Author: Agnieszka Suchowierska
Illustrator: Dorota Łoskot-Cichocka
Year: 2017
Publisher: Literatura
Place of publication: Łódź
Pages: 69
ISBN: 9788376725321
The story, set in modern times, narrates the life of a ten-year-old girl Ada Judytka, who lives in Białystok with her Jewish mother and a father of a different denomination. In her diary, which Ada types on her laptop, she describes certain aspects of Judaism and Jewish culture. Apart from the eponymous tallit, she mentions the tongue-twister song Chiribim Chiribom, famous Białystok Jews (for example Ludwik Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto), Jewish holidays (the Shabbat, Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur), the Hebrew alphabet, Fiddler on the Roof, the dreidel, the shofar, and so on. The characters visit POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The culture of Judaism is compared to the beliefs and traditions of Ada’s schoolmates, Orthodox Christian Ksenia and Catholic Kuba. At back of the book, a paper DIY dreidel can be found, as well as a mini-dictionary with a number of ideas referring not only to Judaism and Jewish culture, but also other religions and customs described in the text.
The Holocaust is mentioned as part of an account of Jewish history in Białystok. At the outbreak World War Two, a large Jewish community thrived there. Some of the Jews managed to escape the enemy. As for the ones who stayed, “the Nazis first locked them up in the Ghetto, and then killed them” (p. 16). Here, Ada admits that her mother is afraid of revealing her Jewish ancestry precisely because of these past events and her resulting fear of anti-Semitism. This is a remarkable feature in Agnieszka Suchowierska’s text as she emphasizes the continued fear of anti-Semitism looming over the contemporary community of Polish Jews.
Bibliography:
- Rybak, K., Obrazowanie Zagłady. Narracje holokaustowe w polskiej literaturze XXI wieku dla dzieci i młodzieży, Warszawa 2023 (p. 55, 239);
- Szumal, M., Ada Judytka i zaginiony tałes. Dziecięcy klucz do wielokulturowego Białegostoku, „Polonistyka. Innowacje”, no. 9, 2019, pp. 131–140.