Alona Frankel is an author and illustrator renowned for over thirty children’s picture books. She is most famous for her classic series Once Upon a Potty (original Hebrew Sir hasirim; 1975; 1st English edition, 1980), which has sold millions of copies worldwide. Born in Kraków, Poland, Frankel settled in Israel in 1949. In 2005, she received the Sapir Prize for Literature and Yad Vashem’s Buchman Prize for her literary memoir Yalda (Girl; 2004). Her second memoir volume, Naara (Teen) appeared in 2009. Other major Frankel works include Sefer hapilpilim (The Family of Tiny White Elephants; 1980) and Sipur al nesiḥa (The Princess and the Caterpillar; 1983).
At her meeting with the associate dean, Edith Margareten asked the administrator, a woman in her mid-40s, about the climate for Jews at Notre Dame. “Oh, it’s fine,” she said. “I’m Methodist myself.”
“…
Under the roof of the oldest synagogue in Prague (the Altneuschul), because of the belief that misfortune would meet the workers, there is preserved, in its primeval form and color, a piece of trunk…
I inherited naive open-heartedness
From generations of small-town Polish Jews,
And sharp talk
From hot-bathed women in my clan.
A blind June-night mixed it all
And sent me out—
With no…