The Classic Tales: 4,000 Years of Jewish Lore

by Ellen Frankel

Three hundred Jewish tales in this extraordinary volume span three continents and four millennia. Culled from traditional sources_the Bible, Talmud, Midrash, hasidic texts, and oral folklore_and retold in modern English by Ellen Frankel, these stories represent the brightest jewels in the vast treasure chest of Jewish lore. Beautifully clothed in contemporary language, these classic tales sparkle with the gentle and insightful humor of the Jewish folk imagination. And like so much of Jewish literature, these stories abound in allusions to classic Jewish texts. Biblical cadences, phrases from the prayer book, and ideas from Jewish proverbs and heroic legends resonate in the air when these tales are read or told aloud. In The Classic Tales, history sheds its dust to become as intimate as family memory. While the breadth and depth of this book make it completely unique, three special features also help distinguish it: God appears without gender (though certainly not without personality); women characters, so often nameless in the original biblical text, wear their midrashic names (e.g., Noah's wife Naamah, Abraham's mother Amitlai, Lot's wife Edith); and many tales of Sephardic origin have been included to correct the common American bias toward Eastern European sources. What's more, this volume has been uniquely designed to be of use to educators, rabbis, parents, and students. It features a chronological table of contents as well as six separate indexes?arranged by Jewish holidays, Torah and Haftorah readings, character types, symbols, topics, and proper names and places_to make the tales easily referenced in a wide variety of ways. Anyone who needs a story to inspire a child, to illustrate a point, to develop a sermon, or just to uplift his or her own thirsting soul will find just the right one in The Classic Tales.

Genres: Judaism

704 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 3 out of 5]

These 300 Tales range from brief to short story length. The book can be divided into four parts:

Bible stories retold, sometimes irreverently and certainly with no pretense to accuracy.

The Diaspora: Folk Tales from the countries Jews traveled to and settled in. These stories date from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

The Hasidim: These are stories that center around the Hasidic community in Eastern Europe.

Finally stories of Elijah. These are not actual stories about Elijah from the Old Testament, but fictitious tales involving the Old Testament prophet where he appears to Jews in recent centuries. These stories resemble secular Fairy Tales and even some Greek folk lore where Elijah appears to people in disguise to test their piety.

As a non-Jew, I found these stories useful in gaining insight and information about Jewish customs and values through the ages.

[Bjørn-Erik Skjøren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read book for all people interesting in lore. Its interesting to read Jewish "stories" around known situations and people I know from the Bible

[Jesse Engel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable stories over the past 4000 years of Jewish history which are moral proverbs in themselves.

[Linda J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Focuses on the non-biblical tales. If you like Aesop's...

[Jesse Engel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful exciting times reviewed the ethical time period throughout the scriptures