HebrewPunk

by Lavie Tidhar

Lavie Tidhar gathers some of his best work in one collection. Stories that are infused with centuries of tradition and painted with Hebrew mythology. We meet the Tzaddik as he faces off against a vengeful angel intent on sending the Fallen to hell. The shape shifting Rat fights lycanthropic Nazis. The Rabbi takes us on a thoughtful and amusing journey into the possibilities of a Jewish state in the heart of Africa. Finally, all three protagonists appear in an old-fashioned caper story that will leave you breathless.

Table of Contents
"The Heist"
"Transylvania Mission"
"Uganda"
"The Dope Fiend"

Special introduction by Laura Anne Gilman

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Steampunk, Science Fiction, Fiction, Jewish, Urban Fantasy

156 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2007

About the author

Lavie Tidhar was raised on a kibbutz in Israel. He has travelled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu.

Tidhar began publishing with a poetry collection in Hebrew in 1998, but soon moved to fiction, becoming a prolific author of short stories early in the 21st century.

Temporal Spiders, Spatial Webs won the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury competition, sponsored by the European Space Agency, while The Night Train (2010) was a Sturgeon Award finalist.

Linked story collection HebrewPunk (2007) contains stories of Jewish pulp fantasy.

He co-wrote dark fantasy novel The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009) with Nir Yaniv. The Bookman Histories series, combining literary and historical characters with steampunk elements, includes The Bookman (2010), Camera Obscura (2011), and The Great Game (2012).

Standalone novel Osama (2011) combines pulp adventure with a sophisticated look at the impact of terrorism. It won the 2012 World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, British Science Fiction Award, and a Kitschie.

His latest novels are Martian Sands and The Violent Century.

Much of Tidhar’s best work is done at novella length, including An Occupation of Angels (2005), Cloud Permutations (2010), British Fantasy Award winner Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God (2011), and Jesus & the Eightfold Path (2011).

Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009) and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012).

He is also editor-in-chief of the World SF Blog , and in 2011 was a finalist for a World Fantasy Award for his work there.

He also edited A Dick and Jane Primer for Adults (2008); wrote Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (2004); wrote weird picture book Going to The Moon (2012, with artist Paul McCaffery); and scripted one-shot comic Adolf Hitler’s I Dream of Ants! (2012, with artist Neil Struthers).

Tidhar lives with his wife in London.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

HebrewPunk is a collection of tales by Lavie Tidhar, tales steeped in Hebrew mysticism.

I first encountered Lavie Tidhar with The Bookman and was eager to see what else he had going on. When I saw this, I was pretty excited. Then I let it sit unread for over a year. Go figure.

Anyway, HebrewPunk is a collection of four tales from Lavie Tidhar, all involving characters or situations influenced by Hebrew lore. You've got a heist story featuring a Rabbi planner, a vampire burglar named Jimmy the Rat, a golem named Goldie and a Frankie the Tzaddik, a wandering Jew, attempting to rob a blood bank, of all things. The other stories are as compelling, like an expedition for a proposed Jewish city-state in the mountains of west Africa, to Jimmy the Rat fighting Nazi Wolfkommandos in World War II Transylvania.

The stories are fairly pulpy and very entertaining. Throughout, I was reminded of Edward Erdelac and his Merkabah Rider series, another Hebrew-themed pulp series. Fine company for a book this good. It's hard to believe this was Tidhar's debut. It's that polished and that well-written.

If I had to gripe about something, it would be that this book wasn't about ten times as large. Four six-pointed stars! I want more HebrewPunk!

[Berengaria · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

short review for busy readers:disclaimer: NOT PUNK. Rather a collection of 4 longer pulp-noir-fantasy-adventure tales with an all Jewish cast of vampires, shapeshifters and tzaddiks. Surprisingly well-written. Lean writing, plot-heavy, somewhat stereotypical but quite entertaining.

in detail:
In the introduction to this collection, Lavie Tidhar says he set out to write a pulp sub-genre story about points of 20th century Jewish history: a ‘heist’ story, a ‘WW2 adventure’, a ‘dope fiend’ story and a ‘lost world’ story.

I wasn’t so enamoured of the WW2 story in which the SS Werewolf troops were literal werewolves in Transylvania attempting to raise the ghost of Vlad the Impaler. Also, the 1920s cocaine murder - based on real events - was somewhat too long and not terribly exciting (cover art is this story).

The heist story that opens the collection, however, is highly entertaining and I very much enjoyed the ‘lost world’ alt history about what if the state of Israel had been founded in British East Africa instead of where it was. A true story which I wanted to find out more about…and found that Tidhar has kindly written an entire novel about it Unholy Land !

This is my first dip into the highly prolific world of Lavie Tidhar, so I can’t say if this collection is typical of his writing or not, but for pulp adventure fans or fans of Jewish fantasy, this is one to enjoy.

NB:
Punk is technology-based sci fi. It can be placed in the future, the present or the past. None of the stories in this collection focus on tech, so the title is highly misleading.

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really steampunk, at all. 20th century settings with magic and supernatural creatures.

This collection of 4 stories opens with the aptly named "Heist," in which a number of fantastical characters come together to rob a blood bank. Some of them barely get page time and it's not entirely clear what the setting is but it is a reasonable way to introduce characters who will then go on to have more adventures tog--

Oh. No. Actually, the other three stories feature only one character each, in different times and places. The rest of the people from the first story are heard of no more. Neither do the stories connect to one another. They were each more or less interesting, if not always polished, but in the end felt like background details for a larger project that never materialized.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

So a tzaddik, a rabbi, and a vampire walk into a bank ...

A collection of four stories, one featuring each of those characters at a turning point in their lives and a heist story that ties it all together. Each of those stories features concepts that could fall into the ridiculous - for example, a drug-addled immortal warring with an angel, a blood bank that keeps holy water in its sprinkler system as an anti-theft system, and lychanthropic nazis seeking Vlad Dracul to recruit him to their cause.

Tidhar's writing style is like a good whiskey - dark, and with a hard edge to it, but in a way that manages to be self-effacing at the same time. He's good, and he knows that he's good enough that he doesn't need to try to impress you.

On a technical level, Uganda is the most interesting story in the collection - in in Tidhar manages to tell an epistolary story that intertwines an interview transcript and three different yet fully-realized journals of different characters. It would be difficult enough to keep those stories straight and well-developed in a novel, but to do it in the limited space of a short story was very impressive.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've admired Lavie Tidhar's work in "Central Station" and "Unholy Land", and I thought I'd try this short collection of novellas. Tidhar applies a noir approach to most of the stories, using Jewish characters with unusual powers. It's a fun collection, but lightweight. The most impressive story is the most un-noirish one, "Uganda", about a British expedition to East Africa in 1905 to see if it would be suitable as a Jewish homeland. This really happened, although the events in his novella did not necessarily happen. Nothing came of it, but Tidhar reused his research and interest in the topic to write the novel "Unholy Land" where he imagines the Zionist effort to create a Jewish homeland in British East Africa succeeded.

Also, any collection that has a story pitting Jewish vampires against Nazis, werewolves and Dr. Joseph Mengele is an interesting one, and fun to read.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early short stories. (Spoiler) I especially enjoyed the concept that a Jewish vampire would be unaffected by holy water or the cross.

[Ben Koops · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard-boiled kabbala is toch echt wel de beste genreomschrijving die ik ooit heb gehoord. Ook nog eens kosher, het is een vrij unieke combinatie van een soort vrijbuiter achtige fantasy verhalen met een dosis Joodse gebruiken. Het eerste en laatste verhaal zouden zo een D&D campagne kunnen zijn, met golems en vampiers. Het derde verhaal is meer lovecraft achtig en natuurlijk kunnen de nazi's niet ontbreken. Zeer aanbevolen voor wie de sleur eens wil doorbreken. Het is niet meer hoogstaand dan een Blade film maar het leest lekker weg en brengt echt iets eigens.

[Michele Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Heist" is an excellent theme setter for this collection. This story has an urban fantasy flavor, only instead of the default setting of the world being based in nature worship-style paganism or Christianity the magic comes from a very distinct Jewish flavor.

Jimmy the Rat (a Jewish vampire), The Tzaddick (an immortal), The Rabbi (a powerful Jewish mystic) and his wickedly constructed golem Goldie come together to take down a mysterious and magical blood bank. Along the way they encounter peculiar versions of zombies and angels and a fortress that will boggle readers with its incredible level of security. It's the motley crew's job to break the fortress, to take down the blood bank and of course, collect their fee.

From there HebrewPunk moves to stories focusing on the trio individually.

"Transylvania Mission" pits The Rat against a band of Nazi werewolves searching for Dracula in the hopes of enlisting his help in their war. More could be said, but that, and awesome, sums up this tale.

"Uganda" mixes the Jewish flavor with distinct African ingredients. In this tale it's the turn of the century and The Rabbi is asked to investigate a tract of land in Eastern Africa which some people hope will become a new Jewish Homeland. Recognized as a mystic by a local tribe, he walks with them, getting a glimpse into the truth of the land, and possibly even the future. While this is a solid, interesting and richly flavored tale it feels unfinished at the end, perhaps because it's written as if compiled by a third party from multiple sources, a style that lends better to longer works.

Finally comes The Tzaddick in "The Dope Fiend", a 1920s set tale of voodoo and ghosts and how they surface in the Jewish mythos. Unfortunately this one is the weakest of the four. There are many major secondary characters that move in and out of the story, playing fairly important roles, but there's a feeling to them as if the reader should know who they are. It's not, however, guaranteed that they will.

Also a point of discontent with this story is The Tzaddick himself, who often comes off as if being a drug addict is all that he is. While there is a level of realism to this portrayal, in this story it keeps the reader from connecting with The Tzaddick as anything but a drug addict. This, and the previously mentioned crew of secondary characters, overpower the plot itself, as if Tidhar had more fun writing the characters than the story.

Altogether HebrewPunk is a collection that reveals interesting possibilities, especially for the Urban Fantasy genre who should sit up and take notice at how much space there still is in the genre outside the realm of nature based magic systems and romance melodramas.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has four stories that were written 2004-2006. I love Lavie Tidhar's science fiction, but these are more like fantasy and horror. I was hoping for more cyberpunk, with Jewish overtones. It does have those overtones, which are great. There are werewolves, vampires, fallen angels (or tzaddiks, whatever). Also gangsters and adventurers with occult powers or experience. Tidhar's talent is obvious, and I'm glad I read this, but I like his newer works better.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, I have an interest in Jewish vampires because I wrote a book with one.

There’s a reason most people don’t write them. Judaism and vampirism are incompatible, and there’s also blood libel baggage to think about. So Jewish vampire books are likely to either be interesting and lively, or a complete disaster. Luckily, this book is interesting and lively! Tidhar knows what he’s writing against.

As such, my favorite stories were the ones with the Rat (our vampire), but the last story, “Uganda,” was very interesting despite not having a vampire. 😉 Also, Jewish vampire vs Nazis is a vibe! That was probably my favorite story.

[Benjamin]

Four stories by Lavie Tidhar featuring pulp content with or around Jews:

"The Heist" introduces three Jewish criminals--the mastermind Rabbi, the vampiric Jimmy the Rat, and the immortal Tzaddik--as they work to break into a blood bank; in the first section, we see a vampire try to break into the bank and get caught by the holy water sprinklers, so we know that the bank's defenses are formidable. But with the help of a special golem named Goldie (made by the Rabbi), they get in and save the day. Or take over the bank by banishing its previous owner.

Each of the other stories features one of these three characters in similarly pulpy, adventurous situations: during World War II, Jimmy the Rat works with partisans to stop a Nazi werewolf division working to summon Vlad Dracul; in 1920s London, the Tzaddik gets tangled up with a black gangster and a Chinese drug kingpin, both working either with or against some terrible mystical force, and both seeking to bring back a young dead actress; and in 1900s British East Africa, the Rabbi goes on an expedition--after being asked by Theodor Herzl--to see how suitable that area would be for a Jewish homeland.

They are all interesting stories, and if you've read any Tidhar before, you'll know how he likes to mix pulp conventions in with his serious issues. For instance, the Rabbi's story involves an expedition to Africa, mysterious monsters, a magical pool--and a vision of a future where a modern Jewish state has to deal with people they've displaced.

However, this time around, the adventure/pulp material here felt less engaging to me than the serious issues. Reading about dope girls in London, I was less interested in the cosmic fight between Tzaddik and angelic/monstrous force than I was in the actual history of the drug trade (thankfully, Tidhar includes a note about his source for that story); and in how the story represented minority/fringe groups and their relation to majority power. (As a recent interviewee on NPR said, her white high school friends got into as many fights as the black high school students she studied in her graduate work; but one group would get parents and counselors called on them and the other would get cops.)

I wonder how much of my reaction to the individual stories might've been because the first story takes place in a time and place that I can't recognize, a sort of secondary world fantasy where angels and golems aren't unusual, whereas all the others take place in recognizable settings that aren't urban fantasy. So even when we're talking about a homeland for the Jews--which is a serious issue that's kind of in the news these days--the fact that we've seen these same characters in a fake world kind of drains some of the tension for me.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of four stories of Tzaddick, the Rat, and the Rabbi are incredibly imaginative and well told. It seems obvious that the author had a great time writing these stories. The characters are uniquely Jewish. The stories are urban tales steeped in the past. The reader gets a cool dose of Jewish myth and religiosity. On the whole, HebrewPunk is a good read.

“The Heist” has the best start of the group, with: “The bank stands alone at the city’s heart.” The beginning tells of a breach at the blood bank and how it is put down with holy water sprinklers. Very cool.

In “Transylvania Mission”, a band of Nazi soldiers and werewolves try to enlist the Impaler. Really just a very well imagined story.

The style used to tell the tale of a potential Jewish settlement in Africa is to take the story from multiple sources, each with holes filled by the other. “Uganda” gains credibility by being told this way. It feels less like fiction and more like a History Channel episode.

Finally, in the “Dope Fiend”, the Tzaddick nearly meets his end in a trade for a ghost. I got a sense that the story was a consequence of having the characters portrayed; that the characters were more important. Heck, even the drugs were more important. The collection might have come off stronger if it didn’t end with this story. But overall, just a great collection. I’m glad I read it.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the idea of urban fantasy with a Jewish bent, so for that basis alone, this slim collection gets props. That being said, the individual stories were 'meh.' The first two seemed more like treatments - the basis for later fleshed-out tales - than fully-realized short stories. The third was the most mature and best of the lot, though some elements were left unaddressed/unresolved. The final story was lame, as if Tidhar forced an interest in folktales and mysticism to merge with an interest in cocaine without any real motivation. Thankfully, this was a quick read - I don't think I could have finished it if it wasn't.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hebrew Punk was a fun, quick read. I don't know much about Hebrew Myths but that's what made this book fun. I like having something interesting to read that makes me want to research a subject more. The Heist was my favourite story and I'd love to know more about the world that it was set in. The three main characters, the Tzaddik, the Rat and the Rabbi were well formed in just a few pages. Worth the read for sure!

[Pierre Mare · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick, satisfying read for lovers of spec fiction. The four stories are told in different styles, for instance, 'Uganda' which tells the story of nascent Zionism through diary extracts and scraps of documents. The main characters come together in the first story and then feature in individual stories.

[ladymurmur · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more unusual collections that I've read in a while. Very engaging, and a fascinating mix of more standard western mythos urban fantasy (vampires, werewolves, etc.) with Hebrew mythology and 20th century history. Golems, wandering jew, the quirks of a Jewish vampire. Crosses & holy water? pfft!

Definitely looking for more by this author.

[Shauna · Rating 4 out of 5]

As so often happens, the most original books are put out by small presses. This collection of short stories features original characters based on Jewish folklore. The best story was the first, "The Heist."

[Jim Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first Tidhar I've read, and I was really hoping it would be better than it is. There are the makings of a few different and quite entertaining stories in here, but on the whole they are far too disconnected and rambling to be compelling.

[Edmund Lester · Rating 4 out of 5]

A re-imagining of vampires, werewolves, zombies and more - told from a background of Jewish mythology.

Refreshing, and a good indication of what this author might become.

[Carmelo Rafalà · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of stories, connected by a Hebrew mythos created by Lavie himself. He weaves together genre tropes with his Jewish faith to create an interesting genre all unto itself. Read this.

[Nerdycellist D · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the stories in this book for the fresh perspective they gave on European horror tropes. I'd love to read more fantasy and horror with traditional Jewish underpinnings.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jew-y sci-fi. Yes. I'll definitely read more from him, though some of the stories here were kind of weak.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, short little collection that live up to the premise. Some of the stories are dumb fun but one is surprisingly arty.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the stories were good, if not great. I particularly enjoyed the last story, "The Dope Fiend."