Whenever anyone tells a tale, that tale sends a message to the
listener. When a Jewish storyteller tells a tale in a Jewish
setting, that tale sends a Jewish message. And when a Jewish woman
tells a tale to other Jewish women, she sends a Jewish woman's
message: how to act as a Jewish woman - toward her community,
toward other people, and toward God. This book is a collection of
such women's tales and an analysis of their messages. The Book of
Jewish Women's Tales consists of seventy-five stories, told and
transmitted within the last two generations by Jewish women from
around the world - from places as diverse as Ethiopia, India,
Azerbaijan, Yemen, Greece, Eastern Europe, Israel, and the United
States. The majority of the stories were culled from the Israel
Folktale Archives, a repository of almost 19,000 tales; others
Barbara Rush collected personally. Each story begins with an
introduction in which Rush identifies its origin, its theme and
meaning, and any other pertinent information about the tale, such
as the biblical or talmudic passages to which it relates. The
volume also includes sources to encourage further study of Jewish
women's tales. The book is divided into sections, including
life-cycle events such as birth, marriage, motherhood, aging, and
death; holidays in the yearly cycle and Shabbat; and sections
dealing with women in Israel and the strength of women. Some of the
tales read like traditional fairy tales filled with supernatural
beings, fairy godmothers, and royalty; others are romantic tales;
still others deal with rites of passage and conflicts between men
and women or among women. The stories have two things in common: in
all of them the women emerge as strong, victorious, and clever, and
all of the stories, while they have universal appeal to women,
contain distinctly Jewish messages. The heroine does not merely win
her beloved; their children carry on the teachings of the Torah.
Some of the tales are based on biblical stories in which the faith
of pious women is rewarded by God; others are local legends that
tell of actual events in Jewish history. The Book of Jewish Women's
Tales is a remarkable collection. As an anthology, it will delight
and entertain, but as a valuable sourcebook, it will educate and
inform. Through her extensive research, Barbara Rush has enabled us
to see from a woman's perspective, not only the common elements of
Jewish women from all corners of the world, but also what they
share with women from all cultures and religions.
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