Lamed Vavnikim
Dec. 21st, 2008 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI read Jonathon Keats' The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-Six recently. It's a twist on the usual idea of the Lamed Vavnikim, with stories of 12 who were far from obviously in that elect group, including an idiot, a liar, a gambler, a thief, a cheat, a gambler, a clown, and a murderer among their number.
The frame story around the 12 worked to link them together well enough. The stories themselves are all ostensibly folk tales with a Jewish bent. This worked fine in stories with dybbuks, or shtetls, or even kings, but some were generic enough, other than naming conventions (the Lamed Vavnik named by a Hebrew letter, the others with Jewish/Yiddish names), to feel not at all Jewish, and one, about a sin-eater, threw me out of the text; sin-eating is definitely outside Jewish tradition, much more so than circuses or thieves or whores. It was also a mixed bag when it came to appropriateness: some felt clearly Lamed-Vav material, while others were more ambiguous. I liked that not only were they not all obvious professions, but not all male, either (there are certain prescribed acceptable roles for females in traditional Jewish tales, as with most folk and fairy tale traditions.).
An interesting read, in any case.
It comes out in February. If anyone wants to read it before then, ping me (much easier if you happen to be local to me, though).
The frame story around the 12 worked to link them together well enough. The stories themselves are all ostensibly folk tales with a Jewish bent. This worked fine in stories with dybbuks, or shtetls, or even kings, but some were generic enough, other than naming conventions (the Lamed Vavnik named by a Hebrew letter, the others with Jewish/Yiddish names), to feel not at all Jewish, and one, about a sin-eater, threw me out of the text; sin-eating is definitely outside Jewish tradition, much more so than circuses or thieves or whores. It was also a mixed bag when it came to appropriateness: some felt clearly Lamed-Vav material, while others were more ambiguous. I liked that not only were they not all obvious professions, but not all male, either (there are certain prescribed acceptable roles for females in traditional Jewish tales, as with most folk and fairy tale traditions.).
An interesting read, in any case.
It comes out in February. If anyone wants to read it before then, ping me (much easier if you happen to be local to me, though).
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Date: 2008-12-21 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 07:35 pm (UTC)I'm familiar with that sort of feeling.