Hundreds of thousands of children participating in this year’s Lag B’Omer festivities will receive a special and spectacular gift: an illustrated Bible. 

The “My Torah” series, published by Chabad-Lubavitch’s Full House books, authored by Rabbi Moshe Shilat, is designed to bring children in Israel closer to Torah. 

This year, the series debuted Bereshit (Genesis), with the four other books of the Pentateuch to follow. 

The Bible is replete with color illustrations, and is accompanied by beautiful photographs, to bring the stories of Genesis alive.

The series’ editor, Rabbi Menachem Brod, is convinced that children will love the book, and will be happy to read it and flip through it over and over again, despite the plethora of digital stimuli competing for attention.

“This is a book written for all Israeli children, so that children who come from non-observant homes can connect to the stories of the Torah and read the Pentateuch happily,” Brod said Wednesday. 

To make it easier for children to read verses from the Torah, the publishers placed alongside each verse a translation of a verse in modern Hebrew.

Children can thus choose either to tackle the original Biblical text – using the side-by-side translation as a guide – or merely to learn the text in the modern language. 

Every Torah portion, or parasha, includes three stories from Midrashic and Rabbinic stories, along with the paintings of illustrator Shimshon Kotlobski. 

The book also includes quotations which are meant to prompt the children to ask questions about how they can connect Bible stories with their own lives.