Rosh HaShanah. Mid-morning. Stillness descends upon the congregation, broken only by the powerful yet trembling voice of the chazzan as he begins the sacred words of the timeless prayer, “Unesaneh Tokef.”
And then little Dovi crunches on his pretzels.

It’s not easy, being a youngster in shul. You don’t know what the words mean. You don’t understand why all the big people look so sad (though, after being told for the third time to sit still, you’re feeling pretty sad yourself…) You finished the snacks that were supposed to last you through lunchtime in the first fifteen minutes, and now you’re bored, bored, BORED!
Unless your parents were wise enough to give you The Elefant Edition ArtScroll Children’s Machzor for Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur by popular children’s author, Shmuel Blitz.

Shmuel Blitz began his career as an author by putting kids to sleep. His Bedtime Stories for Children series, which debuted 13 years ago, was hailed by tens of thousands of parents and their children, and “Blitz-at-bedtime’’ became a recognized phenomena in Jewish homes throughout the world.
But if the carefully chosen stories, short format (beautifully suited to a tired child’s attention span), and entertaining illustrations of the Bedtime Stories was the perfect way to put a child to sleep, what could keep that same youngster awake, alert, and engaged during the hours he or she would spend in shul? How could the beauty of Jewish prayer be conveyed in a way that a young child would most appreciate?
Using his popular, kid-friendly format, that had been so successful, Shmuel Blitz created the ArtScroll Children’s Siddur. For the first time, youngsters had a siddur designed especially for them. It contained eye-catching illustrations, translations that they could understand, and fun facts and “did-you-know’s” that entertained as they educated. The Children’s Siddur – and the Children’s Hagaddah, Megillahs, and Tehillim — became a beloved part of school, home, and, particularly, the shul experience.
And now, finally, youngsters can enrich their Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur davening as well, with the newly-released Elefant Editon ArtScroll Children’s Machzor. The machzor has all the features children have learned to love: wonderful pictures, age-appropriate translations, and fascinating facts. Children will learn why we blow shofar, what the simanim stand for, and what Yom Kippur really means. They will follow along the major prayers. Most important of all, children – yes, even “little Dovi’’ –  will develop warm and positive feelings for the tefillos and for shul, feelings that will stay with them long after they’ve grown up.

Trailblazing author Shmuel Blitz talks to radio personality Nachum Segal about the Elefant Edition ArtScroll Children’s Machzor, and how to  keep our children involved and engaged during the Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur prayers.  To listen to this wide-ranging interview, click here.

A decade ago, at a forum sponsored by the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation, Rav Pam zt’l, venerable rosh yeshiva of Torah Vodaath, made a plea – and issued a challenge. The topic he was speaking about was ona’as devarim – hurtful speech, which, in Rav Pam’s own words “…is comprised of words that cut deeply and cause a great deal of pain, and is the cause of many tragedies.” So much had been done to educate the Jewish world about the dangers of loshon hora, of speaking ill of others. But what about the negative words that one person said not about another, but to another? What about the biting remarks, the criticisms, the insults, which led, Rav Pam said, to broken hearts, broken homes, and broken lives? Then Rav Pam issued the challenge: “Much more needs to be said publicly about the tragedy spawned by ona’as devarim. This concept needs the kind of exposure that has been applied to loshon hora in recent years…”

Positive Word Power, published by ArtScroll/Mesorah in conjunction with the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation, is the answer to Rav Pam’s words. Following the extraordinarily successful format of The Chofetz Chaim: A Lesson a Day on the laws of loshon hora, Positive Word Power focuses on our verbal interactions with people. “Positive Word Power is not about verbal abuse,” says one of the editors who was involved in the multi-year, collaborative effort. “This is about the nuances of conversation, the little differences that can make a big difference. It’s about the small criticisms that we keep repeating.”

Positive Word Power identifies the negative speech patterns that we often tend to follow, and shows us how to replace them with encouraging, affirming ones. Each entry includes a scenario that shows us how to put the positive speech into our real life interactions. “You will find yourself in these scenarios,” says the project’s editorial director. “The scenarios are so believable – you’ll keep saying, ‘hey, that could be me!’”

Rav Pam said, on that historic day: “The result [of refraining from ona’as devarim] would surely be fewer marital problems, less estrangement of children from their parents and fewer dropouts from the yeshivos… powerful words should be written about this topic…” At last, those “powerful words,” and the blessings that refraining from ona’as devarim bring, are available to anyone who can give a few minutes a day to learn “Positive Word Power.”

 Good news for Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s thousands of devoted readers: his newest book, Life is Now, has just been released.  One of the book’s chapters is titled “Joy Made Easy.”  During a recent conversation with Rabbi Pliskin I saw how true those words are. It’s easy to be joyful when you’re talking to this warm, effervescent and ultra-positive personality, author of many bestselling ArtScroll books. Some highlights of the conversation:

On happiness:  “People think it’s so hard to be happy. I lead a ‘Joy Club’ in Jerusalem. We meet once a month to talk about happiness, gratitude, kindness.  At one of the meetings, someone asked: what happens, a person just lost his job – how can he be happy? The idea is — we’re always in the present moment, and in this moment we can create a moment of joy, whatever the circumstances. In other words, focus on the present – and find the happiness that is in the here and now.”
On his new book, Life is Now: “This is a very important book. It’s teaching the skill of learning joy: to live in the present. Most distress comes from excessive and unnecessary focusing on the past and/or unnecessary and unproductive focusing on what might go wrong in the future. What we’re looking for is a wise balance between past, present, and future.”
On how to be happy: “Life is Now takes the reader through a ‘self-creation workshop.’  We examine the key elements that create us: our self-talk, our self-image, our goals, and our ‘traits & states.’  We see the ten biochemical changes that take place when we feel happy. One chapter is devoted to how to start your own ‘happiness club,’ giving the 9 principles a ‘happiness coach’ must learn to follow. The book gives us practical strategies to help us create a moment of joy right now, things like taking a ‘joy walk’ or even baking ‘joy cookies.’ They sound like small things, but that moment of joy can change our lives.”

To hear Leah Jacobs, co-author of the classic Shidduch Secrets, talk about  her book, the “shidduch crisis,” and how to successfully find your “bashert,” , click here.

 Not far away from such venerable American institutions as the Capitol and the Smithsonian stands the U.S. Patent Office. Here we can find more than 5 million patents, fascinating records of humanity’s imagination and ingenuity. Among them are those that brought light (patent number 12631 — the incandescent light bulb) and knowledge (patent number 3120606 — ENIAC, the world’s first computer) to the world.

And then there is ArtScroll’s unique Interlinear Translation system (patent number 6778950) which brought both light and knowledge to the world in a very different way.

 The original ArtScroll translations introduced hundreds of thousands of English speakers to the beautiful and timeless words of Torah and Jewish prayer. Yet one thing was lacking in all translations: they always appeared on the opposite facing page. It was difficult for someone who wanted to follow the translation along, word for word, with the original Hebrew.

 The answer to the problem was clear:  to place an English language translation immediately beneath the Hebrew words. But that raised another challenge: how to deal with the fact that Hebrew reads from right to left, while English reads in the opposite direction, from left to right? How could the English translation be readable, if you had to read it backwards?

 That challenge brought about an innovation so revolutionary that it became the only patented translation system in the world of Jewish publishing. The ArtScroll Interlinear Translations, in the various Schottenstein editions, use an arrow system that guides the eye gently, directing it through the full text in the proper direction. Not sure what a word means in the Chumash or Siddur? Just glance down below and see the translation right there. Want to understand the meaning of an entire phrase or sentence? Your eye moves down to the English and then rapidly, almost unconsciously, follows the arrows to read a flowing, word for word translation, from right to left, from left to right, without interruption.

 The Interlinear Translations have revolutionized the way English speakers learn and pray. With the publication of Sefer Devarim, the Schottenstein Interlinear Chumash is now complete, in five volumes. Many other classic works are available in the interlinear format: the Siddur, the Machzor, the Hagaddah, Megillas Esther, Sefer Tehilim, Zemiros, Pirkei Avos, and the Vidui service.

 The very best inventions change the way we live. The ArtScroll/Mesorah Interlinear translations have changed the way we read, learn, and pray. And what could be more important than that?

As the Tisha B’Av fast comes to an end, hear Rabbi Nosson Scherman share thoughts for the last hour of Tisha B’Av. Listen to “ArtScroll on the Air”  with Nachum Segal,  this Thursday night, AM 620 in the NY/NJ area from 8:00-8:30 PM and also on www.nachumsegal.com.

He writes about “regular people who do great things.” Rabbi Binyomin Pruzansky talks about his stories, his books, his life.  To hear an inspiring interview, click here.

 Many people find the days leading to Tisha B’Av a fitting time to study and reflect upon the Holocaust, the terrible churban of contemporary times.  Certainly, books on the Holocaust place us in the somber, mournful mood so appropriate to this sad season. But more: while difficult and often heart-wrenching, many accounts of the Holocaust can give us the strength to deal with Jewish suffering. We cannot comprehend the tragedy, but we can gain inspiration from the greatness that many Jews showed in the face of their ordeals.

ArtScroll/Mesorah has a large number of books dealing with many different facets of the Holocaust. Just a small sampling:

Sparks of Glory: This groundbreaking work was published decades ago, and has just been re-released after being out of print for many years. As timely now as it was upon its first publication, it is a compilation of incredible tales of spiritual heroism told by survivors in the DP camps directly to the author, Rabbi Moshe Prager. The original Hebrew was published before the Eichmann trial, at a time when Holocaust victims and survivors were looked upon as “sheep going to the slaughter”  – to be pitied, perhaps, but not respected. This work was one of the first to show the spiritual strength and resistance that Jews exhibited under the most horrific conditions.

Live, Remember, Tell the World: The author, Leah Kaufman, was only nine when she and her family were driven on a death march. Somehow she lived, and, all alone, remained true to her parents’ faith in Hashem and love of His  Torah. An inspiring, almost unbelievable memoir.

Shoah: A Jewish Perspective on the Holocaust: Two distinguished Torah scholars, Rabbis Yoel Schwartz and Yitzchak Goldstein, took on the daunting task of dealing with the hashkafah of suffering, as seen through the prism of the Holocaust. A truly remarkable work of Jewish thought.

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Rabbi Heshy Kleinman, author of the bestselling Praying With Fire  and Praying with Fire Volume 2, talks about his books, and how we can tap into the incredible power of prayer. To hear this inspiring interview, click here.