Stories From Jewish Literature

Storytelling, as oral tradition and in writing, has long played a central role in Jewish society. Family, educators, and clergy employ stories to transmit Jewish culture, traditions, and values. This comprehensive bibliography identifies 668 Jewish folktales by title and subject, summarizing plot lines for easy access to the right story for any occasion. Some centuries old and others freshly imagined, the tales include animal fables, supernatural yarns, and anecdotes for festivals and holidays. Themes include justice, community, cause and effect, and mitzvahs, or good deeds. This second edition nearly doubles the number of stories and expands the guide's global reach, with new pieces from Turkey, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, and Chile. Subject cross-references and a glossary complete the volume, a living tool for understanding the ever-evolving world of Jewish folklore.

Three hundred Jewish tales in this extraordinary volume span three continents and four millennia. Culled from traditional sources—the Bible, Talmud, Midrash, hasidic texts, and oral folklore—and retold in modern English by Ellen Frankel, these stories represent the brightest jewels in the vast treasure chest of Jewish lore. Beautifully clothed in contemporary language, these classic tales sparkle with the gentle and insightful humor of the Jewish folk imagination. And like so much of Jewish literature, these stories abound in allusions to classic Jewish texts. Biblical cadences, phrases from the prayer book, and ideas from Jewish proverbs and heroic legends resonate in the air when these tales are read or told aloud. In The Classic Tales, history sheds its dust to become as intimate as family memory. While the breadth and depth of this book make it completely unique, three special features also help distinguish it: God appears without gender (though certainly not without personality); women characters, so often nameless in the original biblical text, wear their midrashic names (e.g., Noah's wife Naamah, Abraham's mother Amitlai, Lot's wife Edith); and many tales of Sephardic origin have been included to correct the common American bias toward Eastern European sources. What's more, this volume has been uniquely designed to be of use to educators, rabbis, parents, and students. It features a chronological table of contents as well as six separate indexes?arranged by Jewish holidays, Torah and Haftorah readings, character types, symbols, topics, and proper names and places—to make the tales easily referenced in a wide variety of ways. Anyone who needs a story to inspire a child, to illustrate a point, to develop a sermon, or just to uplift his or her own thirsting soul will find just the right one in The Classic Tales.

Short stories, proverbs, and folk-tales, traditional and modern.

From the deceptively simple narrative (Apple Cider Vinegar, Hurricane Bob) to the surrealist story (Dismemberers) and the magical tale (Jonah and Sarah and Lanskoy Road), the tempo fluctuates, but throughout, Shrayer-Petrov seamlessly preserves familiar voices. The stories have a genuine feel of the setting and epoch—the Russian stories work as narratives of everyday life, while the American stories offer an accurate sense of an émigré’s alienation. Like all good works of fiction, these stories take on a mythic quality and transcend time and place. Each carries and communicates to the reader an aura of mystery, the enigma of love, and a meeting of the Jewish past and present. Whether he invokes lyrical dialogue, gentle irony, or sharp polemical discourse, Shrayer-Petrov shows that he is a powerful presence in Russian and Jewish literature. For those interested in fiction about new immigrants to America or in the psychology of Jews in the two decades before the Soviet Union’s collapse, this collection is a must read.

The "Jewish Stories" is Isaac Loeb Peretz's collection of short stories and novellas. Peretz found the inspiration for his work in the folklore of Hasidic Judaism. However, all of his stories, with exception of the legend "The Image," are set in late nineteenth century Russia and Poland and deal with social issues related to the life of Jewish population. _x000D_ Contents:_x000D_ If Not Higher_x000D_ Domestic Happiness_x000D_ In the Post-chaise_x000D_ The New Tune_x000D_ Married_x000D_ The Seventh Candle of Blessing_x000D_ The Widow_x000D_ The Messenger_x000D_ What is the Soul?_x000D_ In Time of Pestilence_x000D_ Bontzye Shweig_x000D_ The Dead Town_x000D_ The Days of the Messiah_x000D_ Kabbalists_x000D_ Travel-pictures _x000D_ Trust_x000D_ Only Go!_x000D_ What Should a Jewess Need? _x000D_ No. 42_x000D_ The Maskil_x000D_ The Rabbi of Tishewitz_x000D_ Tales That Are Told_x000D_ A Little Boy_x000D_ The Yartseff Rabbi_x000D_ Lyashtzof_x000D_ The First Attempt_x000D_ The Second Attempt_x000D_ At the Shochet's_x000D_ The Rebbitzin of Skul_x000D_ Insured_x000D_ The Fire_x000D_ The Emigrant_x000D_ The Madman_x000D_ Misery_x000D_ The Làmed Wòfnik_x000D_ The Informer_x000D_ The Outcast_x000D_ A Chat_x000D_ The Pike_x000D_ The Fast_x000D_ The Woman Mistress Hannah_x000D_ In the Pond_x000D_ The Chanukah Light_x000D_ The Poor Little Boy_x000D_ Underground_x000D_ Between Two Mountains_x000D_ The Image

The "Jewish Stories" is Isaac Loeb Peretz's collection of short stories and novellas. Peretz found the inspiration for his work in the folklore of Hasidic Judaism. However, all of his stories, with exception of the legend "The Image," are set in late nineteenth century Russia and Poland and deal with social issues related to the life of Jewish population. Contents: If Not Higher Domestic Happiness In the Post-chaise The New Tune Married The Seventh Candle of Blessing The Widow The Messenger What is the Soul? In Time of Pestilence Bontzye Shweig The Dead Town The Days of the Messiah Kabbalists Travel-pictures Trust Only Go! What Should a Jewess Need? No. 42 The Maskil The Rabbi of Tishewitz Tales That Are Told A Little Boy The Yartseff Rabbi Lyashtzof The First Attempt The Second Attempt At the Shochet's The Rebbitzin of Skul Insured The Fire The Emigrant The Madman Misery The Làmed Wòfnik The Informer The Outcast A Chat The Pike The Fast The Woman Mistress Hannah In the Pond The Chanukah Light The Poor Little Boy Underground Between Two Mountains The Image

Dvora Baron (1887-1956), the first modern Hebrew woman writer, was born in a small Lithuanian town in 1887. Her father, a rabbi, gave his daughter a thorough education, an extraordinary act at the time. Baron immigrated to Palestine in 1910, married a prominent Zionist activist, but defied the implicit ideological demands of the Zionist literary scene by continuing to write of the shtetl life she had left behind. The eighteen stories in this superb collection offer an intimate re-creation of Jewish Eastern Europe from a perspective seldom represented in Hebrew and Yiddish literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Baron brings vividly to life the shtetl experiences of women and other disenfranchised members of the Jewish community. Her stories relate the feelings of a newborn girl, a "Jewish" dog, an impoverished bookkeeper, a young widow who must hire herself out as a wet-nurse, and others who face emotional and physical hardships. Baron's fluid writing style pushes the flexibility of Hebrew and Yiddish syntax to its limits, while her profound knowledge of both biblical and rabbinical literature lends rich subtleties to her stories. A companion to Conversations with Dvora: An Experimental Biography of the First Modern Hebrew Woman Writer, by Amia Lieblich (California, 1997), this collection is drawn from Baron's earlier as well as later works.

"A lavish anthology of mostly unknown folktales, highlighting the theme of human relationships in the family and community"--P. [4] of cover.