Growing up as one of the oldest children in a large family bli ayin hara, I had my fair share of chores to do. While in high school, one of those chores was to put my six-year-old brother to sleep each night. He was (and still is, more than a decade later!) the cutest kid around—but putting him to bed…now that was a whole different story! My mother would throw up her hands in defeat, and somehow I was roped in for the mission.
The first step of the process was telling Binyamin a bedtime story—nothing doing before that! Problem was, it aint easy thinking up a new bedtime story each night, especially with my high-school-girl’s mind more often than not preoccupied with pesukim to memorize, mefarshim to translate, and—l’havdil—the periodic table to decode.
One night, as I was searching in my “story reservoir” (every mommy, big sister, and babysitter has one of those!) for something new to tell Binyamin, the thought suddenly occurred to me: I was studying for a Navi test anyway. Why not tell Binyamin a story from Navi?
The idea was so simple, I had to give it a try. I opened a sefer Yehoshua and began telling my little brother all about Bnei Yisrael crossing the Yarden into Eretz Yisrael, with Yehoshua ben Nun as their leader.
And—to my joy and relief—Binyamin loved the story and went to sleep nicely afterward!
The next day’s story was about the conquest of Yericho and the walls that fell down…then what happened with Achan and the spoils of the city of Ai… Sefer Yehoshua was eventually followed by sefer Shoftim, and then Shmuel… Little by little, Binyamin was accumulating a vast knowledge of the stories of Tanach, and was devouring each one! (In case you’re wondering, yes, I think I did score well on my Navi tests, too!)
Celebrated author Nachman Seltzer had a similar idea when he embarked on writing the book Dovid Hamelech for kids. We’re telling our kids stories anyway—why not teach them the stories of their own history, the beautiful stories in Tanach?
Dovid Hamelech is a magnificent book—both its text and the accompanying illustrations. Flip through it for a moment and you’ll see exactly what I mean—all the many details included in each picture, the mefarshim incorporated in each paragraph… It’s truly the kind of book that screams out, “Gift!” with each turn of the pages (whether for afikoman or for a birthday—you decide!).
This is a book you’ll want to read to your children, again and again. The tochen in it, the lessons your kids will learn from reading about the life of Dovid Hamelech…these are things that can’t be bought for any price. And it’s all yours for the taking, with the purchase of this one-of-a-kind book!
Click here to purchase online.
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