Books > Because God Loves Stories >

Excerpts

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. ANCIENT TIMES IN CONTEMPORARY TALES
Nina Jaffe
The Most Precious Thing
Syd Lieberman
Challahs in the Ark
Cherie Karo Schwartz
Elijah and the Poor Man's Wish
Merit of the Sabbath
Joseph Elias
The Sound of Work
The Talking Mule
Rabbi Edward Schecter
Isaac's Bar Mitzvah

II. THE SHTETL
A. The Shtetl in Folktale
Eve Penner Ilsen
A Tale of Reb Nakhum Chernobler and a Tikkun
Rabbi Edward Schecter
The Teller of Tales
Levi Yitchak Burns the Evidence
Syd Lieberman, Steve Sanfield
The Founding Fathers
A Chelm Medley
Michael Wex
The Kugel
Corey Fischer
The Golem Haunts the Cemetery in Prague
B. The Shtetl in Family Stories
Rita Fecher
The Day My Great-Grandmother Died
Peninnah Schram
The Czar's Army
The Czarina's Dress
Henry Sapoznik
Tants! Tants! Yiddish Music in the Old Country
Matilda Friedman
Think for Yourself
Marc Kaminsky
My Grandmother's Family Tales

III. THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE
Roslyn Bresnick-Perry
Leaving for America
A Real American Girl
My First Thanksgiving
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
From Immigrant to Ethnic in a Family's Tales
Ruth Rubin
Grandmother Elke: Next Year in Jerusalem
Rosa Kuinova
The Refusenik

IV. THE LOWER EAST SIDE AND BEYOND
A. Tenement Life
Sam Levenson
The Tax Man in the Tailor Shop
Crucifixion
Gus Tyler
"The Strike of the Schnorrers" Revisited
Jack Tepper
Pazamentry
Shirlee Kresh Hecker
Papa's Sukkah
Ike the Pike
Hank Halio
A Jew Who Don't Speak Yiddish:
Ashkenazi/Sephardic Cultural Differences
B. The American South
Solomon Blatt
What Mr. Blatt Can't Eat
C. The Catskills
Joey Adams
The Kokhaleyn
The Tumler
D. Yiddish Theater
Baruch Lumet
Plotting to Kill Harry
Zypora Spaisman
The Lonesome Ship
E. Jewish Summer Camps
Rabbi David Holtz
Water and Wine

V. THE HOLOCAUST
A. Folk and Hasidic Tales
Rabbi Israel Spira/Yaffa Eliach
Even the Transgressors in Israel
Circumcision
Hovering above the Pit
Nina Jaffe and Steve Zeitlin
In Your Hands
Sam Levenson
The Wand
B. Bitter Memories
Melvin Katz
Only the Small Survive
Typhus
Pretending to Work
The Cigarette
New Barracks
Liberation
A Bowl of Soup
Lisa Lipkin
What My Mother Never Told Me:
Reminiscences of a Child of a Holocaust Survivor
Barbara Myerhoff
The Shoebox
Roslyn Bresnick-Perry
Going Home to Nowhere

VI. HUMOR IN CONTEMPORARY JEWISH LIFE
Moshe Waldoks
The Health Club
Steve Zeitlin
Jewish Laughter, God's Sense of Humor

VII. MEANINGS AND REFLECTIONS
Shelley Brenner
Ezekiel's Wheel
Steve Zeitlin
A Penchant for Parable
Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard
The Healing Power of Jewish Stories
Source Notes