Uri Shulevitz was born in Warsaw, and lived in France and Israel before moving to the United States in 1959. Shulevitz is an award- winning author and illustrator of children’s books. He was honored with the 1969 Caldecott Medal.
This book retells the legendary founding of the Isaac Synagogue in Kraków, originally told by Simcha Bunim of Peshischa in the nineteenth century.
During the bitterest days of my European exile, I turn to the photo album where I keep, along with more recent memories, a few images from my childhood—images that enlarged and corrected, come back to…
O my creator! Pay heed to the servant that knocks at your doors; open up for him the entrance to the lintel of your dwelling place.
As he lifts up his eyes to you, may his supplication, his cries…