Dear Readers,

We are very excited to inform you that with Hashem's kindness, we are hoping to "Move the Needle" on child safety again -- this time in Eretz Yisroel.

 

Over the past 14 months, we were able to honor the request of the numerous Gedolim, Rabbonim, Mechanchim, community leaders and parents in Eretz Yisroel who asked us to produce a Hebrew version of our best-selling "Let's Stay Safe!" 

 

 

The Dov and Nancy Friedberg Hebrew children's safety book "Mah She'batuach - Batuach!" was sent to the printer this week and we hope it will be available in Israeli Judaica/seforim stores in time for parents to read it with their children for Yom Tov. 

 

We will use this email list to inform you when they are available for purchase in the stores. In the meantime, if any heads of schools, Shuls or communities wish to purchase the books in quantity, kindly drop us an email at letsstaysafe@gmail.com.

 

Child safety materials are most effective when the children identify with the pictures and images as being part of "their lives." With this in mind, we invested an extraordinary amount of time, effort, creativity and money to create brand new content and rhyming text that matches with the surroundings of children being raised in Israeli communities.

 

 

Attached, are sample pages from our existing English and Yiddish safety books and the corresponding pages of the Hebrew edition so you can see for yourself how this was accomplished.

 

Throughout the production of "Mah She'batuach --  Batuach!", we have been in close contact with educators, writers and parents and their children in Eretz Yisroel to make sure our final product would be one that would be culturally congruent with the lives of Israeli children and appropriate for the Tzniyus (modesty) standards of all their homes.

 

We are gratified that the pre-publication reviews have been extraordinarily positive, and that leaders of major school networks in Eretz Yisroel are developing plans to quickly distribute our book

 

 

We received beautiful letters of  Haskama (approbation) from Reb Chaim Kanievsky shlit'a, Rabbis Yehudah Silman, and Shmuel Eliezer Stern shlit'a, two senior Rabbonim and heads of Batei Din in Bnei Brak, and a handwritten letter from Rebbitzen Koledszky, daughter of Reb Chaim Kanievsky.

 

In fact, Rebbitzen Koledszky requested that we give her the first 10 copies of our Hebrew safety book, right off the press so she can give them to Reb Chaim's married grandchildren for their families! 

  

We are humbled that our Karasick Child Safety Initiative truly "moved the needle" in the English and Yiddish-speaking Jewish world (in addition to the numerous calls and emails we received from parents, informing us that their children were directly saved from possible molestation by reading our safety book, it was noted by the

Time for a Safety Talk/Refresher

 

Over the years, we have noticed a significant spike in abuse-related calls to Project YES around the joyous Pesach and Succos Yomim Tovim.  

 

Those of us who work in the arena of child safety attribute the greater number of abuse cases during these times of year to:

 

1) The less structured environment at home, in Shul and at play.

2) The fact that children are exposed to a far greater number of pre-teens, teenagers and adults during Yom Tov (including Yom Tov guests) than they are during the average school week.  

 

We are all busy before Yom Tov, but we at Project YES strongly encourage you to speak to your children about child safety before Rosh Hashana, and give them a refresher talk if you already have.  

 

Thankfully, there is now an unprecedented awareness of the importance of child safety and we have come to the painful understanding that our community is not immune to the ravages of abuse.

 

We plead with you to take this matter seriously and do everything in your power to keep your kids safe. There are two steps you ought to take in order to accomplish this:  

 

1) Have safety talks with your children - using effective, research-based techniques that will educate and empower your children without frightening them.  

 

2) See to it that they are properly supervised over Yom Tov - both at home and in Shul. 

 

Here are 3 short videos that can teach you how to speak to your children about child safety: 

#1  http://youtu.be/O3i9Gdlbw1g  

#2. http://youtu.be/zS7WBs_osNE 

#3  http://youtu.be/lp0vjJolygQ

 

There are five basic messages that children need to internalize in order for any abuse prevention program to be truly effective:

 

1. Your body belongs to you

2. No one has the right to make you feel uncomfortable

3. No secrets from parents ever (there is no concern for Loshon Horah) 

4. Good touching/bad touching

5. Hilchos Yichud applies to everyone -- there are no excuses 

 

Please educate yourself before speaking to your children so that your discussions generate light and not heat. Additionally, it is important for you to know - and to share with your children - that although "stranger danger" is a genuine concern, the vast majority of molesters are family members or people well-known to the children, who they trust.  

 

As Tenafly Police Chief Michael Bruno brilliantly said during a talk he gave on child safety, "We need to train our children to consider the "it" (the inappropriate action being done to them) not the "whom" (regardless of the relationship or stature of the individual who is doing it to them).  

 

There are free resources available in the Karasick Child Safety Initiative section of our website www.kosherjewishparenting.com, and we encourage you to take advantage of them:

 

* A comprehensive list of Links to Safety Resources for Parents 

* An introduction to our "Let's Stay Safe!" book by Dr. David Pelcovitz 

* Our Yiddish Video on Child Safety                                                            *The DVD read-aloud download of "Lets Stay Safe!"  

 

Our best-selling Child Safety picture book Let's Stay Safe! was published in conjunction with ArtScroll. You can find it in your local bookstore or order it online from Project YES here.

 

Also available is our read-aloud, downloadable video version of our children's safety book.  

 

Thanks for reading these lines, and kindly take a minute to forward this to others - for the only way our children and grandchildren will be safe, is when each and every one of us is well educated about child safety.

 

Best wishes for a Ke'sivah Ve'chasim Tova, and much Nachas from your family.

 

Yakov Horowitz