The Oxford Book Of Hebrew Short Stories is NOT lightweight reading material!
With 413 pages, 32 good-length short stories, and a 15 page , thesis-quality introduction, the reader is not short-changed.
The compiler and editor, Glenda Abramson, herself a published writer, is the Shreiber Fellow in Modern Jewish Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Sudies, and Cowley Lecturer in Post-Biblical Hebrew at the University of Oxford.
In her clearly-written introduction, she explains that some understanding of Jewish history is necessary to an appreciation of the cultural and linguistic changes that have occured to make Hebrew fiction possible..that before the establishment of the State of Israel, few people associated the Hebrew language with fiction. Poetry rather than prose had always been regarded by Jewish scholars and teachers as the supreme form of creative expression, and fiction in Hebrew was not produced at all until the early nineteenth century, when Hebrew readers began to demonstrate their readiness for pastime literature to supplement religous treatises. However, the task of creating modern fiction of aesthetic value in a language which had not been used as the vernacular for centuries was almost insurmountable, since, on the one hand , each author was attempting to recreate imaginary worlds without adequate voacabulary, using a language which for almost two thousand years had been almost exclusively textual rather than spoken and colloquial...while, on the other hand, they had frequently to contend with active opposition from some religious authorities who considered the reading of fiction to be an unworthy, even sinful occupation.

Nor did the editor find her task of selection , with inherent rejection, an easy one.

."..They have been chosen primarily for their aesthetic quality, their narrative texture and colour, the combination of language, innovativeness, and , above all, impact.....Despite the non-programmatic choice of stories there is , however, an inevitable embodied history, not only of the literature but of the people who have written it.."

The writers are presented chronolologically, from Mendele, (S.J. Abramowitz, 1836-1917), through to Savyon Liebrecht, b 1958. Each story is preceded by a brief biography of the author and an explanation of the main themes of each writer's work, and a useful glossary can be consulted at the end of the book, although, as the author points out:
"..Some authors are untranslatable, for their writing is so linguistically specific that translation would not do it justice...".

But, on the whole, the authors are well served by their translators, and the stories, for the most part , flow freely, and are richly varied. I found some that I enjoyed enough to immediately consult Amazon Books for lists of in-print works by these authors.
And used thus, this anthology can serve as a stepping-off point for a study of Jewish literature,and Hebrew fiction in particular.
And as an aid to the study of the short story as a literary form , it has also justified its place on library shelves..
And it is a good enough anthology that it simply merits a reading , by lovers of the short story, for its own sake, as an interesting collection with something to say about a particular culture, a deliberate way of life, and a part of the world that is likely to affect the lives of all of us.

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