The ‘library’ that’s a lifeline for families
SAM GRAINGER is six and Zachary Swain is five. They live hundreds of miles apart, but they have a lot in common.
They both live in villages, with quintessentially English names — Sam comes from Bunwell in Norfolk, Zachary’s home in Whimple in Devon, is the only one with a mezuzah among the thatched cottages.
They both have mothers who are Jewish and teachers, and fathers who are not Jewish but who support bringing their boys up as Jews. Sam and Zachary are both described by their mothers as: “The only Jewish child in the village school.”
Sam goes to two synagogues in Norwich, one Orthodox, one Liberal, while Exeter Synagogue, which Zachary attends is non-affiliated, and reflects its members — a bit of everything.
The boys are as far from the Jewish “bubble” as they can be. And their mothers similarly grew up outside the main centres of Anglo-Jewish life, Hannah Grainger in Norwich, Gaby Swain in “deepest Somerset”, a pupil of Wells Cathedral School.
The boys share something else too. Every month they receive a package containing children’s books on Jewish themes; attractive, colourful books, fiction and non-fiction, about Judaism, festivals, Shabbat, Israel, Jewish people and families.
These books help Zachary, Sam and Sam’s brothers expand and strengthen their Jewish identities. Their mothers say they are a “lifeline”.
The books come from PJ Library, an organisation set up by an elderly man from Mass a c h u s e t t s . Harold Grinspoon made a Zachary Swain fortune in property, then established a charitable foundation to build Jewish identity and invigorate Jewish life globally while ensuring a strong state of Israel. One of the foundation’s main initiatives was PJ Library, which started by sending books to 200,000 families in Massachusetts, expanded rapidly and has distributed more than seven million books in North America in the past 10 years. In 2011 the service went global and now provides books to families in countries including Australia, Mexico, Singapore, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Uruguay and Russia. The programme started in the UK in 2015 and there is so much demand that there is currently a waiting list. Mr Grinspoon wanted to give children something his child-