You’ve Told Me Before by Jennifer Anne Moses offers a refreshing alternative in the Jewish short story genre. That’s because while many of her characters do their fair share of kvetching — with some good and some less good reasons — the majority of them remain devoid of self-pity, holding onto optimism and a sense of humor (if often of the self-deprecating sort).
In the first and title tale, a woman who laments having made all of her life’s decisions under the controlling thumb of her mother, nevertheless concedes that the choices were hers to make and actively considers how to escape her predicament.
In “The Jewish Wars,” the centuries old query of who gets to speak for the Jewish community is explored with two different approaches to literature and popular fiction. In “The Charlotte Situation,” the cliche of the single girl pining for the male best friend who only sees her as a pal while he chases an unattainable non-Jewish woman receives a self-aware twist, and in “The Goy,” readers are treated to the perspective of a non-Jewish husband who has gone along with raising his kids Jewish and living a life surrounded by Jews and, frankly, he’s kind of over it.
All of the above stories, as well as the remaining eight others, could have easily fallen into stereotypes we are all endlessly familiar with from books, television shows, movies and stand up comedians.
However, You’ve Told Me Before avoids falling into that trap by featuring characters who are not only honest and self-ware about their problems (especially with themselves, first and foremost), but they are also thinking about how to fix them. And they believe that they can work on these issues.
On the one hand, this smacks of Jewish intellectualism: I am smart, if I think hard enough, I will figure a way out of this predicament! On the other hand, You’ve Told Me Before deliberately avoids the whining and masochistic misery so common to the shallow and all too common media portrayals of Jewish people.
Every narrator in these dozen unique stories has something they are struggling with, be it with a family member, or with themselves. Yet every narrator also believes they can persevere. Which is a very Jewish mindset in real life, but a rare one to find in fiction. You’ve Told Me Before delivers the puff of hope we are all perennially desperate for, especially now. It doesn’t matter that we’ve been told before. It is always good to hear it again.
Alina Adams is the NYT bestselling author of soap opera tie-ins, figure skating mysteries and romance novels. Her Regency romance, The Fictitious Marquis was named a first Jewish #OwnVoices Historical by The Romance Writers of America. Her Soviet-set historical fiction includes The Nesting Dolls, My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region, and the May 2025 Go On Pretending. More at: www.AlinaAdams.com.
