Mission Statement
The Magic Meadow Series
Board of Directors
Contact Information

Goal:
Development of a multi-media suite for children about American Jewish history from 1600-1800, inculcating basic values from the Colonial and Revolutionary periods. Since this time frame involves the formative years of this nation, issues of equality, religious freedom, slavery, and tolerance will figure prominently in the story development.

This book-based series begins with pre-Colonial history in the Hudson Valley, covering the Lenape Indians, the expansion of trade and settlers coming up river from the city—the Protestants, Jews, African Americans and Catholics in the colonies and the Revolutionary era. The stories are centered around a group of contemporary teenagers and the Gomez Mill House in Newburgh, New York, the oldest extant homestead built by a Jew in America.

The young adults are a diverse group of friends living in Bergen County, an area filled with blue historic markers. Among them are the descendant of a slave; a JewBu (Jewish-Buddhist wannabe) who was told by his guru to stay Jewish; his sister, a music therapist and Hebrew School teacher for Reconstructionists in Woodstock; two lapsed Catholics; a Jehovah’s Witness who hates to proselytize, and a Birthright girl (a participant in the Bronfman-Steinhardt program to take young Jews to Israel in order to greater familiarize them with their Jewish heritage) and the descendant of a slave.

The plot revolves around the Magic Meadow near Woodstock, New York, where the teenagers go camping on the night of the full moon. As they sit around a camp fire, beating drums in harmony with their inner spirits, one of them enters a mystical circle of stones and suddenly disappears. Sequentially, each youth falls through a time tunnel and lands in the Devil’s Dance Chamber, the holy site where the Algonquins of the Lenape Federation performed their religious rites in the 17th century. Located on the shores of what would become Newburgh Bay and where Jew’s Creek would empty into the Hudson, they bear witness to a ship called the Half Moon—Henry Hudson’s ship—silently floating by on the river that would one day bear his name.

In their encounters through time, they meet Henry Hudson, Assur Levy, Peter Stuyvesant, General Burgoyne, Benedict Arnold, Captain Kidd, the entire Gomez family, and a host of characters from the Hudson Valley and Colonial America.

What will readers learn from their adventures? In addition to being a fun read, with contemporary colorful illustrations, the children will learn a great deal about American Jewish history in the epoch between the establishment of the first colonies and the Revolutionary War. They will learn how America became the first country in the world to grant citizenship privileges to Jews and other persecuted peoples. They will learn how for the first time in centuries Jews were not forced to live separately, were not forced to dress differently, and were eventually able to own land, join guilds, vote, and even run for political office.

Readers will learn how Jews and others contributed to the safety of New Amsterdam, how they helped finance the Revolution (it took more than Haym Solomon to do that), how they had to decide between being Loyalists or Whigs. And readers will learn how Jews faced the same issues they face today: deciding whether to remain Jewish or to assimilate.

By linking what was happening in Europe to the Atlantic frontier, the book will describe how America became a natural refuge for Jews, especially members of the Sephardic community who were the earliest pioneers of the American Jewish experience. The Gomez family, a leading Sephardic family from Spain and Portugal, plays a major role in the first volume of the suite.

The series’ format will be in the spirit of Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and Harry Potter: young people out on an adventure, with mystery, magic, mayhem, and more. It will also encompass a formula easily adaptable to other time periods and geographic locations.

We hope to see these characters turned into animated figures, a CDRom interactive video game, a cartoon series, a series of pop-up books for younger children and perhaps an after school special on HBO or the ABC/Disney Network. Licensing opportunities would include action figures and t-shirts, as well as baseball caps, book bags and other paraphernalia.

Dr. Alex Grobman
President

Dr. Philip Sieradski
Executive Vice President

Board of Directors (in formation)
Menachem Daum
Ursula Merkin
Russell F. Robinson

Advisory Board (in formation)
Dr. Michael Berenbaum
Prof. Jerome Chanes
Dr. Eva Fogelman
Blu Greenberg
Prof. David Kranzler
Mahli Lee
Rabbi S.Z. Lieman
Ernest W. Michel

Public Speakers
Regarding The Holocaust, Zionism and Israel, and Women's Issues in Judaism
Jeanette Friendman
Alex Grobman

Phone: (201) 986-0647
Email: brenninstitute@aol.com