Seha is a Moroccan trickster, known elsewhere also as Joha, the renowned trickster in Jewish and non-Jewish Mediterranean folklore. Marc Eliany's modest volume introduces close to 50 Seha tales, annotated and framed in thematically organized chapters that range from social concepts such as compassion and gossip to phenomena such as immigration, secularization, and modernization. The author, Eliany, is the mediating agent, writing down these tales that he had heard from his beloved grandparents in his Moroccan hometown Benni Mellal and later in the post-immigration residence of his paternal grandparents in Kiryat Shmonah, Israel. Not only do these tales serve as a rich template for ethnographic and historical analysis of the Jews of Morocco, pre- and post-migration, they also intimately recollect one person's geographic and mental journey.The 27 thematic chapters are followed by concluding remarks addressing the distinct repertoire of each of the three storytellers: Grandpa Mordekhay's Seha—a cultural Jewish hero; Grandma Esther's Seha—a comic figure; and Grandma Tany's Seha—a socioeconomic and political hero. In addition, the conclusion offers suggestive pointers regarding Seha's embodiment of transformational processes, namely, modernization and secularization, which characterized sociopolitical conditions in Morocco and which were no longer relevant in the newly declared state of Israel. This contextual shift explains why Seha “was left behind in Morocco when the majority of Jews left their homeland in the mid-twentieth century” (p. 101). The tales of Seha, argues Eliany, “are about a popular fictional hero in Jewish Moroccan storytelling who embodies a symbolic self-reflexive narrative representing reality and change” (p. 101; emphasis added). In other words, he is a trickster in many of his guises. Surprisingly, the recognition of Seha as a trickster, although it is mentioned in Annette B. Fromm's introduction, does not inform Eliany's analysis of the tales.Barbara Babcock-Abrahams, in her seminal article “‘A Tolerated Margin of Mess’: The Trickster and his Tales Reconsidered” (Journal of the Folklore Institute 11:47–86, 1975), provides a broad characterization of the trickster narrative. She regards the trickster as a liminal figure who marks the paradoxes and contradictions between creation and destruction, the individual and society, and center and margins. He is a sign who embodies unresolved ambivalence and cultural tensions. The trickster narrative contains a playful element and often—although not always—a comic component. Through his marginal position, the trickster introduces a reflection on normative categories, exposing their arbitrary qualities.Approaching the tales of Seha as trickster narratives yields different readings from those suggested by Eliany, which mostly highlight a moral lesson or positive value that they are meant to impart. A few examples will suffice.Chapter 4, titled “Tales of Compassion and Gossip,” tells the story of Seha's compassion for donkeys: Just outside the town of Beni Mellal, at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, halfway between Fez and Marrakesh, villagers assembled once or twice a year to buy and sell beasts of burden, such as horses and donkeys. One day, Seha went on a mission to buy a young donkey for his community. Seha chose one that seemed healthy, negotiated a decent price, tied a rope around his neck, and took the road back to Beni Mellal.The first couple of people Seha met saluted him, but as soon as they parted they said, “Seha bought a donkey but he walks barefoot.” Seha climbed on the donkey's back and continued his ride to town.Down the road Seha met a few more people who saluted him, but as soon as they parted they shook their heads and said, “He who has no mercy, will soon ride a dead animal!” Seha carried the donkey on his shoulders and walked the remaining distance to town.When Seha finally entered Beni Mellal, people rushed to help him and said, “Seha is a compassionate man. He was our best choice to buy this donkey!” (p. 19).In this chapter, the author recounts the erudition and ethical code of his grandfather, Mordekhay, who referred to this tale apropos of Miriam's leprosy as punishment for having gossiped against Moses, in the biblical book of Numbers. He concluded his teaching by saying that “heaven does not tolerate speaking badly of any creature” (p. 18). But clearly this framing of the tale addresses, at best, a peripheral by-product of a typical topsy-turvy trickster narrative that undermines the positive value of compassion by presenting an absurd picture of the human being as the beast of burden. Even if a moralistic reading of the tale were possible, it cannot ignore its carnivalesque overall character.Similarly, in chapter 10, titled “Mutual Aid Organizations,” which addresses community organizations that assisted the poor with performing life-cycle rituals, Eliany tells a tale of Seha's torment because he could not pay back the loan he had received for his daughter's wedding. His wife, seeing her husband unable to fall asleep, opens the window and cries out, “Listen O men and women, Seha has no money to pay back his debts by morning!” She turns to her husband and says, “Sleep in peace now; it's everybody's turn to worry now!” (p. 42). Here, again, the tale is brought to illustrate qualities such as pride and shame, which Mordekhay attributes to Moroccan Jews, to pre-empt the wrong impression that the organizations operated in a degenerated society whose members were callous parasites. But in terms of the narrative itself, one is hard-pressed to accept this reading. As in the previous tale, where excess of misplaced compassion enabled reflection on the concept itself, here, the wife's cry to the public subverts and ridicules the value of social solidarity that mutual aid organizations imply to begin with.It is the playful, ambivalent, and reflective traits that render Seha a versatile figure in Jewish Moroccan folklore, one that Eliany insightfully suggests embodies intense social processes. Anyone interested in the Jews of Morocco, their history, and traditions, will find unexpected gems in this warm yet critical book. Folklorists might explore its terse remarks (e.g., the “disappearance” of Seha from post-immigration repertoire).It would have been beneficial for this book, and is of interest to the folklorist, to compare the corpus of Seha to the large volume of Joha tales published in English, such as those collected and edited by Matilda Koén Sarano, translated from the Judeo-Spanish [Ladino] by David Herman, Folktales of Joha, Jewish Trickster (Jewish Publication Society, 2003).