This collection of fictional and mythic stories features strong Jewish women, often in tales that are familiar in the Jewish canon. The writers “turn Jewish folktales on their heads,” as it says on the back cover — by re-gendering them.
The writers are all members of The Jewish Women’s Storytelling Collective, started when five women graduating from Debra Gordon Zaslow’s Maggid (a Hebrew word meaning “storyteller”) training program joined with her to bring a uniquely female perspective to a field previously dominated by men. Zaslow explains in her Introduction: “In 2019, after reading a collection of stories of the Baal Shem Tov (the eighteenth-century rabbi who founded Hasidism), our maggid-student cohort expressed their dismay at the lack of female protagonists and the apparent sexism of many of the stories. It seemed like it was time to do something, and the germ of an idea for this collection was born.”
There are 34 stories in total, organized under six headings: Wise Women, Mothers and Daughters, Freedom to Be Oneself, Gifts We Give and Receive, Torah Women, and Supernatural Stories. They’re designed to be read aloud, if not “performed” by a storyteller. Readers may want to use the book this way — reading a story several times until it is nearly memorized, then sharing it aloud with others.
Some stories will be familiar to readers of Jewish folklore. Gail Pasternack’s “Esperanza and the Twelve Loaves of Challah” is one example, with a story that has origins in a classic tale told by Syd Lieberman, Howard Schwartz, Lawrence Kushner, and others. It’s about two people who come in and out of a synagogue each Sabbath, one to give challah in gratitude to God, the other to pray for God’s assistance in feeding his family. The one gives, and the other receives, and neither knows how the challah appears or disappears when their paths do not cross. Pasternack explains at the end: “In my version, Esperanza, the wife, takes the leading role, and I changed the ending by introducing a new character, the caretaker’s daughter.”
Other stories, such as Dutch writer Jose de Kwaadsteniet’s “My Mother’s Candlesticks,” are entirely original. Hers is about her conversion to Judaism from Christianity, centering around a pair of rather mysterious candlesticks.
Nineteenth-century Eastern Europe is the most common setting for the stories, including a fun one in the last section on the supernatural: “House of the Demons’ Weddings,” by Deborah Rosenberg, and a surprise one titled “A Queer Soul in the Shtetl,” by Lisa Huberman, that begins with the townspeople saying, “She’s not a regular girl, but she’s not a boy either.”
All of the tales are entertaining, but probably more importantly they will spark conversations. This book is highly recommended for book groups and clubs.
