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June 8, 2001/Sivan 17, 5761, Vol. 53, No.36
Storytelling relays Jewish experience
GILA WERTHEIMER
Chicago Jewish Star
Storytelling is a time-honored Jewish tradition, and four recently published collections continue that tradition, each in its own way conveying something of the Jewish experience.
"Two Jews on a Train" by Adam Biro, translated by Catherine Tihanyi (University of Chicago Press, $17 hardcover)
This collection most closely reflects classic Jewish storytelling in form and content.
Biro, a Hungarian-born, French author and publisher, received his introduction to storytelling from his grandfather, and his source for the stories here is a 5-volume set, "Five Thousand Jokes," that belonged to his grandfather.
"I am an open channel between the tellers of those stories and their listeners who will tell them in turn," Biro writes in his introduction. From teller to listener to teller - that's the chain.
The stories are humorous, teach a lesson, are self-deprecating, ironic, contain wisdom, happiness, pain and pride. Many reflect pre-war Eastern European life in the days when two Jews travelling on a train would meet and exchange a few words. Others are contemporary, and while the encounters no longer take place on a train, they still echo the past.
For Biro, the title has an additional meaning. He relates that when his daughters were young and he would wake them for school, they would pretend to be asleep. He would utter the phrase, "Two Jews are traveling on a train," and they would burst out laughing.
This is a delightful collection that will warm you as you chuckle, and often recognize the experiences, even though they never actually happened to you.
"The Sweetheart Is In" by S.L. Wisenberg (Northwestern University Press, $17.95 paperback)
In this wonderful first collection of short stories by this Chicago writer, characters go back and forth between stories. Yet although the stories are connected, each stands on its own.
There are stories here of girlhood, like "Pageant," about participation in an elocution competition, where outward control of voice and mannerism masks an inner rage. There are stories of love, as in a story by that name and in "Living with Moranza," with its gentle lyricism and descriptive details.
The title story is a coming-of-age piece, about a young girl whose older sister is chosen Sweetheart of the Senesh boys' group. And there are stories of faith and doubt. In small details, in a turn of phrase, in a sudden, brief description, Wisenberg expresses the longing and yearning that are part of everyday life and that comprise the search for connection with others.
The stories are set in Chicago and Houston, and have a Jewish aspect that is often part of the backdrop, but that informs the sensibilities and perspectives of the stories. It's pure pleasure to read these stories, with their straightforward writing, their honesty and their openness.
"How I Came Into My Inheritance" by Dorothy Gallagher (Random House, $22.95 hardcover)
This memoir reads like a collection of stories.
The daughter of socialist Russian-Jewish immigrants, Gallagher grew up in New York in the 1940s in a home where words like "the Party," "Bolshevik", "Stalin" and "class struggle" were part of daily conversations and the newspaper of choice was the Daily Worker.
We learn about her parents, her aunts, uncles and cousins. There's her cousin Meyer, who was born in the Ukraine, remembered the Cossacks, knew hunger and poverty and out of those experiences became a socialist.
He came to America when he was 20, and in 1932 took a trip back to visit the Soviet Union. It was hardly the socialist utopia he had imagined, but in those years, instead of blaming communism he blamed himself - "I had lived in America too long. I was spoiled. ... Yes, I was selfish and spoiled." Meyer committed suicide at the age of 87. Her uncle Oscar, whom everyone considered a little "slow," married "an American girl," which meant not so much that she was born in this country, but that she was spoiled. Why? She got Oscar to give her an engagement ring, in a family where no one even wore wedding bands.
Woven into these stories is the author's own story: college dropout, early marriage, abortion and divorce. Her writing career began with a job at a pulp magazine, writing mostly fabricated stories about celebrities. Her mother did not approve - it was not "serious work."
Eventually, Gallagher agreed. She turned to serious writing. While "How I Came Into My Inheritance" falls into that category, it is witty and filled with humor as she delineates what must have been a very odd cast of characters. Gallagher writes of them with deep affection and poignancy. They are, she says, "My refugees," and "these pages are their last home." She has given them a wonderful home and invites us in for a delightful visit.
"Teacha! Stories from a Yeshiva" by Gerry Albarelli (Glad Day Books, $10.95 paperback)
Albarelli, with his Italian American Catholic background, saw an ad in a newspaper for an English teacher at a Hasidic yeshiva in Brooklyn. He applied and took the job, teaching there for five years. "Teacha!" is about some of his experiences.
The rabbi who hired him had this to tell him about his new position: "Think of it this way: you're going to Mars."
It wasn't far off the mark. The second grade boys all spoke Yiddish as their first language, their English was broken or non-existent and interest in learning the language was at about the same level. "Talk Jewish, they told him on his first day."
After the hiring rabbi's advice, Albarelli is told by other teachers and other rabbis that discipline is the key, and most of them try to control the chaos of their classrooms by yelling and by calling on Rabbi Katz, a large man with a booming voice who carries a stick.
In his teaching, Albarelli is told he cannot speak about current events, girls and women, movies, television. And, "No talk about Israel."
Although the yeshiva and the Hasidic sect are not named, he tells us it is in Williamsburg and that most of the boys are named Joel, after one of the Grand Rabbis. This, along with the anti-Zionism, leads one to assume it is a yeshiva of the Satmar sect.
In spite of the challenges Albarelli faces, he slowly manages to have some success. He begins to teach through telling stories and having the boys put on plays, and they respond. In the process, they learn some English.
Albarelli opens a window to a world that, for most of us, would also be foreign. We feel the humor, the frustration, the caring that he expresses, and the acceptance he shows for his young charges.
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