I have found it challenging to figure out how to teach Torah to my now four-year-old child. I feel like my spouse and I have flourished pedagogically in the more obviously mimetic spheres of prayer and song, but how to introduce our child to the characters, stories, and laws of Torah and Rabbinic texts has felt elusive. I have not found great resources, either. What I have seen tends toward talking about Torah text, rather than through it, dumbs down the material, or encumbers it with ideology. Mostly, though, I find an absence of materials for young children.

I’ve been impressed with Hadar Institute’s Devash magazine, but feel antsy waiting until my child is 7, the floor of Devash’s target audience. Against that backdrop, I greeted with excited relief the news that Hadar was publishing its first publication for readers aged 4 and up, The Devash Jr. Book of Shemot (Exodus), by Chana Kupetz and Efrayim Unterman, with emotionally evocative illustrations by Rivka Tsinman, who previously illustrated Hadar’s wonderful The Devash Megillat Esther.

The most important thing to tell you about The Devash Jr. Book of Shemot is that my child wanted to binge it. Here’s her review: “I want to read another one!” Already in our second time through, she still wants to read multiple parashiyot in one sitting. She saw the illustration of Yocheved sending baby Moshe off in the basket and exclaimed, “she’s crying!” She saw the illustration of young Moshe trying to stop the Egyptian from whipping a Hebrew slave and asked about the whip, “Is that sharp?” She expressed instinctive curiosity about the surprising shape of the showbread (lehem ha-panim) loaves in Parashat Terumah, and instinctively wanted to count them, inviting a conversation, beyond the text, as to why there might be twelve, where we’ve seen that number before, and setting up good noticing when we later met the twelve stones on the High Priest’s breastplate. 

Here’s my review: The Devash Jr. Book of Shemot is an extraordinary contribution to early childhood Torah education, demonstrating masterfully that ambitious textual literacy is accessible to young people.

Devash Jr. doesn’t summarize each Torah portion; it homes in on key passages and translates them in concrete language accessible to young children, arranged intuitively with accessible and inviting illustrations, and supplemented by a corner text box with one verse covered on that page in Hebrew and a straight translation. Devash Jr.’s prose is virtuosic in its precision. Compare, in Parashat Shemot, a canonical, adult translation with Devash Jr.’s rendering of Shemot/Exodus 2:13-14, where young Moshe tries to intervene in a fight between Hebrew slaves, after having previously killed an abusive Egyptian:

JPS 1985 translation of 2:13-14

When he went out the next day, he found two Hebrews fighting; so he said to the offender, “Why do you strike your fellow?” He retorted, “Who made you chief and ruler over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Moses was frightened, and thought: Then the matter is known!

Devash Jr. 

The next day, Moshe went out again. This time, he saw two Hebrew slaves fighting each other. 

He called out, “Stop! Why are you doing that?”

“You’re not the boss of us,” said one of the fighters. “Are you going to do the same thing you did to that Egyptian yesterday?”

“Uh-oh,” thought Moshe. “People found out what happened.”

Other passages require some unpacking, but Devash Jr. admirably restrains itself from excessive explanation. For example, in Parashat Mishpatim, Devash Jr. shares the Biblical verse in the corner box, “If someone opens up a hole or digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, then the person who made the hole has to pay” (Shemot/Exodus 21:33-34). Devash Jr. illustrates a two page spread with kids playing and adults working in the middle of a street, digging holes and leaving out skateboards, scooters, balls, and other familiar items, while several characters are shown in different stages of tripping and falling. Their text reads:

Be careful not to leave things out that could cause falling and tripping. So if you dig a pit where people might fall, make sure to cover it up.

If you leave your stuff around where it can hurt people, you are responsible.

Four-year-olds may not be able yet to understand money meaningfully, but they are primed to know about being responsible for hurting people and for grownups telling them to clean-up their messes.

Other highlights include the visual and verbal illustrations of the High Priest’s special clothes and the components of the Mishkan in Terumah, Tetzaveh, Vayakhel, and Pekudei. I am confident that many adults reading those sections with their little ones will understand those Torah portions better than they ever have before and will find interest and connection through the natural gravitation of young children to the concrete and material.

One other dangling note of praise: Devash Jr. successfully avoids using gendered pronouns to God without ever tumbling into awkward syntax. I don’t think that I’ve ever succeeded at that challenge.

Each parashah closes with a page for review with three sections, “We learned”, “Think about it!”, and “Try it out!” My own four-year-old has not yet engaged the “think about it!” questions, but I’m confident that on subsequent readings, or maybe when she’s 5 or 6, she’ll respond to prompts such as Parashat Yitro’s “Why did Moshe feel good about asking for help? Can you feel good about asking for help?” I am excited to rise to the invitation in “Try it out!” by making time to actualize, for example, Parashat Vayakhel’s narration that Benei Yisrael built God’s home with their own hands by inviting my child to “try out” Devash Jr.’s suggestions to “Put up a mezuzah with a hammer” or “make a tzedakah box”. The Devash Jr. authors deeply understand Torah and young kids and artfully bridge between the sacred text and the sound pedagogy of material, lived experience.

I anticipate a long life for this wonderful book, so I do want to offer a few critiques and suggestions for future editions:

• I would prefer that the Torah verse in the little text box on each page include chanting tropes. Some readers will find it helpful and lively storytelling to chant the actual Torah text for and with their children.

• In parashat Shemot, after naming the children of Ya‘akov and describing their increase, Devash Jr. continues, “King Pharaoh said to the Egyptians, ‘I do not like Benei Yisrael growing so much!’” I would prefer one more sentence beforehand: “A new person became king over Egypt, someone who didn’t know Yoseph.” I think that some of the target readers of Devash Jr. will be able to wonder why Egypt turned on the Israelites. Adding the detail of the regime change can prompt the kind of question-asking that Devash Jr. is deftly seeding, while pointing them to the paths of Rabbinic interpretation for which they will be ready when they graduate to Devash.

• Only once does Devash Jr. share a Rabbinic interpretation, rather than a Biblical verse, in the corner text box. In Parashat Shemot, the page narrating the refusal of the midwives Shifrah and Puah to kill babies on Pharaoh’s command includes a text box offering the Talmud’s interpretation that Shifrah and Puah were actually Yocheved and Miriam, Moshe’s mother and sister. I am curious why the editors chose to elevate that interpretation in particular. I’m especially curious because this particular verse is provocatively ambiguous, with a long tradition of dispute among commentaries whether the midwives were Egyptian or Hebrew, as I’ve discussed on this blog. I would have preferred for Devash Jr. to leave the text ambiguous, to share the Hebrew text of the verse in the box with a translation that leaves the Hebrew ambiguous, such as “the Hebrews’ midwives”, and to invite the readers in the “Think about it” section to consider how Shifrah and Puah, as well as Pharaoh’s daughter, found the courage to break Pharaoh’s bad rules.

• Also in Parashat Shemot, the Torah verse in the corner text box reads, “Benei Yisrael groaned from the slave work, and they cried out. Their cry for help went up to God because of their suffering” (Shemot/Exodus 2:23). The plain meaning is that the people simply cried out in anguish and that God heard their cry. Devash Jr. uncharacteristically adds a significant element, saying, “They strained and groaned out loud. They cried out to God. And God heard them” [emphasis mine], implying that they opened their mouths in prayer, and foreclosing the possibility, suggested in the plain reading of the Torah and occasionally explicit in Rabbinic commentary, that the Israelites did not pray to God, had become distant from God, and that God’s greatness is in receiving the distressed cries of the oppressed slaves as prayer. One of Devash Jr.’s merits is letting the Biblical story be and not over-interpreting it, so I was surprised to see this addition to the text. I think the next edition will benefit if edited to “They cried out.”

• In Parashat Bo, Devash Jr. deftly transitions from the tenth plague to the hurried departure of the Israelites narrated in Exodus 12:31-39, conveying the rushed sense in simple, accessible language. The text, however, omits one fact of the narrative, the Israelites asking their Egyptian neighbors for silver, gold, and fabrics, a plot point that seems crucial to the Biblical text, as I’ve written about elsewhere. Every time the Torah writes about the exodus, in anticipation and during its narration, it emphasizes this requirement (Genesis 15:14, Exodus 3:22 and 11:2). This plot point especially stands out in its narrative importance because it runs so strongly against the grain of the surrounding hurried narrative. I would prefer that the Devash Jr. text read something like this (my addition in italics):

“Everything happened very quickly. The Egyptians couldn’t wait to send the slaves away.

So Benei Yisrael grabbed their dough before it could even rise and made it into matzah.

They tied their bags over their shoulders.

They grabbed their walking sticks.

They came out of their slave houses for the last time.

They knocked on their Egyptian neighbors’ doors and asked them for their silver, gold, and garments.

And then, after hundreds of years in slavery, Benei Yisrael left Egypt.”

I think that this small addition to the Devash Jr. text could open rich conversations between children and their grownups, in terms children can access, about exploitation and what people deserve. It can also serve as a useful reference point for the commandment in Parashat Terumah “to donate all kinds of fancy things”, including exactly the silver, gold, and fabrics received here.

• Devash Jr. diverges from the Torah’s narrative voice in one noteworthy place. In Parashat Ki Tissa’s narration of the sin of the Golden Calf, the Biblical narrator describes Aharon’s participation with direct, active language: “He took [the gold earrings] from their hand, fashioned it with a graving-tool, and made it into a molten calf” (32:4). Devash Jr. uncharacteristically diverges from the narrator’s voice, saying, “He threw the gold into a fire, and out came a golden calf,” reflecting Aharon’s feeble explanation a little later in the narrative (32:24). I was surprised to see Devash Jr. depart from its usual approach here, and I think the book would be better served by sticking to the Torah’s narrative voice. Let the children be as surprised as adult readers are by the scandal of Aharon fashioning a golden calf. Devash Jr. already encourages the readers to ask, “Why did Aharon help them?” in the “Think about it!” section. Let them think about it!

• Finally, as of now, The Devash Jr. Book of Shemot is available for purchase only on Amazon, which is — how should I put this? — no kind of place for a ben or bat torah to do business. I look forward to Hadar putting the care it put into the composition of this remarkable book into the mechanics of making Devash Jr. available on Bookshop.com or Hadar’s own website.

These critiques should not obscure the profound achievement of this book. I eagerly await Devash Jr. editions of the other books of the Torah, may they come speedily, in our days. The Devash Jr. Book of Shemot demonstrates for a new audience that which has long been Hadar Institute’s exemplary vision: that Torah is rich with meaning and gimmicks are not necessary to receive it. With educational thoughtfulness grounded in reverence for Torah and respect for learners, even for the youngest ones on the cusp of reading, The Devash Jr. Book of Shemot demonstrates that Torah is “not in heaven…nor beyond the sea…but is very close to you”.