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Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People
What if there are other timelines, other histories, other Jews? Would they still have a covenant with the one God, or would they know strange gods? Would they have survived banishment, pogrom and Holocaust? What if the Holocaust had not occurred? Or what if it had succeeded beyond Hitler's darkest dreams?
Some of the world's greatest speculative fiction authors explore these roads not taken, and many others, in Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People, the first-ever anthology of Jewish alternate history fiction.
Contributors include Jack Dann, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, Jane Yolen, Lavie Tidhar and Benjamin Rosenbaum, among many others!
Some of the world's greatest speculative fiction authors explore these roads not taken, and many others, in Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People, the first-ever anthology of Jewish alternate history fiction.
Contributors include Jack Dann, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, Jane Yolen, Lavie Tidhar and Benjamin Rosenbaum, among many others!
361 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
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154 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 27, 2022
I bought this book as its premise fascinated me: how would Jewish life look in other, alternative timelines. (Think the multiverse) I haven’t been disappointed. What if the Exodus hadn’t happened? What are golems and dybbuks like in space? What if the bier hall putsch ended differently?
The book is an anthology by top notch authors. I was pleased to discover there were short stories; there was poetry; there were alternative religious texts.
For me, one of the pleasant surprises is the twists and turns are often not at all apparent until I’m at the end - or near the end - of each piece. (No, I won’t reveal any spoilers.)
There are books I buy, start to read, and never finish. This one is different. This book has definitely been a read from beginning to end book!
It’s hard for me to categorize the book. It’s certainly science fiction / fantasy. It’s Jewish fiction, in the same way the stories of Sholem Aleichem are - like Fiddler on the Roof - it’s about Jewish life yet accessible to all.
Age for whom it’s appropriate? Thoughtful middle schoolers can enjoy the book. So of course, high school and older can easily appreciate it.
Do I recommend it? Absolutely. Would I buy it again? Yes.
The book is an anthology by top notch authors. I was pleased to discover there were short stories; there was poetry; there were alternative religious texts.
For me, one of the pleasant surprises is the twists and turns are often not at all apparent until I’m at the end - or near the end - of each piece. (No, I won’t reveal any spoilers.)
There are books I buy, start to read, and never finish. This one is different. This book has definitely been a read from beginning to end book!
It’s hard for me to categorize the book. It’s certainly science fiction / fantasy. It’s Jewish fiction, in the same way the stories of Sholem Aleichem are - like Fiddler on the Roof - it’s about Jewish life yet accessible to all.
Age for whom it’s appropriate? Thoughtful middle schoolers can enjoy the book. So of course, high school and older can easily appreciate it.
Do I recommend it? Absolutely. Would I buy it again? Yes.
January 16, 2023
I reviewed this book for the Hugo-winning blog Nerds of a Feather:
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2023/01/...
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2023/01/...
March 20, 2025
I'm intrigued by alternate history, and once wrote an article called "What If: Alternate History and the Rabbis". The ideal alt-history, in my opinion, involves:
For starters, some of them are more like fractured fables. In one story, David and Goliath are the false identities of gay lovers who are also con artists, pretending to fight in order to make money from the betting on the fight. ("And In This Corner...!" by D.K. Latta) That premise is not a "what if things had gone differently" – it's a complete rewrite of the Biblical story, in the same category as the subversive novel The Red Tent.
Other stories are not alt-history but science fiction. One is about an astronaut using kabbalah to create golems for space-mining (see title and author below). Good sci-fi story, but not really alternate history.
Other premises strain credulity. No less than three of the stories present a world in which Judaism has been merged syncretistically with Avodah Zarah (idol worship). Given how consistently obsessed Judaism has been with absolute monotheism at least since the Ten Commandments, hypothesizing an idolatrous Judaism is like hypothesizing triangular squares.
A few of the stories seem like the author hasn't done enough homework about the Orthodoxy of the characters. Like the one in which the yeshiva-educated teen hears a reference to Shir HaMaalot (Psalm 126) and says he knows it from the Passover Haggadah ("Strength of My Salvation" by Bogi Takács), when in fact anyone leading an Orthodox Jewish life knows it from saying Birkat HaMazon every single Shabbat. Or the story that revolves around the shtetl rabbi's refusal to allow anyone to save people's lives by digging up and burning the zombies, which are inexplicably called golems ("Rise and Walk the Land" by David Nurenberg). The author has heard of the mitzvah to bury the dead but not the mitzvah of Piku'ach Nefesh (saving life), which carries so much weight in Judaism that all agree it even overrides the otherwise supremely important mitzvah of Shabbat. And no, neither of those stories posits an alternate version of Judaism.
I did like some premises and some plots, but in only one case was I impressed with both (see below).
I was impressed by these premises (more than their plots) –
1) "The Premiere" by Hunter C. Eden
Premise: Jewish gangsters prevented the Communist takeover of Cuba, and turned it into a gambling haven. Eventually, a film is made (with Marlon Brando and Al Pacino) that glorifies these gangsters, called "The Shtarker."
2) "White Roses In Their Eyes" by Matthew Kressel
Premise: In a parallel world where Hitler never came to power, Yiddish literature is still going strong, and Anne Frank is a grandmother and acclaimed Yiddish writer.
3) "The Time-Slip Detective" by Lavie Tidhar
Premise: In the 1930s in a parallel world, the State of Tel Aviv features zeppelins (and Yiddish speakers) – after having expelled all the Arabs.
I was impressed by these plots (more than their premises) –
1) "If the Righteous Wished, They Could Create a World" by Jack Nicholls
Plot: The kabbalistic astronaut has to deal with an intruder whose true identity has a twist that's no less than phildickian.
2) "The Book of Raisa" by Alex Shvartsman
Plot: A Jewish neurosurgeon from the Jewish exile of Birobidzhan needs to decide whether or not to obey Beria's order to kill the aging Stalin.
3) "The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships" by Milton Verskin
Plot: Socially awkward Spinoza manages to fall in love, get married, and become a Jewish leader – in Lithuania?!
Only one of this book's stories wowed me with both its premise and plot. Actually, it's a novella from 2011:
"Shtetl Days" by Harry Turtledove, who's an incredibly prolific alt-history author.
Premise: In a parallel world, Hitler won. Now, in the 21st century Reich, German actors reenact daily the shtetl of the long-extinct Jews.
Plot: The actors get so into character, they start noticing what's wrong with the Reich.
Now you can see what I liked and disliked about Other Covenants. I'm not sorry I read it, but overall I had a better experience with another Jewish story collection published around the same time: Jewish Futures: Science Fiction from the World's Oldest Diaspora. My review of that book is here.
1) a great premise (what if this event happened differently or never happened)Considering that Jewish history is thousands of years old, I was looking forward to lots of different perspectives in Other Covenants, which offers 27 stories and 8 poems (the majority of which were written for this collection). But I was disappointed in a number of ways.
combined with
2) a great plot.
For starters, some of them are more like fractured fables. In one story, David and Goliath are the false identities of gay lovers who are also con artists, pretending to fight in order to make money from the betting on the fight. ("And In This Corner...!" by D.K. Latta) That premise is not a "what if things had gone differently" – it's a complete rewrite of the Biblical story, in the same category as the subversive novel The Red Tent.
Other stories are not alt-history but science fiction. One is about an astronaut using kabbalah to create golems for space-mining (see title and author below). Good sci-fi story, but not really alternate history.
Other premises strain credulity. No less than three of the stories present a world in which Judaism has been merged syncretistically with Avodah Zarah (idol worship). Given how consistently obsessed Judaism has been with absolute monotheism at least since the Ten Commandments, hypothesizing an idolatrous Judaism is like hypothesizing triangular squares.
A few of the stories seem like the author hasn't done enough homework about the Orthodoxy of the characters. Like the one in which the yeshiva-educated teen hears a reference to Shir HaMaalot (Psalm 126) and says he knows it from the Passover Haggadah ("Strength of My Salvation" by Bogi Takács), when in fact anyone leading an Orthodox Jewish life knows it from saying Birkat HaMazon every single Shabbat. Or the story that revolves around the shtetl rabbi's refusal to allow anyone to save people's lives by digging up and burning the zombies, which are inexplicably called golems ("Rise and Walk the Land" by David Nurenberg). The author has heard of the mitzvah to bury the dead but not the mitzvah of Piku'ach Nefesh (saving life), which carries so much weight in Judaism that all agree it even overrides the otherwise supremely important mitzvah of Shabbat. And no, neither of those stories posits an alternate version of Judaism.
I did like some premises and some plots, but in only one case was I impressed with both (see below).
I was impressed by these premises (more than their plots) –
1) "The Premiere" by Hunter C. Eden
Premise: Jewish gangsters prevented the Communist takeover of Cuba, and turned it into a gambling haven. Eventually, a film is made (with Marlon Brando and Al Pacino) that glorifies these gangsters, called "The Shtarker."
2) "White Roses In Their Eyes" by Matthew Kressel
Premise: In a parallel world where Hitler never came to power, Yiddish literature is still going strong, and Anne Frank is a grandmother and acclaimed Yiddish writer.
3) "The Time-Slip Detective" by Lavie Tidhar
Premise: In the 1930s in a parallel world, the State of Tel Aviv features zeppelins (and Yiddish speakers) – after having expelled all the Arabs.
I was impressed by these plots (more than their premises) –
1) "If the Righteous Wished, They Could Create a World" by Jack Nicholls
Plot: The kabbalistic astronaut has to deal with an intruder whose true identity has a twist that's no less than phildickian.
2) "The Book of Raisa" by Alex Shvartsman
Plot: A Jewish neurosurgeon from the Jewish exile of Birobidzhan needs to decide whether or not to obey Beria's order to kill the aging Stalin.
3) "The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships" by Milton Verskin
Plot: Socially awkward Spinoza manages to fall in love, get married, and become a Jewish leader – in Lithuania?!
Only one of this book's stories wowed me with both its premise and plot. Actually, it's a novella from 2011:
"Shtetl Days" by Harry Turtledove, who's an incredibly prolific alt-history author.
Premise: In a parallel world, Hitler won. Now, in the 21st century Reich, German actors reenact daily the shtetl of the long-extinct Jews.
Plot: The actors get so into character, they start noticing what's wrong with the Reich.
Now you can see what I liked and disliked about Other Covenants. I'm not sorry I read it, but overall I had a better experience with another Jewish story collection published around the same time: Jewish Futures: Science Fiction from the World's Oldest Diaspora. My review of that book is here.
March 30, 2023
Okay, so admittedly, I mostly picked up this book because I know one of the authors, and because reading your colleagues' work is kind of like sanctioned eavesdropping? But damn if this wasn't worth it.
I'm going to apologize in advance of writing this review: I am totally a generic white girl and this isn't my religion, so a lot of this book probably went over my head despite all the Yiddish now in my Google search history. Please let me know if anything below is ignorant or incorrect so I can edit this accordingly.
Sooooo:
I really, really love 'If the righteous wished, they could create a world'. Using combinatorics and modern computing to get functional golems? Amazing.
'White roses in her eyes'. Okay, yeah. I love the fact the author chose an epistolary format, given that we know Anne mostly by her diary. Other notes: Yeah, I cried on those pages. The juxtaposition of what actually happened to Anne next to what could have happened for her, for all of us, makes the history of this world feel worse.
'Ka-Ka-Ka' with the role switch between African Americans and Jewish folk? It's always tempting to think that ethnic violence is something that happened a long time ago. Somehow, I've never connected what African Americans deal with in the States to what Jewish people dealt with historically in Europe--even if towns literally had Black ghettos before desegregation, and even if some of the same rhetoric has been historically used to dehumanize both African Americans and Jewish people.
"Night at the Crimea". Yes, I checked IMDB to see if there were Zohar films. Yes, you can laugh, so long as someone goes and gets on making those adaptations.
... I have a lot of other feelings about this anthology. To sum it up though, it's beautifully written and arranged, and while this wasn't its intended purpose, it was a fascinating way to learn about Jewish perspectives and faith for someone whose engagement with the religion has been fairly limited. I'll admit to wishing there was a glossary in the back, but again--a glossary wouldn't make sense given the intended audience. Oh well, guess I'll just have to remember the Yiddish and Hebrew for the next time I see it ;)
I'm going to apologize in advance of writing this review: I am totally a generic white girl and this isn't my religion, so a lot of this book probably went over my head despite all the Yiddish now in my Google search history. Please let me know if anything below is ignorant or incorrect so I can edit this accordingly.
Sooooo:
I really, really love 'If the righteous wished, they could create a world'. Using combinatorics and modern computing to get functional golems? Amazing.
'White roses in her eyes'. Okay, yeah. I love the fact the author chose an epistolary format, given that we know Anne mostly by her diary. Other notes: Yeah, I cried on those pages. The juxtaposition of what actually happened to Anne next to what could have happened for her, for all of us, makes the history of this world feel worse.
'Ka-Ka-Ka' with the role switch between African Americans and Jewish folk? It's always tempting to think that ethnic violence is something that happened a long time ago. Somehow, I've never connected what African Americans deal with in the States to what Jewish people dealt with historically in Europe--even if towns literally had Black ghettos before desegregation, and even if some of the same rhetoric has been historically used to dehumanize both African Americans and Jewish people.
"Night at the Crimea". Yes, I checked IMDB to see if there were Zohar films. Yes, you can laugh, so long as someone goes and gets on making those adaptations.
... I have a lot of other feelings about this anthology. To sum it up though, it's beautifully written and arranged, and while this wasn't its intended purpose, it was a fascinating way to learn about Jewish perspectives and faith for someone whose engagement with the religion has been fairly limited. I'll admit to wishing there was a glossary in the back, but again--a glossary wouldn't make sense given the intended audience. Oh well, guess I'll just have to remember the Yiddish and Hebrew for the next time I see it ;)
March 21, 2023
I always find it difficult to rate collected anthologies, because there are so many author-styles in one book. I was worried about this one when I didn't like a couple of the first stories but then as I kept reading, I was delighted to find that I was rating almost all the stories 4 or 5*. I don't rate poetry so of the 26 short stories, I gave a full ten 5* and only three received below a 3*.
My top favourites were The Golem with a Thousand Faces by Claude LaLumiere, which was a bit of a surprise because I don't generally read spy fiction, but I loved the world-building and how it ended, and A Sky and a Heaven by Eric Choi, which just gave me a beautiful "What if The Martian but Jewish" feeling.
The most disappointing in the bunch was Ka-Ka-Ka by C.L. McDaniel. I understand what they were trying to do with the story but it felt like extremely low-hanging fruit to co-opt someone else's communal struggle. Prejudice and bigotry and the struggles that stem from such are not a competition and it just felt weirdly cheapening to read such a one-to-one swap.
My top favourites were The Golem with a Thousand Faces by Claude LaLumiere, which was a bit of a surprise because I don't generally read spy fiction, but I loved the world-building and how it ended, and A Sky and a Heaven by Eric Choi, which just gave me a beautiful "What if The Martian but Jewish" feeling.
The most disappointing in the bunch was Ka-Ka-Ka by C.L. McDaniel. I understand what they were trying to do with the story but it felt like extremely low-hanging fruit to co-opt someone else's communal struggle. Prejudice and bigotry and the struggles that stem from such are not a competition and it just felt weirdly cheapening to read such a one-to-one swap.
March 28, 2023
I very eagerly backed this anthology on Kickstarter, both because the premise was fascinating, and I was a fan of other works from the publisher, Ben Yehudah Press. And oh my, it did not disappoint!
I was a bit worried that most of the stories would focus on an alternate history in which the war ended differently, and while there were some stories with that premise, there was a delightful variety of other histories.
My least favorite part of this anthology was that it ended. That being said, I did have a few stories that were my favorites:
If The Righteous Wished, They Could Create a World by Jack Nicholise - Jews in space, creating golems to mine asteroids? Sign me up!
A Sky and a Heaven by Eric Choi - what happens when you combine a Holocaust survivor who saved the tiny Torah scroll he read from while in the camps, Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, and the Columbia shuttle disaster? Me ugly sobbing, that’s what you get.
Shtetl Days by Harry Turtledove - I can’t even describe this, but it is definitely going to stick around in my head for a while.
I was a bit worried that most of the stories would focus on an alternate history in which the war ended differently, and while there were some stories with that premise, there was a delightful variety of other histories.
My least favorite part of this anthology was that it ended. That being said, I did have a few stories that were my favorites:
If The Righteous Wished, They Could Create a World by Jack Nicholise - Jews in space, creating golems to mine asteroids? Sign me up!
A Sky and a Heaven by Eric Choi - what happens when you combine a Holocaust survivor who saved the tiny Torah scroll he read from while in the camps, Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, and the Columbia shuttle disaster? Me ugly sobbing, that’s what you get.
Shtetl Days by Harry Turtledove - I can’t even describe this, but it is definitely going to stick around in my head for a while.
April 28, 2023
Like any anthology, it’s a mix of how good, from meh to excellent, but most worth reading. Also a mix from fantasy, alt history, through to hard science.
Read
August 7, 2023A Sky and a Heaven made me cry
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