Evan’s Reviews > The Penguin Book of Jewish Short Stories > Status Update

Muriel Spark's 'The Gentile Jewesses' was among the shortest works in this collection and closed things out on a nice reminiscence of ancestors, specifically her mother and grandmother, of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unclear if this short story is mostly non-fiction or fiction, autobiographical or not. 6/10

At 45 pages, the penultimate story by Bernard Malamud was the longest in this collection, following a freelance writer visit to the U.S.S.R. in his later life after losing his wife, & being unsure if he should re-marry. He becomes acquainted with a Mr. Levitansky, a cabbie whose real work is writing stories. He smuggles 4 stories out of Russia, and they are presented in the final pages as stories within a story. 9/10

Amos Oz's 'Setting the World to Rights': Elderly man who is the kibbutz mechanic, but a loner who lives on hatred & gloom. His disappointment with modern Israeli society after coming from a childhood in Lithuania where he was part of the Zionist Youth Movement mainly stems from forgotten ideals. Now he reads the papers after work cursing the powers that be, and commits suicide by hanging himself from a tree.

Cynthia Ozick's 'The Pagan Rabbi' was the most modern of all the stories so far in this collection, narrated by a nameless man who is the friend of Isaac Kornfeld, rabbi recently deceased by suicide, and who visits first the tree from which he hung himself and then the home of his widow, Sheindel, who tells him what she knows of the reasons around Isaac's suicide. 8/10

Saul Bellow's 'The Old System' was one of the longest short stories in this collection. Modern in perspective of narrator, it tells the story of Dr. Samuel Braun's family, esp. cousin Isaac who is a self-made millionaire and whose sister Tina holds a grudge to the day of her death insisting he cheated her and their siblings, when in fact they abandoned him at a moment of need. Entertaining, but enigmatic. 6/10

Philip Roth's 'The Conversion of the Jews', a piece by one of the better known modern / contemporary writers included in this collection, was probably the funniest story so far, telling the tale of Ozzie Freedman, who (along with buddy Itzie Lieberman) cuts up in Hebrew school under the tutelage of Rabbi Marvin Binder, causing his mother to have to frequent the Rabbi's office to ensure her son's better behavior. 9/10

Dan Jacobson's 'The Zulu and the Zeide' was about 15 pages long. The story set in Johannesburg, S.A. follows the Grossman family, particularly patriarch Harry and his father referred to as the Old Man Grossman, who gets himself into trouble sneaking out of the house. He is paired with a young African man to keep him out of trouble and they develop a unique bond. 10/10

Emanuel Litvinoff's 'Fanya' was another story of the Yiddish theatre and an American Jewish actor who comes for a tour and leaves a young Jewish woman pregnant with promises he'll bring her to the U.S., but after the tour is over. I really enjoyed the adolescent yearning, themes of Hamlet in the narrator's life, and the folk wisdom of the women. 10/10

Isaac Bashevis Singer's 'A Friend of Kafka' was probably my favorite story so far in this collection. Written in two parts, it tells the story of Jacques Kohn, a former actor in the Yiddish theatre who sees life as a chess game with God. 10/10

Isaac Babel's 'The Journey' was one of the more depressing short stories in this collection, a mostly autobiographical tale of his fleeing from the front in 1917 as a young Bolshevik during the Russian Civil War. 9/10.