Customer Reviews

The Classic Tales: 4,000 Years of Jewish Lore

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful book full of stories perfect for children and adults. It focuses on values in a way that is positive, endearing and educational. Nearly all the stories have a lesson that is appropriate for the times we live in - even though the origin of many of them lies in books and teachings which are thousands of years old. This is a great book for students of Judaica, teachers, camp counselors/directors, or anyone who tells stories from time to time. It's also perfect to keep in one's own home library to share with others.

I have quite a library of Judaica, and I can unreservedly say that there's no other anthology of tales--perhaps I should say, "popularly readable tale variants"--that comes close to this. Oh, you can find more panoramic material, albeit dizzyingly (dis)organized, by Patai--or umpteen variants of each nit, by Bin Gorion--but this one takes the cake for offering a historical treatment that takes us from the Creation, through the Biblical era, through the Diaspora and the Middle Ages, right up to Hasidic and near-modern times. The book is possibly rivaled by Pinhas Sadeh's collection, though he focuses more on the mystical tales. Also, Howard Schwartz offers an intriguing variety of Jewish storybooks, although, truth be told, the material gets so overwhelmingly repetitively repetitively repetitive that one begins to wonder how many of the variants were authored by Schwartz himself in the ceaseless race to "publish or perish." Buy Frankel, and you will not be disappointed by her rich panorama of clever, witty, emotional, fulfilling, soul-nourishing stories that make you brilliantly proud to be one of the chosen people.

I absolutely loved this book. I would highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the Apocrypha , folklore, and mysticism. The majority of these stories are midrashic, embellished, and often very entertaining, retellings of Bible stories, others are more like fables. This collection is rendered by a modern woman who has tried to eliminate derogatory references to women. It also has a glossary of unfamiliar words. One particular story "The Hunter and the Bird" stayed with me. A bird offers the hunter three pieces of wisdom in exchange for its freedom. 1. Do not seek what you can not obtain. 2.Do not regret what you have lost. 3. Do not believe what can not be. As the tiny bird flies away she informs the hunter that she has a pearl the size of an ostrich egg inside of her. A slightly different version of this story appears in another excellent book, Wisdom of the Dervishes by Idries Shah

The author does not hide the fact that this is lore. However, a keen eye will see that there are many Biblical correlations within these oral traditions. Read with a grain of salt and there is much enjoyment to be found within these pages.

I collect stories to have as a resource. But the most important part of any story book is when they cite their resources. Ms. Frankel cites all the places she's seen a story: Citing midrashim and talmud. I haven't even started reading the stories, but I am already so excited. And there really are 300 stories in here! And the table of contents is also user friendly for choosing appropriate stories. In the back, it even tells you which stories are related to which parsha or haftorah reading! (The only reason I gave it four stars, is because I haven't read the stories yet... but I can't imagine that the stories won't be great)