Matzah Ball: A Passover Story

Sometimes it can be really hard to keep kosher for Passover with so many temptations surrounding you. And nobody knows it better than Aaron, a Jewish boy and main character of Mindy Avra Portnoy's children's book Matzah Ball: A Passover Story. This delightful tale takes place at an early season Orioles' baseball game at Camden Field during the week of Passover. Much to his disliking, Aaron totes his "Kosher for Passover" lunch-sack to the game. While his friends will be consuming mass quantities of junk food he'll be forced to chomp away on his tuna fish and dry matzah crackers. Once his friends discover he's packing a meal full of kosher delights they waste no time helping themselves to his lunch. Poor Aaron is left with nothing to eat until a kind older man offers him a matzah cracker and tells him a story that ultimately changes Aaron's mind about being Jewish. The story couples a few traditional Passover themes, keeping kosher and Elijah, with the beginning of the baseball season in order to explain that even though at times it may seem difficult or inconvenient to be Jewish the reward lies in being true to one's self.