PJ Library Goes to Israel
by Naomi Firestone
Jewish Book Council Blog
September 10, 2009
Galina Vromen, a past judge for the National Jewish Book Awards and currently the head of Harold Grinspoon Foundation’s operations in Israel and director of Sifriyat Pijama, just sent me a press release on PJ Library’s new program in Israel. The program, known in Israel as Sifriyat Pijama (Hebrew for Pajama Library) will benefit some 3,000 kindergarten children, mostly in underprivileged northern parts of Israel. Every month participants will receive a free children’s book at school to take home and read with their parents. The books come with guides for parents to help them engage in discussion and activities with their children that focus on the Jewish values of the books. It’s a wonderful idea and questions about it can be directed to Galina at galina@hgf.org.
Please see below for an excerpt from the press release:
Although Israeli children often know more about Jewish holidays than their American counterparts, Harold Grinspoon, the founder of the PJ Library, discovered in conversations with Israeli educators that Israeli children are often unaware of what Judaism has to say about universal values. On frequent trips to Israel, he also heard teachers bemoan the dearth of books in many of their young charges’ homes, particularly in peripheral areas of Israel.
“Sifriyat Pijama is designed to address both education in Jewish values in Israel and reading in the family,” explained Galina Vromen, head of Harold Grinspoon Foundation’s operations in Israel and director of Sifriyat Pijama.
Grinspoon, who launched The PJ Library in his native Massachusetts in 2005, first got the idea from country singer Dolly Parton. He brought Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a literacy program that distributes books to inner-city children, to Western Massachusetts. “It occurred to me – this is the ideal project to adapt to the Jewish community,” he recalled.
“The Israeli version, Sifriyat Pijama, is a synthesis of The PJ Library and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library,” explained Vromen. “It creates Jewish moments like The PJ Library, but, often, the population we are working with is similar to the families served by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. We are distributing the books across the board in the communities where we work – to rich and poor, religious and non-religious.”
In its first year, Sifriyat Pijama will involve children in a disadvantaged part of Israel with which the Harold Grinspoon Foundation has a long-standing relationship – Afula, the Gilboa and Upper Nazareth – as well as kindergartens in the Tali (Enhanced Judaism Studies) school network. In addition, with co-funding from the Moriah Foundation, a few schools with a predominantly Ethiopian immigrant population in Netanya will receive books, as will afterschool Tzipora Centers run primarily for Ethiopian immigrants by the Eli Wiesel Foundation.