The book is far easier to read and more direct than the actual Torah, but the language of Ehrlich’s free verse is still not quite ordinary speech, which makes for a bit of work. And to me it felt a little audacious of Ehrlich to decide what exactly in the Torah is “worth” telling — though that could be my rigid Orthodox education at work. But it struck me that it would have been nice, growing up, to have a volume like “With a Mighty Hand”: visually pleasing and stripped of confusing matter that could threaten any child’s understanding, attention span and ultimate captivation. “With a Mighty Hand” is a great transitional Torah — something between an illustrated book of Bible stories for children and the full heft of the actual Five Books of Moses, still told in its own words, on its own terms, making what was once intimidating palatable.

“The Barefoot Book of Jewish Tales,” by Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand, isn’t a book of Bible stories but of time-honored Jewish folklore about prophets and kings and righteous people. In one tale, a boy who loves letters can’t learn to read. One Yom Kippur, he sits in the back of the synagogue and cuts out Hebrew letters. When his father catches him, he screams at the boy for cutting letters instead of praying for forgiveness and announces how ashamed he is. Suddenly, the cut letters float up and turn into words, which yield the most inspiring prayers these Jews have ever seen. The boy is forgiven, for he has taught the congregation that everyone has a contribution to make, even if that contribution isn’t obvious.

In another story, a virtuous woman’s reward for her good life is the ability to visit heaven and hell prematurely to see how all this ends up. She finds that denizens of both are saddled with splints that prevent them from bending their elbows. In heaven, they’re still happy because they realize that if they feed one another, they can eat well. In hell, however, they can’t eat because they can’t figure out how to work together. The woman discovers that “the same challenges and opportunities exist in heaven as in hell.” If you are kind and generous, you will enjoy the afterlife. If you are greedy and unhelpful, you’ll starve.