Alona Frankel is an author and illustrator renowned for over thirty children’s picture books. She is most famous for her classic series Once Upon a Potty (original Hebrew Sir hasirim; 1975; 1st English edition, 1980), which has sold millions of copies worldwide. Born in Kraków, Poland, Frankel settled in Israel in 1949. In 2005, she received the Sapir Prize for Literature and Yad Vashem’s Buchman Prize for her literary memoir Yalda (Girl; 2004). Her second memoir volume, Naara (Teen) appeared in 2009. Other major Frankel works include Sefer hapilpilim (The Family of Tiny White Elephants; 1980) and Sipur al nesiḥa (The Princess and the Caterpillar; 1983).
A Meeting at the StationI stood outside the grocery, holding a shopping bag in one hand, and Phat’hi’s strange “letter” in the other. I looked at the drawings of the car, the clock, and the sign over…
Rabbi Levi Yitskhok’s drayman—the one who wore
tales and tfiln as he smeared the wheels
of his wagon with tar—
turns up in the shape of a bunch of Jews
hanging around their houses,
washing the car
(w…
The main point is that, since we are all irremediably inadequate to know the essence of God’s nature, all names (attempts to capture the Divine essence) are metaphors.
We can encourage children to “do…