Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature ed. by Miriam Udel

Abstract

Reviewed by: Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature ed. by Miriam Udel Veronica Schanoes (bio) Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature. Edited and translated by Miriam Udel, New York University Press, 2020, 323 pp. Miriam Udel's Honey on the Page is a beautiful book and of great interest to fairy-tale scholars and aficionados. While the book does not focus on [End Page 325] fairy tales specifically, there are wonder tales found throughout the volume, and they offer provocative questions to our definitions of "fairy tale" as well as insight into the world of Yiddish literature, which thrived for seventy-five years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book opens with a foreword by Jack Zipes, who reflects on the political and ethical themes woven throughout the various stories. This topic is taken up in Udel's own introduction to the volume (the one directed at adults), where she gives the reader a very capable and informative overview of the development of Yiddish literature for children and the cultural and ideological milieus that gave it life. It is here she writes also of her decisions regarding the structure of the volume, which is modeled, she writes, on "early Yiddish anthologies, which tended to progress from the narrowly Jewish to the broadly humanistic," in an effort to "strike a sustainable balance between expressions of particular Jewish identity and gestures toward universal human belonging" (5). The book is divided into eight sections by theme: Jewish Holidays; Jewish History and Heroes; Folktales, Fairy Tales, Wonder Tales; wise Fools; Allegories, Parables, and Fables; School Days; In Life's Classroom; and Jewish Families, Here and There. Thus the volume begins with tales of Jewish holidays. Here can be found at least three tales that I would classify as fairy tales, such as Yaakov Fichmann's "A Sabbath in the Forest," which tells of a tailor who never fails to keep Shabbas, lost in the woods as the sun sets on a Friday night, before whom a magical palace, warm and full of food and wise fellowship, appears, so that he might observe the Sabbath properly. It is followed by Yankev Pat's "The Magic Lion," in which a rabbi, abandoned by his caravan while crossing a desert because he insisted on stopping to observe Shabbas, is sent a magic lion who helps him reach his destination. This section also contains Levin Kipnis's "Children of the Field," a retelling of "a legend very briefly related in the Talmud" having to do with Exodus (40). It might be argued that these stories concern divine miracles and so are not true fairy tales, but I would point to the often quite Christian literary tales of the late nineteenth century in response, such as those of Oscar wilde. A wonder tale can also be found in Part II on "Jewish History and Heroes," in which Rokhl Shabad's "Gur Aryeh" tells a tale of Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, in which the rabbi throws a miraculous feast for the king and becomes his most trusted advisor. The volume continues with Part III, "Folktales, Fairy Tales, wonder Tales," in which Solomon Bastomski's "The King and the Rabbi" presents us with another wonder-working rabbi, this time one who saves the Jews of the king's realm from a wicked advisor. This trope, of the rabbi who advises a king, speaks to one of the realities that separate a Yiddish wonder tale concerning royalty from a gentile one: if the protagonist is Jewish, his reward cannot be [End Page 326] marriage into the royal family and incorporation into the larger community. That "reward" would mean the abandonment of Judaism, and of course such an ending would be no happy ending at all, at least from a Jewish point of view. Being trusted as an advisor, then, is the highest material reward possible. Two other tales in this section, Judah Steinberg's "Roses and Emeralds" and David Ignatov's "The Red Giant" recall to me the tales of Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar wilde in their lyricism, but with gentler moralizing. Further sections of the book...