Sing Time

Description

Sing Time by Bruce H. Siegel 'The cantor likes Elvis! But what does Elvis have to do with learning Torah? And does he really think that listening to rock music will make me like Sunday school?' The protagonist of this new juvenile novel finds the answer to these and other questions in the unlikeliest of places-the office of a cantor, the religious official who leads the singing in Jewish prayer services. The book begins on a gray afternoon. An unnamed ten-year-old boy is wandering the halls of a strange synagogue while his father registers him and his brother for Hebrew school. Suddenly he finds himself in the messiest-and most intriguing-office he has ever seen. And somewhere within this chaos is Cantor Eli Jacobs. The boy and the cantor talk only once. In the course of their brief conversation, however, they touch on topics as concrete as the words to a Little Richard song and abstract as the nature of time. Cantor Jacobs also helps the boy reconcile one of the most harrowing and problematic stories of the Bible. And through this new interpretation of an old tale, the boy comes to better understand some of the more troubling aspects of his own imperfect family. The title of this touching story, SING TIME, refers to a phrase the boy sees in a framed picture on Cantor Jacobs' wall. These words-and their unique message-become part of an unexpected gift from the cantor that steers the boy down a path he might never have taken.