How Dolly Parton inspired Jewish bedtime stories
Country music legend Dolly Parton, who died aged 80, inspired the creation of PJ Library, now reaching thousands of Jewish families in Australia.
When Dolly Parton was a little girl growing up in a one-room cabin in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, her mother sewed her a coat from rags. To make her daughter proud of it, she told her the story of Joseph and his coat of many colours.
“In my mind, I thought I looked just like Joseph,” Parton later recalled in her memoir Songteller. “But the kids didn’t, and it crushed me.”
That childhood memory became one of Parton’s most beloved songs, Coat of Many Colors.
Parton died on August 25 at her home in Nashville. She was 80.
Her nephew Bryan Seaver announced her death in a video posted to her social media accounts, saying Parton died “peacefully”. In lieu of flowers, the family asked that donations be made to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, the children’s literacy program she founded in 1995.
comments