The PJ Library: a Jewish Childhood From Cover to Cover
by Joanna S. Ballantine and Gali Cooks
CONTACT: The Journal of Jewish Life Network Steinhardt Foundation
April 14, 2007
Once upon a time, while sitting on a plane waiting to take off, Harold Grinspoon watched a young mother help her fussy toddler settle down. The mother pulled out the classical storybook The Little Engine That Could from her backpack. Almost instantly, the child rested her head in her mother’s lap and listened intently to the soothing words. “I think I can. I think I can...” By the time the plane took off, the child was fast asleep. Recognizing this mother/daughter experience as a nurturing and powerful moment of childhood, Harold wondered, “Could this moment be transformed into a Jewish moment?” Some weeks later, Harold learned about the Imagination Library, a nationwide literacy program created and administered by Dolly Parton. The initiative sends a free age-appropriate book each month to every child under five in her community. The Imagination Library has numerous financial partners across the country who see it as an effective way to bring books into the homes of families who are in need of such resources. Within months, Harold became a partner in the Imagination Library, offering free books to inner-city, preschool families in his home community of Springfield, MA.
On his way to a lecture about the state of Jewish demographics, Harold thought, “We can use the model of the Imagination Library to send Jewish children’s books to Jewish families.” A few weeks later, at a Grinspoon family Seder, children were delighted when they received beautiful Jewish children’s books upon finding the afikomen. At that point, Harold realized that we have jewels that must be shared with Jewish families. Thus, the PJ Library was born. The PJ Library (PJ for pajamas) mails a monthly Jewish children’s book, CD of Jewish music or select parenting book to Jewish families with children aged six-months through six years. Launched in our local area of Western Massachusetts in December 2005, the PJ Library has attracted more than 750 children (525 families), which represent nearly 60 percent of the eligible population in Western Massachusetts.
Having successfully established the program locally, Harold and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation wanted to extend it across the country. Just as Imagination Library takes on the task of negotiating prices for bulk purchases with publishers and centrally handles the distribution and warehousing for local communities, PJ Library has taken the hassle out of the process and allows donors to make a real and lasting gift to their local communities with ease.
Through partner communities and funding from local federations, foundations and/or philanthropists, the PJ Library is now available to families in 28 cities across the country, from Shreveport, Louisiana to San Francisco, California. The program is donor-recognized in each community, so while a PJ child in Western Massachusetts receives a book in an envelope that says the gift is from “The Harold Grinspoon Foundation and the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts,” in other communities around the country, the gift comes from the local donor/sponsor.
The pace of expansion has been remarkable. Our goal is to engage dozens of cities and thousands of families in the program. Parents have lauded the PJ Library’s simplicity and convenience. Within weeks after signing up, they begin receiving award-winning, high-quality Jewish children’s books at their mailboxes each month. The key here is quality and age-appropriateness. To assure this, the PJ Library has engaged a committee of world-class Jewish educators and experts in children’s literature who have carefully chosen books that will engage and spark the imagination. A six-month old receives a different book than does his or her five-year-old sibling. The committee constantly reviews new and re-issued books to keep the list updated and fresh. The beauty of the program is that it — and the books — speak both to engaged as well as to marginally connected Jewish families. The program is particularly sensitive to families where only one parent is Jewish, families who may send their child to a JCC preschool but do not carry out Jewish rituals in the home, parents who may have grown up in a synagogue but feel alienated from Jewish life, and parents who may have attended Jewish overnight summer camp but do not have the knowledge base to impart to their children the yiddishkheit they may have learned there. We believe strongly in providing the PJ Library free for the first year because we want it to be clear that this is a gift. After that, there is an $18 renewal fee each year, as an indication that the family has a true interest in the program and is using the books in the home. What’s more, the monthly mailings come with guides to help parents access Jewish information in the books. For example, a book like It’s Challah Time comes with a challah recipe to make bread with children.
A family’s Jewish journey is intensely personal and multi-faceted. The PJ Library, through its gentle stories and user-friendly resources, aims to transform the special moments of childhood into Jewish moments. The dozens of letters we have received from parents attest that it is working. Based on a survey of Western Massachusetts families conducted less than a year after our local launch, we learned that the PJ Library is having a transformative effect on a broad range of Jewish families. Survey highlights include:
• 44 percent of families responded to the survey (a very high response rate)
• 80 percent of parents read the books at least once a week
• About 50 percent of families are unaffiliated with any Jewish institution
• Over 50 percent of the parents are intermarried
• 84 percent of families give the PJ Library program top rankings and have recommended the program to friends
We know that reaching out to young families is critical to winning the future of American Jewry. Dr. Mark Rosen, senior researcher at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, has found in his research: “If the Jewish community reaches out to young Jewish couples when they have a child, there is potentially a three to five year window for influencing their future educational choices and the Jewish identity of their children.”
The PJ Library is ideally poised to fill this national need. It meets young families where they are sure to be — at home. It is a first step in a community effort to reach families when parents are most open to change. In the best of circumstances, it can and should be coupled with community and family education, developing a seamless approach to engaging young families in Jewish life. The PJ Library is a simple idea and one that is easy for communities to adopt around the country. It has tremendous potential to transform families’ Jewish journeys and affect the future of an inspired American Jewish story.
Joanna S. Ballantine is the Executive Director of the Harold Grinspoon
Foundation (www.hgf.org) and a mother of two. Gali Cooks
was the founding Director of the PJ Library (www.pjlibrary.org).
Published in CONTACT: The Journal of Jewish Life Network Steinhardt Foundation; Winter 2007; Volume 9 Number 2, available at www.jewishlife.org/journal.html