Let My People Go!

by Tilda Balsey

illustrated by Ilene Richard

$7.95 paperback

Ages 4 and up

Grades PreK and Up

Kar-Ben Publishing

When Let My People Go, a retelling of the 10 plagues, arrived at our house, I wanted some time to preview it before reading it aloud to my daughter, Ella. Still working on a narrative of Purim that would gloss lightly over assassination plots, gallows and edicts to kill the Jews, I wasn’t quite ready to explain the next “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat” holiday. So the book sat around, untouched, for several days – unusual for a book in our house. But once Ella spotted the cover, festooned with wacky Egyptians and acrobatic frogs, she wanted to hear it immediately.

“Not yet. I want to read it first,” I replied.

“Well, why do you want to read it first?” she asked.

“I want to make sure it’s not too scary.”

Ella thumbed through the book, assessing the colorful cartoon pictures. “I KNOW it’s not too scary.” she announced.

I complied, and thus began her introduction to the 10 plagues. Ella laughed as the Egyptians held their noses around the “red” water (I may have read the word bloody just a tiny bit more softly than the rest of the text on the page) and as the hailstones bounced off Pharoah’s head. She was more interested in the fancy outfits of the women in the illustrations than the insects swarming thickly around their heads, and didn’t seem to notice the retching donkey or the sheep, legs splayed heavenward, in various states of rigor mortis. But, having chanted the plagues twice a year, every year, for almost 40 years, I knew that I wasn’t quite ready to share the final plague with my first-born child. So after the plague of darkness, when the remarkably obtuse Pharoah once again refused to let the Israelites free, I paused. “Look what time it is!” I exclaimed. “Let’s make lunch.”

Two grilled cheese sandwiches later, Ella wanted to hear the end of the story. You know, the part when God decides to kill every first born Egyptian son. Not exactly Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus material. Unprepared to field any questions that might arise, (Oh Readers’ Guide, how could you leave me on my own with the Angel of Death?)  I read fast. Really fast. “Thisplaugeisbadbeyondcompare / deathtoeveryfirstbornson / fromroyalborntopoorestone,” and turned the page before pausing to take a breath. “Hey, look at all those people following Moses!” I gasped. Ella promptly turned back to page I had just zipped through.

“What happened in this part?” she asked, understandably confused.

I paused. “Well, it says that the first born Egyptian boys would……well, something bad would happen to them.”

“What?” she persisted.

I paused again. “They would die.” I answered grimly. Ella looked puzzled. “But I don’t really believe that happened,” I added quickly. “I think it’s just a story.”

“Me neither,” Ella laughed. “That would never happen!”

So, it turned out she was right. The book wasn’t too scary for her. And I suspect that this had less to do with the absurd way I read it to her, and more to do with the way she heard it. Perhaps, as psychologist Bruno Bettelheim argued about fairy tales in The Uses of Enchantment, children hear the stories of the Torah differently from adults. While the tales might seem scary, politically incorrect, or inappropriate in a myriad of ways to us as parents, maybe children hear something else. Maybe they discover fundamental truths about themselves and the world. (Or maybe not. After all, Bettelheim also blamed childhood autism on cold, distant mothers.) Alternatively, perhaps they take in the parts they are ready for, and discard the rest as only that much more inscrutable blather from grownups.

As a parent, I struggle with how to handle some of the grim and morbid stories in our tradition, which, unfortunately, are mighty prevalent. Ella is swiftly outgrowing the ignore-the-uncomfortable-parts approach. A book like Let My People Go offers another possible approach - make it silly. The popularity of plague bags leads me to believe that this strategy works for lots of parents. I happen to find the idea of tossing plush boils around the table to be in poor taste, to put it mildly.  But more importantly, I don’t like the idea of my children laughing at someone else’s suffering, even if they don’t realize that’s what they are doing. I think it’s far more appropriate to spill out 10 drops of sweet juice than to engage in “Family Fun with the 10 Plagues!” (one of the first hits I found on Google while researching this piece.)

Maybe I’m being far too analytical. Ella loved the book. Nevertheless I’m struggling with the urge to hide it. Yesterday I found her at the kitchen table, poring over the last picture. She gestured towards the blood dripping off the Israelites doorposts’.

“What do you think that is?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered. Which meant, of course, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know whether to shelter you from everything that’s hard in the world. I don’t know how much longer I can put off answering all of these difficult questions. But maybe, just maybe, one more year?

Comments? Ideas? Please share them at my website, www.amymeltzer.com, where you can also read my previous PJ columns.

Amy Meltzer is an award-winning writer and educator. She has worked in a myriad of Jewish educational settings, teaching and designing programs for day schools, supplementary schools, camps, wilderness schools and Hillel. She was the founding director of the Teva Learning Center, North America's foremost Jewish environmental education center.

Amy is the author of A Mezuzah on the Door, a 2008 AJL Notable Book for Young Readers. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters.

The PJ Library™ program sends Jewish-content books and music on a monthly basis to families with children through age seven. Created by The Harold Grinspoon Foundation, The PJ Library is funded nationally in partnership with The Harold Grinspoon Foundation and local philanthropists/organizations.  To learn more, go to www.pjlibrary.org

This column was originally published on pjlibrary.org

Reprinted with permission of The PJ Library and Amy Meltzer.

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