The sub­ti­tle of this bold new book from the Jew­ish Women’s Sto­ry­telling Col­lec­tive fills in gaps from tra­di­tion­al midrashim and Jew­ish folk­lore. While these tra­di­tion­al sto­ries con­vey essen­tial moral lessons through the tales of mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, women — wise, brave, and pow­er­ful — are made con­spic­u­ous by their absence. Deb­o­rah Gor­don Zaslow, Gail Paster­nack, and Deb­o­rah Rosen­berg have includ­ed a range of respons­es to this trou­bling omis­sion, wel­com­ing many dif­fer­ent voic­es to restore the female per­spec­tive to Jew­ish sto­ry­telling. Some sto­ries con­tain per­son­al anec­dotes, while oth­ers change the gen­der of the pro­tag­o­nists in well-known nar­ra­tives. The collection’s most suc­cess­ful chap­ters con­front the his­tor­i­cal exclu­sion of women, and engage with the impli­ca­tions of rein­ter­pret­ing Jew­ish val­ues from a more inclu­sive perspective.

Each sto­ry is fol­lowed by a brief back­ground on its orig­i­nal pub­lished form, as well as an expla­na­tion of why and how it has been reimag­ined. In Deb­o­rah Rosenberg’s ​“The Trou­ble with the Spoon,” a girl makes the halachic deci­sion of how to use a dairy spoon that has been acci­den­tal­ly used to stir meat cholent. Libke, the prag­mat­ic and con­fi­dent hero­ine, decides with­out apol­o­gy to enjoy the meat meal. Her voice implic­it­ly con­trasts with the more abstruse dis­cus­sions by male schol­ars of this famil­iar domes­tic sit­u­a­tion. Although women have his­tor­i­cal­ly been asso­ci­at­ed with cook­ing, they still had no author­i­ty in rab­binic deci­sions about kashrut. 

Some­times the res­o­lu­tion of a dilem­ma is incom­plete. In ​“Edel’s Spark,” based on a sto­ry about the Baal Shem Tov’s daugh­ter, author Lisa Huber­man admits the painful real­i­ty of exclud­ing Jew­ish women from schol­ar­ship. Unlike many daugh­ters of tzad­dikim, Edel is grant­ed a cer­tain amount of priv­i­lege, and is per­mit­ted to learn along­side her father’s stu­dents. How­ev­er, her mar­riage brings an abrupt end to this intel­lec­tu­al free­dom. There is def­i­nite bit­ter­ness in Edel’s real­iza­tion that ​“her des­tiny was not to be her father’s suc­ces­sor, but to give birth to the next suc­ces­sor.” Edel finds a sense of val­i­da­tion when she meets a woman from a sim­i­lar back­ground; this new com­pan­ion also longs for a part­ner in study­ing Torah. The two friends are com­fort­ed by the recog­ni­tion that at least they are not alone, even if their com­men­taries, like many women’s, might ​“fad[e] into the sands of time.” 

This col­lec­tion also speaks to how women’s dis­em­pow­er­ment may have ter­ri­ble con­se­quences. In Deb­o­rah Rosenberg’s ​“A Charm in the Red Dress,” the dis­turb­ing mes­sage still holds true today. A preda­to­ry male in the town of Berdiche­va takes advan­tage of Morde­cai, an hon­est tai­lor, who has cre­at­ed a beau­ti­ful Rosh Hashana dress for a cus­tomer, Shay­na. Morde­cai is a decent— but unfor­tu­nate­ly gullible — man; when a manip­u­la­tive stranger offers him a finan­cial reward to sew a charm inside the new gar­ment, Morde­cai accepts. With the help of the charm, the stranger almost coerces the young woman into a sex­u­al encounter. Although she escapes, and read­ers are reas­sured that the stranger will nev­er threat­en anoth­er woman, Shayna’s close call is hard­ly an unusu­al expe­ri­ence. Almost equal­ly trou­bling is the fact that Shay­na must patient­ly explain to Morde­cai why his orig­i­nal deci­sion had been wrong. Rosenberg’s ver­sion demon­strates that it is not enough for women to defend them­selves; they must also edu­cate men to be their allies.

Wel­com­ing women’s voic­es into Jew­ish texts from the past is an insep­a­ra­ble part of the Jew­ish present and future. The Roost­er Princess and Oth­er Tales is a valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to this legacy.