AGE: 7-10In
little Sheindel’s eyes, the world was full of beauty. She loved picking
flowers, skating in her wooden skates on the frozen river in winter, gazing at
the clouds changing their shapes in the sky and imagining them to be whatever
she wanted. Sheindel and her family lived in a little village in Europe, one
of the places that the Jews called a shtetl in Yiddish. For hours on end
she would watch her father the blacksmith at work, as he made different tools out
of molten metal that looked like gold to her, but was actually just plain
brass. One day he made a pair of candlesticks that weren’t a success and came
out all crooked and wrong. He was disappointed and wanted to scrap them, but
Sheindel stopped him and said that she thought they were lovely. She lit
candles in them every Sabbath eve, and never parted from them, even when she
grew up, got married and had a daughter named Rochele. The candles in the crooked
candlesticks lit up the little cradle and Sheindel hoped that her daughter
would also learn to like things with flaws. Then there came days of darkness
and evil. Sheindel’s husband was shot dead; the only synagogue in the village
was burned down, and the Jews were driven away, across the frozen river, and
herded together into a ghetto. There were no candles to light in the ghetto,
but Sheindel and Rochele kept on blessing the light although darkness covered
the earth.
Nava
Semel’s story is one of memory and continuity and the need to seek out beauty
in a world where there is so much ugliness. Sheindel’s
great-granddaughter, Nava, didn’t know her, but the candlesticks survived
and now, when Nava lights them and prays that the darkness won’t return, she
imagines the blacksmith’s little girl in the shtetl waving her little
hand at her.
Illustrations:
Gilad Seliktar