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Loading... Private Joel and the Sewell Mountain Sederby Bryna J. Fireside
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A young Jewish Union soldier realizes Passover is approaching and he will be far from home. Together with the other Jewish men of his unit, his commanding officer, and three freed slaves of a nearby Negro Regiment, he arranges all they will need to hold seders and observe the holiday. Somehow he manages to get matzah, cider, lamb, even haggadahs, and with a little ingenuity (and not a little cider), the men hold a memorable set of seders in West Virginia. This fictionalized account is based on memoirs and records researched by the author. I highly recommend it for primary aged children. It is an easy to read, brief chapter book, fully illustrated, with a historical research note at the end. no reviews | add a review
A group of Jewish soldiers, and three freed slaves, have a Passover seder in 1862 on the battlefields of the Civil War. No library descriptions found.
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After recently reading and enjoying Elka Weber and John Winch's The Yankee at the Seder, another true story of a Passover seder during or immediately after the American Civil War, I decided to seek out Private Joel and the Sewell Mountain Seder as well, in order to contrast and compare. This is a somewhat more advanced title, being quite textually dense for a picture-book, and tells an interesting story. The makeshift aspect of the seder celebration felt authentic - after all, Private Joel and his compatriots would have had a difficult time coming by everything they needed, on a mountaintop in West Virginia - and the comparisons between the story of Passover, and of the Exodus, on the one hand, and the fight against modern-day slavery on the other, felt quite appropriate. The drunkenness of the soldiers, after drinking a little too much cider, was unexpected in a children's book, but also amusing. I don't think this one was as well-written or as engaging as the Weber/Winch title, but it was certainly well worth reading. Recommended to more advanced picture-book readers looking for Passover and/or Civil War stories. ( )