Chelm for the Holidays

October 7, 2019
“When the angels were distributing silliness throughout the world,” Frankel writes, “their bowl tipped, spilling all the silliness into one town—Chelm.” But as these 10 Jewish holiday–themed stories show, silliness never gets in the way of the Chelmites fulfilling their festive duties. Frankel doesn’t always have the firmest narrative hand, but two stories successfully combine the Chelmites’ goofy logic with endearing evocations of shtetl life. A tale for Shabbat, “The Disappearing Challah,” finds the town miser attempting to bribe God to get into heaven and inadvertently feeding a poor man and his wife for 10 years. In “The Oiliest Miracle,” the Chelmites discover they have no oil left for the town’s menorah (they’re so despondent they almost stop eating); the answer, of course, is stuffing greasy latkes into the eight branches of the candelabra and igniting them. Ages 8–12.