THE BRIDE WHO ARGUED WITH GOD

A collection of short folktales collected from Jews who immigrated to Israel.

In the introduction, Ben-Zvi notes that for centuries, Jews have passed down their culture, morals and spirituality through oral folktales. Emerging from countless countries, they dispersed throughout the world, forming a strong Diaspora that has fostered a diverse storytelling tradition. Upon the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, many immigrants told their stories to the Israel Folktale Archives, which became the author’s major inspiration and research source. The tales included here are brief and seek to explain, teach a lesson, or extol the religious or personal virtues of the characters. In the title story, a couple is visited by the Angel of Death, who informs them that they will soon lose their son. They ask that he be allowed to marry first, and on the day of his wedding, the Angel appears in the form of a beggar. Though both the parents and the son plead for his life, it is his new bride who prevails, arguing that, because the Talmud specifies that a new husband should not leave his bride for a year, it must not be his time to go. After each story, Ben-Zvi includes notes that offer an interpretation of the story’s lesson, a guide to direct readers to more information about the Jewish laws and traditions invoked in the tale, or more information about the particular Jewish community from which the story originated. Though the morals of the stories become quickly repetitive, and the prose is occasionally awkward and overly formal, the author’s dedication to research is evident. The wide range of settings–Morocco, Poland, Persia, Tunisia, Czechoslovakia, Israel, Russia, Iraq and more–admirably reflects the remarkable diversity of the Jewish Diaspora. In much of the world, particularly North Africa, Asia, and the non-Israeli regions of the Middle East, Jewish communities are slowly dying out–a fact that makes this preservation of their oral traditions particularly meaningful.

An important piece of public history.