Workitu’s Passover

By Ben Hagai, Zahava Goshen and Eden Spivak

It is another day at Workitu’s village. As usual, she is awoken by the morning sounds of the village. However, for Workitu, something doesn’t feel right. She knows that today, ahead of the Passover celebrations, she will have to break all of the crockery she had become so used to, including her favourite cup, the one she made all by herself. She can’t help but feel that she will be losing something valuable and meaningful to her. 

Then, an incident makes her drop the cup she was holding on to the ground, breaking it into pieces. Workitu begins to cry, but then her auntie shares a secret she learned a long time ago, and Workitu is finally able to see this tradition in a new light: “It’s good to break things sometimes. To let go of old things . . . I break, and then I make. All with the same hands.”

With beautiful illustrations throughout, this is a meaningful tale about the importance of letting go of the old to make space for the new, and how family traditions are passed on through generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: May 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781784389000

Ben Hagai

Maayan Ben Hagai was born in Kibbutz Degania Bet in 1970. She is a social worker and owns a bookstore in a mobile truck, Astronautit, which she takes to various communities on the weekends. She has published two novels, short stories and a book for youth, Gudai, which she wrote with Zahava Goshen. She lives in Jerusalem with her three daughters.In 2016, Maayan received the Minister of Education's Award for Children's Literature for Gudai.

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