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5 Iyar 5760 - May 10, 2000 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family
BOOK REVIEW
Chogegim Im Chagit

by Menucha Fuchs
Reviewed by Sheindel Weinbach

I don't know if anyone can compete with our Libby Lazewnik - in any manner, especially as a prolific writer. But Menucha Fuchs is a close runner up, with a few dozen books to her fame and as a columnist. As far as style and message, each to his unique own!

Menucha Fuchs writes children's books in Hebrew. Some of them have been translated into English, like her "Chessed", "Little Scientists", "Hand in Hand", and probably others in the making.

But why wait? Why not read her captivating, charming books in the original?

Hebrew is not only our mother tongue, it is THE mother tongue of all languages, and becoming fluent in it can surely enrich the vocabulary of any woman or child who does any home study, be it in Shemiras Haloshon, Parshas Hashovua, Mussar, Kitzur Shulchon Oruch etc.

One reason is for getting into the habit of familiarizing yourself with the written language. And another reason, as we have pointed out time and again, is to close that generation gap of Anglo-Saxons who are raising an Israeli-born generation, or the gap created by a shrinking Jewish world with Eretz Yisroel at its hub.

Menucha Fuchs is simplicity itself. It takes hardly any effort to get into the book, which revolves around Chagit, a very normal, average babysitter, like you once were, use right now, or want your daughters to become. The age level target is probably from seven upwards, but there are subtle messages radiated all the time, the kind that children pick up subliminally and internalize best, since they are so natural. Which is the hallmark of a good writer.

One of the best examples might be Chagit's problem with elevators. An elementary case of claustrophobia which had its onset when she got stuck in an elevator as a child. This is treated in a very forthright manner with a head-on encounter. I don't know how a secular writer would go about resolving this knotty psychological block, but Menucha Fuchs does it admirably through the medium of bitochon. How?

Case history: A traumatic experience in an elevator. Everyone can identify with this.

Development: Babysitter finds a job with a family, the Appelbaums, who live four flights up. The children are accustomed to using it with adult accompaniment, and expect the babysitter to provide it. Chagit is afraid.

The crisis: The turning point comes when Chagit returns home from an outing with the three exhausted children, the youngest of whom has fallen asleep on the bus, in her arms. Chagit is knocked out, herself, and capitulates to the majority demand. In they go.

Chagit presses the button to get to the fourth floor. And then it happens. Again. Repeat performance of the elevator stopping midway and the light going out.

How does the author proceed to handle the initial problem? Perhaps she learned this trick from the tshuva process, where one is finally cured of a bad tendency only when one has relived the temptation - and overcome it.

All is pitch black, as it can only be in a hermetically sealed compartment like an elevator in an elevator shaft in the evening. "Help! Help!" scream the children.

From hereon in, we will translate, as it appears in the book:

I almost shouted along with them.

Suddenly, I gave myself a good shaking. `Wait a minute. How can I stand and scream when these little children are depending on me? I'm the big one here and I must manage, somehow.'

"Quiet, now. Hush up, girls!" I begged, futilely. The screaming kept up in spite of my pleading.

`I've got to do something to calm them down. Right away!' I said to myself.

`If I shout to get their attention, it won't work, because I can't outshout them. I'll have to do something different.'

`So what should I do?' Without thinking twice, I began to sing, `Eso einai el hehorim, me'ayin yovo ezri...'

The song succeeded in getting the girls quiet. They stopped screaming and looked at me questioningly. [By now, their eyes were accustomed to the dark.] Soon, they joined me. We sang one song after another, songs they knew. Then I suggested that we say Tehillim. I recited one verse, and they repeated it after me. Even little Ruthy repeated word for word.

I didn't stop to think what would be the outcome. I knew that there was Someone Upstairs Who made all the decisions and didn't need my help at all.

Then, just as we finished one chapter, the light went on and we began to move. The elevator went up slowly. It seemed like forever.

The door opened and a man entered. He didn't look like one of the residents.

"I'm the electrician," he said to me. "There was a power failure and I was called in to fix it. You got stuck in here, right? Poor kids! Now you'll probably be afraid of elevators for the rest of your lives!"

I couldn't help laughing. "I've BEEN afraid of elevators all my life," I told him. "But from now on, I feel that I'm not afraid any more at all. I don't know why. Maybe you can tell me?"

The electrician did not reply. I knew that if he were to answer, he would probably say, "I know about electricity and not about things like that," and he would continue to connect wires...

The messages here, as our adult readers will agree, are subtle and create a long lasting impression on impressionable young minds.

And if you connect the right wires together, you'll see that the same lessons can apply to us, too.

One of many elementary lessons in this fine book. Recommended for ALL ages.

 

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