Avner and Brachot (Windows & Mac)

Judy Siegal (4/1/2000) wrote:
Jerusalem Post Computer Software Editor



Avner & Brachot (U'Virkot Hanehenin), a CD-ROM in English and Hebrew, produced by Lamigal Projects Ltd., published by Torah Educational Software (TES) in Jerusalem, distributed by The Jerusalem Post Books Department, requires PC Pentium 100 Mhz and above and Windows 95 and above or Mac PowerPC 100 Mhz and above, for children aged six to 12.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Pious non-Jews have it easy: Those who recite a grace before meals need memorize only a standard prayer before eating any meal.

With the Jews, as usual, it's much more complicated.

The observant are obligated to recite not only a long prayer after eating meals that began with bread, or a shorter blessing after eating a minimum amount of any other food or beverage - including water; they also have to say a special blessing - one of eight possibilities - before eating a minimum measure of anything, or even before smelling something with a pleasant perfume.

Even religious Jewish children as young as three are bound to say the proper blessing, which makes it quite a job to teach them the suitable blessings, complicated by the fact that a piece of bread requires one blessing, while a piece of French toast, for example, requires another.

Torah Educational Software has come to the rescue with this excellent disk, aimed at children from observant families who are taught they should be grateful for every gift from God. It's aimed at both the Israeli and Diaspora market, as it can be installed either in Hebrew or in English.

The program sorts everything out and at the same time offers an imaginative series of kosher computer games for kids who already know the ABC's of blessings by heart.

The hero of the disk is a charming, three-dimensional character named Avner, a brown-haired boy wearing an aqua-colored baseball cap (rakishly to one side). He takes to the skies in a hot-air balloon, but it crashes, leaving our hero in a tropical island.

The only way to save him, users learn, is to help him learn the blessings and overcome challenges posed by the disk.

Before playing the games, the user is best advised to study up on the blessings.

One section teaches all the blessings in a very attractive way combining color graphics and narration. First you click an icon to hear the blessing recited; you can't exit the section without clicking another icon to hear an explanation of the blessing and the types of foods it encompasses. Then there's a computerized registry of hundreds of different foods and beverages commonly eaten by kids, including pizza and felafel.

Just click one of the foods on the list and the appropriate blessing appears below within a frame.

With this information, the player is armed with enough to start the first game (each game is dedicated to a different kind of blessing).

The first - to my mind the most difficult game and one of the most fun - puts Avner in a field of wheat sheaves that he has to collect while avoiding three very speedy green snakes whose heads turn purple when they 'see' Avner. The player has to survive three rounds, each of which require collecting a larger number of sheaves.

One quickly learns that when surrounded by the snakes on one side of the screen, you can use the arrow keys to slip out a door and then appear on the other side of the screen.

It sounds easy, but it took me almost two hours to learn how to manipulate the panting Avner with the the keys to evade the snakes while picking up the sheaves and reach the next stage with three loaves of bread. By the end, I was relieved and happy - and ready to recite another blessing not included in this challenging disk: Shehehiyanu.

It's impossible to go on to the higher-level game before succeeding in your previous assignment - which is logical but which will frustrate some and force them to try harder.

The game for grapes and wine requires Avner, activated by your arrow keys, to catch clusters of grapes falling from the sky in a purple container, while avoiding other fruits. The Mezonot blessing recited on baked goods (excluding bread) puts Avner in a subterranean maze, populated by more green snakes, through which he has to be maneuvered.

The object is to pass through packing crates and pick up foods on which one makes the Mezonot blessing. The Pri Ha'etz blessing comes with an excellent Tetris-like game with various fruits falling three at a time into a grid from above; you have to change their sequence and have them fall in the proper order so three of the same fruits land diagonally, horizontally, or vertically and disappear.

To succeed at the Ha'adama blessing on vegetables, click snakes (the developers seem to have a snake fixation from their study of goings-on in the Garden of Eden) that pop up behind packing crates to squirt them with water, while the Shehakol blessing comes with an assignment to lower Avner into a deep well using an elevator, picking up foods while avoiding the snakes (again).

The animation is first-rate, and the klezmer-like background music is soothing to one's nerves. TES has proven that a company can produce high-class edutainment for kids without using violence or teaching crooked morals.