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Follow on Google News | The Maccabee on the Mantel, a New Educational Plush Toy for the Holidays!By: Maccabee on the Mantel Indeed, it can only be called bashert – fated by divine providence – that the children of Abra Liberman-Garrett and David Wilk would become best friends in kindergarten. Both Liberman-Garrett and Wilk were raised Jewish (with mothers who had converted to Judaism), and now living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with young families, always surrounded by holiday celebrations that were either blandly generic or openly Christian. “I grew up in Chicago,” says Liberman-Garrett, “where the visibility of the Jewish holidays was a given. But when I put my children in a secular school, and they scheduled a field trip on the high holidays, I realized that many people here hadn’t met many Jews – they weren’t even on the periphery.” To remain connected to the stories and community she grew up with and share those traditions with her young children, Liberman-Garrett had worked for several years as a pre-school teacher at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas. And so it was at another in a seemingly endless series of holiday/Christmas parties where Liberman-Garrett and Wilk happened to take a longer look at an Elf on the Shelf, now ubiquitous in most homes with children. “Where’ “We are the ‘yes, and,’ company,” Wilk explains, citing the foundational philosophy of successful improvisation and collaboration. He and his colleagues not only produce sold-out shows every weekend in their 212-seat theatre on Sundance Square, but offer classes, host corporate events, and bring their unique brand of training and performance into the business communities. Among their many awards, Four Day Weekend was just named the Small Business of the Year by the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce and recently received the Key to the City for being the “Fort Worth’s Greatest Ambassadors.” So it was nothing but fate that Wilk would immediately challenge Liberman-Garrett, who had long worked as a freelance writer, to write a story to create the product that embodied her idea. She had already helped as an editor on Four Day Weekend’s first publication, The Art of ImproviZen, so they already had a working professional relationship: At first, the idea was to get a book publishing deal and have the plush Maccabee doll be an add-on. With a story that Liberman-Garrett insisted be “curriculum worthy” in terms of teaching the origins of Hanukkah to children, consultation with local Rabbis on the content of the book and even the design of the drawings and the plush toy gave Maccabee on the Mantel a unique profile among holiday season gifts. There was no reason to make up a generic Jewish character or make up a new story – the power and passion of the story of the Maccabee’s escape from the despotic King Antiochus was enough to anchor the brave Maccabee soldier in real Jewish history. “It’ “The problem was we are a ‘yes-and’ company and we ran into a few ‘no-but’ people in publishing,” That also meant that Four Day Weekend could create commercials and marketing strategies for the product, including a series of YouTube videos that comically reimagine that now-fated idea at a holiday party, with Wilk and Liberman-Garrett playing themselves, and others featuring Wilk as a life-sized Maccabee, perched awkwardly on a mantel. “Ultimately, the Maccabee on the Mantel is all about making kids laugh, making them happy and educating them about the holiday and Judaism,” says Liberman-Garrett. “It is indelibly rewarding to see these children connecting to the Maccabee – and to their religion – in such a fun way.” Someday, perhaps, someone will tell the tale of “The Mom who Saved Hanukkah” and relate the story of how the Maccabee on the Mantel came to be; but you can be sure that like all Jewish history, it would not be a coincidence. ### http://www.maccabeeonthemantel.com/ https://www.youtube.com/ http://fourdayweekend.com/ July 2014 End
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