Honey on the Page

Edited and Translated by Miram Udel

NYU Press 2020

352 pages

Review by Valerie Estelle Frankel

Those like myself who grew up with the Chelm stories adore them—they focus on an entire village of silly people who nonetheless persevere and celebrate their Judaism. Still, those who study the Chelm stories or the other authentic Jewish folktales quickly notice there’s a short supply. Only a few authors transmitted and translated those stories from Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe, and so many of our books repeat the same collection of tales. Frustratingly, more is available, free from The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, but almost all remains in Yiddish…until now.

Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature brings readers something we’ve rarely experienced—more Jewish stories from a century past. The title, of course, references the Jewish custom of introducing little children to study by having them lick honey from the page and experience sweetness. This book is likewise a taste of the vanished Jewish world—one many modern children have never gotten to explore. The editor, Professor and Rabbi Miriam Udel, did the research and translation herself in order to share the best of the stories in archive.

This large book is perfect for reading aloud. It begins with holiday tales from Shabbat to Lag B’Omer, as are popular to share with today’s kids. Isaac Bashevis Singer fans will quickly fall into familiar patterns: magic and moral tales blend smoothly, offering readers sweet new Jewish fairytales of rabbis and princesses. After holidays, there’s a massive folklore section with some stories from everyone’s favorite fictional place: the silly town of Chelm. There are also fables, including the delightful rhyming “The Horse and the Monkeys” by Der Tunkeler, a popular cartoonist. Charmingly, Ida Maze contributed a ballad on “Where Stories Come From.” Authors hail from everywhere, from South America to Israel, with plenty of writing from Europe and the United States. There are animal stories, silly stories, and serious ones, all standing out for their moral teachings and the Jewish culture they embody.

Some of the stories focus on education with metafictional fun like “The Alphabet Gets Angry” by Moyshe Shifris. Others are particularly deep, as a tale of sprouting children, “Children of the Field” by Levin Kipnis, becomes a diaspora and assimilation metaphor. Similarly, “The Girl in the Mailbox” is a light story but hints at the confusion of children evacuated to distant lands ahead of the Nazis. “Boots and the Bath Squad” mixes a “Cat in the Hat” type story with the reality of life in the USSR as Soviet agents arrive to bathe a particularly dirty child in a rhyming poem. A historical fiction section also appears with tales of the Gur Aryeh, Judah Abravanel, and the Jews of Spain and Frankfurt. The collection is curated for children, but as with nursery rhymes, the stories offer vague hints of a dark past. As such, they could be used as gateways for teaching about history.

There’s also an insightful introduction by fairytale scholar Jack Zipes and lengthy biographies on the original authors, some of whom have other available works in English. It’s a delightful taste of a vanished world, and more fascinatingly, it’s a collection of stories never available before in English.

Valerie Estelle Frankel has won a Dream Realm Award, an Indie Excellence Award, and a USA Book News National Best Book Award for her Henry Potty parodies. She’s the author of over 80 books on pop culture, including Hunting for Meaning in The Mandalorian; Inside the Captain Marvel Film; and Star Wars Meets the Eras of Feminism. Her Chelm for the Holidays (2019) was a PJ Library book, and now she’s the editor of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy, publishing an academic series for Lexington Press. Once a lecturer at San Jose State University, she now teaches at Mission College and San Jose City College and speaks often at conferences. Come explore her research at www.vefrankel.com or Her amazon author page or on Twitter @valeriefrankel

The Magical Imperfect

By: Chris Baron

Feiwel Friends 2021

336 pages

Review by: E Broderick

When I was an adventurous middle grade reader I wound up in the adult SFF section of the library. Although this shaped my lifelong reading and writing habits it was probably not the best idea. Luckily, the precocious middle graders of today have more options. Including The Magical Imperfect by Chris Baron.

Set against the backdrop of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake and concurrent World Series this novel in verse follows young Etan, a Jewish boy with selective mutism, and his budding friendship with Malia a Filipino girl who is home schooled due to severe eczema. The fast paced plot is a moving yet easy to read introduction to poetry for young readers. Throw in a magical jar of clay rumored to be the remains of a Golem and you have a story that parents and middle graders can enjoy together.

I connected with this book on so many levels.

The Jew in me was drawn to the vivid descriptions of Shabbat dinners in which Etan’s grandfather gathers with old friends that immigrated to the U.S. with him on angel island. Not everyone sitting around the table was Jewish, but their shared experiences made them family nonetheless. This is the environment I strive to recreate at my own table, where all are welcome regardless of level of observance.

The allergy sufferer in me wanted to try and alleviate Malia’s eczema with the new medications currently on the market. Much the way Etan wants to use his magical clay to heal him. However, the story resists using magic as an easy “fix” for medical issues. Instead, they both learn that true healing comes from within and that physical illness should not hold Malia back. Malia does not need her eczema to be healed in order to fulfill her dream of singing or to attend school.

She needs a friend. So does he.

That lesson hit particularly hard in this time of remote schooling and quarantine. Before coronavirus made it unsafe, I enjoyed hosting shabbat dinners like the one Etan and Malia plan in the book. It was meaningful to have the people I cared for, Jewish or not, sitting around my table. The laughter, the food, the stories. That was shabbat for me. It has been hard without it. I found that feeling again in the pages of this book.

Spinning Silver

by: Naomi Novik

Del Ray, 2019

480 pages

Review by: E Broderick

In the opening pages of Spinning Silver the author, Naomi Novik, tells a fairy tale. It is both tantalizingly familiar and utterly foreign at the same time. That is because this version of Rumpelstiltskin, or The Miller’s Daughter, does not focus on the usual suspects.

Neither does Spinning Silver.

If you are Jewish you may immediately pick up on the fact that the first viewpoint character, Miryem, is a Jew. Because having a father that is a moneylender and living with the knowledge that your entire village hates you for no reason is fairly baked into our collective consciousness by now. For other readers, it will be several chapters before the word Jew is used to clue them in. And this is brilliant. Because by that point they will have already felt Miryem’s pain, lived her struggle, and come to understand why she must collect old debts to keep her family from starving.

Indeed, it is painfully obvious that Miryem does not suffer from the greed her neighbors would ascribe to all Jews in order to help themselves forget about the fact that have taken money they never intended to repay. No, if we are to assign her a sin it would be Pride. And even that is the result of having so many things taken from her that she has nothing else left to cling to. For what else could cause a girl to boast that she can turn silver into gold thereby bringing her to the attention of fae like creatures known as the Staryk?

A closer look at original Tale of The Millers Daughter brings up some uncomfortable questions. It is a story steeped in antisemitism. The main villain is heavily coded as a money hungry Jew who morphs into a babysnatcher. That evil scapegoat is what allows the reader to overlook the fact that tale’s supposed heroine is being married off to a King that would have killed her just as easily as married her and she’s signed away the life of her firstborn child. Who needs to worry about defaulting on debts when there’s a monster around to persecute instead?

If ever there was a parable for what Jewish life was like for many of our ancestors, this is it. We do not have fairy tales or happily ever afters. Too many of our stories end similarly to a story Miryem’s mother tells her about a neighboring town: “And now there are no Jews in Yazuda.”

A while ago a list of “bad Slavik rep” and “good Slavik rep” made the rounds of people who enjoy having ‘hot takes’. Anyone with the courage to look behind the surface of their own bias would realize those lists could have been named “books mostly written by Jews” and “books by everyone else”.

Spinning Silver was on the bad list. But how can a story be a bad example of something it never aspired to achieve?

Because this isn’t a Slavik story, nor does it ever try to be. This is the reclamation of a tale that tried to grind Jewish people into the dirt. A joyous retelling of a story that puts flesh on the bones of a people it has previously been used to dehumanize. Much like the story in the opening pages, it forces the reader to consider another point of view. To strip away our preconceived notions, look past the antisemitic tropes and instead peer into our own faults and shortcomings.

For many that is terrifying. Because they have grown up on tales of the Other coming to snatch away their babies, their money, their culture. As if we had any use for those things.

Jews do not need to steal stories. We have our own. Spinning Silver is one of them. And we are more than happy to share them with anyone who will open their mind for long enough to listen.

E Broderick is a speculative fiction enthusiast. When not writing she enjoys epic games of trivial pursuit and baking. She currently lives in the U.S. but is eagerly awaiting the day a sentient spaceship offers to take her traveling around the galaxy.

Today Tonight Tomorrow

by: Rachel Lynn Solomon

Simon Pulse 2020

400 pages

Review by: E Broderick

When Rowan Roth, aspiring romance author and heroine of Rachel Lynn Solomon’s YA romance Today Tonight Tomorrow, laments that her passion will never be more than someone else’s guilty pleasure I felt seen. 

And that’s not the only thing this book made me feel.

Rowan teaming up with her arch nemesis to solve an end of high school scavenger hunt is as much a love song to Seattle and adolescence in general than it is about the actual couple. Watching Rowan come to terms with the fact that she often gets so wrapped up in her dreams she misses the opportunities that are right in front of her was a sucker punch. Because who hasn’t done that?

When Rowans classmates express antisemitism, when Rowan herself discovers she has made wrong assumptions based on appearances, the reader is horrified right along with her. When her friendships start to fray at the edges, as all friendships do in times of change, I couldn’t help but mourn my own lost friendships that dwindled due to intention and distance. Yet I never despaired.  because I knew this was a romance novel. And in romance novels I am guaranteed a happily ever after. In fact the cover art basically gives away the entire end game. 

Which is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to feel the feelings and go through the emotional roller coaster knowing there was joy waiting for me at the end. I needed that certainty in order to free myself to experience all the heartache and life lessons that must come before it. 

The moral here goes beyond “there’s nothing wrong with enjoying romance”. The world has been a pretty messed up, dumpster fire, of a place lately. If I can find something that delves into serious subjects but still gives me a happily ever after that makes my heart sing, you best believe I’m not letting anyone treat it as anything less than what it is: precious and rare. 

Today Tonight Tomorrow is a book I would give to writers of any genre looking to learn about craft. We know what the heroine wants, we sob as she is stripped of each and everything she holds dear and then we watch her grow and change and work for that happy ending. We have a character arc that is strong and believable, stakes that only grow as the book progresses, tension that has you reading into the middle of the night and pacing that I would give my left kidney for. 

This is true art. And if you fail to acknowledge that because it is “genre” and contains kissing scenes or is female focused then you don’t deserve the gift that is this book.  

I probably won’t ever write anything this good, I’d settle for even a tenth as good, but I’ll try to be less afraid of admitting the category I write in. Because maybe if we let Sci-Fi have more kissy scenes and be unabashedly female centric for a change it won’t be dead anymore. If we let fantasy feature more than the same white, cishet, European aesthetic we might realize only a very small portion of it is “oversaturated”. If I own this, like Rowan and her romance novel, they maybe I too can get my happily ever after. 

Rebel Daughter

by: Lori Banov Kaufmann

Delacorte Press, 2021

400 pages

Review by: E Broderick

When I think about Jewish summer camp, I remember the color war songs and the overly sweet shabbat wine, the way we all complained about swimming even though we loved it and the perpetually damp towels that never fully dried on the clothing lines. But I also remember Tisha B’Av, the Jewish day of mourning for the loss of the Temple, which always falls in the summer.

The entire camp would sit on the floor. Those who had reached B’nei Mitzvah would fast. The camp library was fully stocked with depressing Holocaust narratives to help those interested muster up some tears for Jewish tragedy across the ages. For many it was a deeply spiritual experience. For me, it was awkward, forced and uncomfortable. 

Those books did not help the situation. Instead, they made me too scared to sleep, convinced me incalculable evil hid in the hearts of everyday humans and filled me with terror so strong I still can’t breathe when I’m waiting for my passport renewal to arrive. They made me sad but they did not help me mourn the temple.

Too bad Rebel Daughter by Lori Banov Kaufmann wasn’t around back then. Although, I’m not sure the camp library would have stocked it. It’s too honest and accurate about how Judaism was practiced in those days. About the fact that while many of our customs are the same, others are wildly different. Proof that we as a people do change over time with outside influence and learn to adapt with society and ever advancing technology while still holding our sacred traditions dear.

Never have I read such a well researched, vivid and gripping description of what life was like for Jews under Roman rule in a work of fiction. Never has the destruction of the Temple, come alive in quite this way for me.

The marketing material had me worried this might be an oppressor/oppressed romance. It is not. Instead this is a meticulously researched fictionalized account of Esther, the daughter of a high ranking temple priest, as she lives through the Jewish revolts against the Romans and the ultimate devastation that resulted. It is a tale of Jew fighting Jew, the shame of subjugation and the loss of everything one holds dear. It brings to focus the shocking reality that sometimes the battle lines we seek to draw are hazy at best and distinguishing ally from enemy is not always easy.

Most of all it is a tale of historical accuracy. I was grateful for the chance to see my ancestors as real people with real lives. Including the fact that young girls were considered women back then and how very much like property women of all ages were treated. This was Esther’s reality and I appreciated the honesty. Even if it did make my stomach turn.

Revelations in this book include the fact that Jews were not always pale, suit-wearing, yeshiva students. Nor were the great Rabbis and priests of old strangers to taking up weapons and fighting. When Esther described muscular Jewish rebels, who also split their time in study houses, it felt right. When she danced in the Tu B’av circle or waited in line for the women’s ritual baths in broad daylight I mourned the fact that such customs would today be called “immodest”. Because we shouldn’t have lost the knowledge of our ancestors right along with our temple.

Who Esther ends up with romantically by the end of the book is, in my humble opinion, besides the point. It’s the “B plot” so to speak and it never took up that much headspace for me. When she does find love it is through a process that Jews have been experiencing for centuries: living through tragedy and figuring out how to survive despite it.

Did I cry? No. But I finally felt the destruction of the temple in a way that was real. I regained a piece of my heritage that had been long lost. To me, that is preferable.

Modern Jewish Baker

by: Shannon Sarna

Countryman Press 2017

264 pages

Review by: E Broderick

When I bake, it comes from a place of love. I feed people to show I care. I create elaborate desserts to express my feelings, doughy testaments to the depths of my unconditional affection. Except for the first time I baked a babka. That was an experience fueled by a rage so powerful only the melted chocolate oozing out of the doughy yet crisp loaf could assuage it.

It was season seven of the Great British Bake Off, my comfort show, and Benjamina was baking a chocolate, tahini and almond babka. It sounded delightful. Benjamina was one of my favorite contestants and she was baking a very Jewish dessert. I felt seen. Then Paul Hollywood showed up and ruined it all. He smugly insisted that Benjamina was baking a couronne, not a babka, because she twisted the dough into a circle instead of a loaf pan.

Excuse you Paul Hollywood. Then go take several seats.

While I myself had never baked a babka, Jewish people had been doing so for ages. I often spotted them twisted into rounds in local bakeries, and I would be damned if I was going to let Paul Hollywood dictate the rules of Jewish dessert.

My people contained multitudes. So could our desserts.

Modern Jewish Baker was already loaded on my Kindle. I had achieved success with some of the challah recipes, my favorite being the garlic and za’atar bread, but something had scared me off from trying the babka. A proper loaf needs to be proofed twice and the rolling, filling and shaping process is fairly involved. Plus everything needs to be coated in sugar syrup several times while baking. I wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.

I was wrong. Fueled by my desire to prove Paul didn’t know a babka from a bagel I decided to try the S’mores babka recipe. Sarna’s instructions were clear, her photos made the shaping process easy to understand, and the babka rings baked up to perfection.

As with several recipes in the book, I needed to make a few adjustments to get the dough to the consistency described, but this did not bother me. In fact, I found the recipes surprisingly malleable and forgiving. My babka technique improved with practice and I began experimenting with my own flavors and fillings using Sarna’s recipes as a base.

They came out perfect every single time.

So when the Great British Bake Off recently featured a babka challenge in which half the contests didn’t even know what babka was and Paul Hollywood completely ignored the fact that true babkas are proofed twice, I kept my cool. I knew how to make babka. What they were doing wasn’t it.

In the subsequent week I was delighted to find several articles interviewing Shannon Sarna about babkas and setting the record straight. I didn’t bother finishing that season of the Great British Bake off. I was too busy baking babkas of my own.

The Sisters of the Winter Wood

By: Rena Rossner

Redhook, 2018

464 pages

Review by Jessica Russak-Hoffman

Jo from Little Women. Lizzie from Pride and Prejudice. An entire childhood spent reaching to see myself in any main character. I thought everybody grasped at straws, looking for the tiniest personality trait in the heroine and holding onto it for dear life. I didn’t know that there were readers out there who read a book and thought: she’s just like me. I didn’t know there were readers who saw themselves on the page.

So when I read Rena Rossner’s THE SISTERS OF THE WINTER WOOD in my 30’s, and experienced this feeling for the first time, literal tears fell down my cheeks. My soul flew. I was overjoyed at finally understanding what publishing professionals meant when they said readers deserved to see themselves represented in literature, and sad for the younger version of myself who never got to.

Set in a village on the border of Moldova and Ukraine, this book is about two Jewish sisters, Liba and Laya, who must face challenges, temptations, love, and the truth about their own magical identities. It’s Jewish fantasy, grounded in the shtetl, and I didn’t know this was something I needed until I had it. Now I want more. This book is laced with more than Jewish identity, it’s laced with Judaism itself. Torah and Chassidic dynasties and mitzvot. Yiddish and Hebrew. Ancient stories and destinies tied together with young Jews deciding for themselves how best to step into world.

I identified most with Liba, whose body is built for the shtetl, who feels the weight of her feet hitting the ground when she runs, who does not move with grace. Liba, who hungers for Ashkenazic comfort food and wishes to cleave to her Judaism. Liba, who is a little bit of a yenta, and wants to protect her sister Laya from the temptations of non-Jews. Liba, who ultimately accepts what she cannot control when her love for her sister matters more than what she thought was important.

But most of all, I was inspired to write more authentically. To embrace the Yiddish and Hebrew and Aramaic that is part of my own speech, dig into my Torah knowledge for world-building my stories, and let my characters be Orthodox Jews.

Rena Rossner has done something magical with THE SISTERS OF THE WINTER WOOD, and again with her latest release, THE LIGHT OF THE MIDNIGHT STARS. Jewish fantasy, Orthodox characters, and a chance for us to ourselves on the page. That’s magic to me.

Jessica Russak-Hoffman is writing Jewish magic and hanging out in lakes and rivers in the Pacific Northwest. When she is not obsessively listening to Dave Matthews Band, Mumford and Sons, and the History Chicks podcast, she is tweeting about being Jewish, writing, and co-hosting the Kiddush Book Club podcast. You can follow her work at www.jessicarussakhoffman.com.