Reading Notes - Jewish Fairytales (Reading A)

I read the Jewish fairytales for this week's reading assignment and I was skeptical, in the way that we're all naturally skeptical of things that are unfamiliar. I didn't really know what a "Jewish fairytale" would look like, but as I read the stories, I noticed that they all feature very familiar characters--just interacting in ways that I've never heard of before and speaking with others that are less familiar. 

Taking these well-known biblical figures and reading stories about them in less magnanimous contexts has really been a treat. I am really familiar with their "Bible stories," because even though I'm not a fan of organized religion, I was raised in a Black Baptist church where my father was a deacon, my mother a deaconess, and my godfathers are pastors. But sometimes we forget that religious texts have more to them than just "spiritual advice" or "guidance." Books like the Torah and the Bible have cultural significance beyond the religions that are associated with their words. 

I liked all of the stories, but I didn't really get any story ideas from a specific story. I'm more interested in trying to replicate the humanization of well-known spiritual characters. Part of me wants to know if these stories were originally part of the Bible or other religious texts and over time they were just removed or forgotten, or if they were simply oral traditions about Biblical characters that were eventually transcribed separately. But I digress. 

The storytelling challenge for me would be to write a story about a Biblical character and use the "folktale" style to de-aggrandize him or her. I know I can't be the only one who forgets that Bible characters are "human." They always seem to be held above the rest of use in traditional references. I think that it can be cool to use folk to make these characters that we have put on pedestals over the course of centuries seem more human. 

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Bibliography: Jewish Fairytales and Legends by Gertrude Landa

Source: Christ Gain via Flickr