ver­sion of his grandfather’s rec­ol­lec­tions, we expe­ri­ence the world of East­ern Europe’s Jews and their hard­ships. More impor­tant­ly, Lehman-Wilzig con­firms the impor­tance of Judaism and its prin­ci­ples with­in the dai­ly vil­lage cul­ture. Asin­gle lemon tree not only pro­vides an entire vil­lage with susti­nance and a bit of lux­u­ry, it serves to reveal the lessons of Torah, the val­ue of car­ing acts, the respon­si­bil­i­ty to one’s fam­i­ly, to one’s com­mu­ni­ty and the earth. The sto­ry drawn from the Pirkei Avot; Mish­na 3:22, focus­es on the val­ue of hard work, the process of cre­at­ing from our own hands and the impor­tance of con­ti­nu­ity. The ​“theft” of a few lemons demon­strates how the best inten­tions to pro­vide for the fam­i­ly may mis­di­rect a person’s behav­ior from liv­ing a life of Torah, while reveal­ing that peo­ple can learn new lessons and that the abil­i­ty to per­form mitzvot sur­rounds us at every moment. The art­work engages the read­er with its por­tray­al of days past, offer­ing many visu­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to delve into the his­tor­i­cal life of a Jew­ish vil­lage. The com­bi­na­tion of Mish­na, text and art­work pro­vides an entire les­son plan. The book also fea­tures an activ­i­ty page, which asks the read­er to dis­cov­er their fam­i­ly tzeda­ka heir­loom. Part of Gefen’s new series of Jew­ish Heir­loom Sto­ries, this delight­ful pic­ture book is a trea­sure. For ages 7 – 10.