It’s a week to Pesach, and you’re perusing the book ads in one of the Jewish magazines, wondering what’s the latest and greatest out on the market this season.

Children’s books for afikomen presents…bumper novel to curl up with during the long Yom Tov afternoons…new Pesach cookbook (“You’ll never guess these recipes aren’t chametz-dik!”)…they’re all there. And then there are the haggadahs.

My goodness, there are so many of them! And all of them with commentary by such great Torah leaders. How to choose which new one to buy to grace your Seder table this year?

And then you see it—The Chafetz Chaim Haggadah. Immediately your decision is made—of course you will go with this one! After all, the Chafetz Chaim is the Chafetz Chaim! He was the saintly tzaddik and leader of his generation, and even nowadays Klal Yisrael continues to be nourished by his holiness and his Torah… And just this year, a haggadah has been published with the commentary of the Chafetz Chaim himself!

The real question is—what took so long for this haggadah to make its appearance?? (The answer to that, by the way, is because writing this sefer entailed hunting down all the vertlach and lessons from the Chafetz Chaim on different aspects of Pesach and the Seder, and then compiling them together into a haggadah—no small job at all.)

But it’s out on the market now, and what a beauty it is, in every respect! It’s a given, of course, that the contents are dazzling, but aesthetically the book is quite a masterpiece, too. So whether you’re looking to be inspired by the Chafetz Chaim’s divrei Torah yourself at the Seder, or you want to present someone with an extraordinarily handsome gift this Pesach—The Chafetz Chaim Haggadah is exactly what you are looking for.

Click here to purchase online.

You’ve had one of those days. The kids were at each other’s throats the whole afternoon, milk and apple juice spilled like Niagara Falls during supper, the dishes and laundry are competing for which looks more like Mt. Everest, and the baby, sick with another ear infection, has been kvetching non-stop. You feel like a used dishrag.

Oh, and of course, Pesach is in three weeks. (In case you forgot.)

You know what you need right now? (Well, besides for 2 Advil and a bar of chocolate. And a few hours of cleaning help thrown in, too.)

A delicious book of fiction short stories from Bracha Rosman. Something like Silver Linings.

Yup, I tell you, it works every time. (That’s right, I speak from experience.) There’s nothing that rejuvenates a worn-out woman the way a good book can. You burrow under a warm, fuzzy blanket on the couch, keep a mug of hot cocoa and some snacks (remember your chocolate bar?) at your side, and flip open to a new story.

Ahhh… Feel the stress melting away?

And this book contains many juicy, beautifully-written stories in it, by the way—so the therapy is good for at least a couple dozen of your tough days!

What is it about Bracha Rosman’s stories that have this amazing power to recharge you? Is it the author’s high-quality writing? Her realistic portrayal of life’s issues? Her true-to-life characters? The positive approach with which she treats each of her stories?

Whatever it is, you don’t argue with success! And that’s just what Silver Linings is.

Pick up your copy now, so you’ll have it on hand when you need it most! And…take a deep breath (don’t worry, the dishes, laundry, and Pesach cleaning are not running away!), relax…and enjoy!

Click here to purchase online.

Icicles turning into lanterns…gangsters freezing in their place at the sight of a holy man…poor innkeepers miraculously striking it rich after crying out to Hashem… Stories about the Baal Shem Tov are as exciting as a story can get! And now, instead of just hearing these stories from others, your beginning-reader child can actually read them all by herself!

Prolific writer Rebbetzin Sarah Feldbrand has begun a brand new series of biographies for young readers, and the first book, The Story of the Baal Shem Tov, has just made its debut. In this book, your child will read all about the life and times of the Baal Shem Tov, as well as some of the astounding stories told about him.

Junior readers will appreciate the illustrations that appear throughout the book, and the large and clear typography on each page. And they’ll just love the storyline!

So go ahead and buy this book for your children! They’ll be thanking you for it…and you’ll be thanking us!

Click here to purchase online.

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.

“So! I hear you’re making Pesach for the first time?”

“Um. Yes. Hopefully, I mean. With lots of help from the One Above.”

“You’re not nervous or anything, are you?”

“Oh, no, not at all! Why would you think I was?”

“Really?! You’re not nervous or scared?”

“Nervous? Scared? Are you kidding? I’m just…absolutely petrified!!”

Let’s face it: making Pesach is major. And you have every right to be nervous about doing it, especially if you’re a newbie and have no idea where to start. And if you happen to be making a simchah right around the same time, too, or you’ll be hosting guests for Yom Tov—well, you have just as much of a right to be nervous about making Pesach!

But rather than fret and quail about how much you still have to cook and clean, and why are the kids eating cookies in a room you just cleaned, and why can’t you have more cleaning help, and why, oh, why, doesn’t your house come with a Pesach kitchen (or, once you’re at it, a self-cleaning feature for the whole place)—why not do something that will actually give you some relief?

By this, I mean: why not buy yourself the best present ever, the handy guide for Pesach-cooking-without-a-Pesach-kitchen, called Pesach While You Sleep?

Yes, you read that right. You can live like a mentch, without “turning over” two weeks before Pesach—even if you don’t have a Pesach kitchen and you do have a lot of people to cook for!

How? The method is explained clearly in this book. It’s easy to learn and easy to implement. And all it requires is the use of a couple slow-cookers, a folding table, and some basic supplies and ingredients!

Click here to purchase online.