Fables from the Jewish Tradition

Title

en_US Fables from the Jewish Tradition

Description

en_US Original language: arc

en_US Rabbi Manes Kogan

Creator

en_US Ferder, Marcelo

Contributor

en_US Ferder, Marcelo

Date

2016-01-25T19:59:08Z

en_US 2009-11

en_US 2008

Date Available

2016-01-25T19:59:08Z

Date Issued

en_US 2008

Abstract

en_US This is a paperback book of 104 pages offering forty numbered fables, each with a lively colored illustration and a paragraph of comment--all in a two-page spread. One strong feature of the book is the brevity of each fable. Most of the fables last just a few lines. Many come from the Aesopic tradition. The Aesopic fable about the wolf and the fox, for example, starts here with the fox tricking the wolf into the place where the Jews live on Sabbath eve (30). It includes Ezekiel 18:2 about fathers eating sour grapes and the children's teeth being set on edge. I find these fables often not hitting their issues as directly as good fables usually do. They seem often just a bit off. In some cases, the miss seems to coincide with an intent to align the fable with a scripture passage. The author claims a common theme, for example, between a good story about a mulberry thief's stained hands, used as a parallel to the story of Cain's blood-stained hands, and the Aesopic fable in which a man uses a mulberry tree as an excuse for his having blood-stained hands. I do not think that there is a common theme here. The Aesopic fable about the fox entering an oak (or a granary) lean and needing to come out again lean is told rather of a fox entering a vineyard and is referred to coming into life naked and needing to leave the same way (32-33). The Aesopic theme is, I think, quite different from the Jewish. The art focuses particularly on the characters' or animals' eyes. A typical illustration might be that of the dancing crow on 59. At the book's end there are some seventeen pages on fables, midrash, and Talmud. I had to find a second copy of this book online because the first I found was lacking pages 19-22. This copy is integral.

Identifier

en_US 9780932412669 (pbk.)

en_US 6777 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/82085

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US Mayapple Press

en_US Bay City, MI

Subject

en_US PJ5059.E8 F327 2008

en_US Jewish

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole