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Article: Angelic escapades. (Reviews).(Review)
- Article from:
- Judaism
- Article date:
- January 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 American Jewish Congress. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Moses and the Angels. By ILEENE SMITH SOBEL (paintings by Mark Podwal). New York: Delacorte Press. 1999.
Moses and the Angels is a unique, yet ultimately unsatisfying, children's book. The author splices fantasmagorical stories of angels from midrashim and legends into the Torah's version of Moses, making the Torah's account, with its burning bushes, parting seas, and divine voices, seem downright tame. One wonders what to make of the irruption of angels into a children's book about Moses. I imagine that the author, as Elie Wiesel suggests in his introduction, seeks to appeal to children's capacity for the magical. Perhaps it is a kind of religio-cultural ...