We get to meet the authors of Benny Feldman’s All-Star Klezmer Band at our next BeJewcy Book Club meeting! (I’ve actually met them before and they are WONDERFUL!)
Benny Feldman’s All-Star Klezmer Band is so warm and funny it’s the best kind of cozy. This middle-grade novel by authors Allison Marks and Wayne Marks celebrates Jewish music and Jewish identity, friendship, and the messy, courageous journey of trying to figure out who you are in the world.
I was seventeen the first time I remember engaging with Hebrew. I’d gone to my first, ever, High Holiday services just weeks before. I’d gone to Friday night Shabbat services enough times that I could sing along with some of the prayers - which I thought of as songs - reading along with the transliteration. That Friday night as we sang Shalom Rav I remember I touched the Hebrew letters. I touched that first one, that “sh” one, all round on the bottom and reaching up with three fingers. I touched the last one, the one that sounded like “mmm” that was a squared-off circle. I didn’t know their names, and I didn’t know that the last one was in its final form. My eyes scurried mouse-like around the page hungry for the morsels of “sh” and “m.” My hand shook. I wanted these letters. I wanted ALL of these letters.
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