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After Abel And Other Stories

Finalist, 2015 National Jewish Book AwardHonorable Mention, Sophie Brody Medal, American Library AssociationOne of the Jewish Book Council's "15 fiction books that shaped Jewish literature in 2015"Eve considers motherhood.Miriam tends Moses.Lot’s wife looks back. Vividly reimagined with startling contemporary clarity, Michal Lemberger’s debut collection of short stories gives voice to silent, oft-marginalized biblical women: their ambitions, their love for their children, their values, their tremendous struggles and challenges. Informed by Lemberger’s deep knowledge of the Bible, each of these nine stories story recasts a biblical saga from the perspective of a pivotal woman.Michal Lemberger’s nonfiction and journalism have appeared in Slate, Salon, Tablet, and other publications, and her poetry has been published in a number of print and online journals. A story from After Abel, her first collection of fiction, was featured in Lilith Magazine. Lemberger holds an MA and PhD in English from UCLA and a BA in English and religion from Barnard College. She has taught the Hebrew Bible as Literature at UCLA and the American Jewish University. She was born and raised in New York and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters.“Original and thought-provoking.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS“Lemberger imbues her characters with a consciousness that, although taking place in ancient times, seems contemporary, because she brings such empathy to her characters… It is this act of empathy that shines through…. an alternative dialogue that reminds us that it is the stories that we tell that are civilization’s true heritage.” — FORBES“Fresh and engaging.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY“Appeals to readers with even the most basic introduction to the Biblical canon, but especially those whose imaginations are piqued by the mystery of an untold story.” —JEWISH BOOK WORLD“Reminiscent of Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent. . . . These beautifully written stories feel like meeting Eve, Lot’s wife, and many other compelling characters for the first time.” —LAUREL CORONA, author of The Mapmaker’s Daughter and The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi’s Venice“Stunning.” —MOLLY ANTOPOL, author of The UnAmericans“Gorgeous and captivating.” —DARA HORN, author of A Guide for the Perplexed and The World to Come“Marvelous.” —MICHELLE HUNEVEN, author of Off Course and Blame“What struck me most about these stories is their clear, assured confidence—as if Michal Lemberger had pulled apart some of the lines in the old story, spied a new story tucked in there way off in a corner, shimmied in a fishhook and pulled it out.” —AIMEE BENDER, author of The Color Master and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Paperback: 288 pages

Publisher: Prospect Park Books (April 7, 2015)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1938849477

ISBN-13: 978-1938849473

Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.7 x 6.9 inches

Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #425,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #99 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical > Short Stories & Anthologies > Short Stories #379 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical > Jewish #554 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Religious & Inspirational > Jewish

This thought-provoking collection of biblical stories told from the point of the view of the women who inhabit them but are rarely "asked" for their perspective was varied in both substance and style, in many ways reflecting the nature of the story itself. While there were two choices I questioned, the body of the work in its entirety will make all but the most chauvinistic readers look at this archetypal tales through a different set of eyes.Several stood out for me:+ Eve makes two observations that I continue to mull over: first, she, The Great Mother, never having been a mother herself, is ill-equipped to mother the first children, and she berates herself for how her poor skills might have contributed to her children's fates. Second, the lesson that she learned from the garden isn't about the frailty of humanity but that words can be both truth and lies- and God is just as capable as the Devil.+ Zeresh, Haman's wife, is one of the best meditations on power I've ever read. I've always been bothered by the Purim story, and this gets to the heart of what makes me (and many others) uncomfortable: for all of the machinations of both Haman and Mordechai, the problem in the story is the despot Ahasuerus, who is vain, fickle and bloodthirsty. While everyone is trying to worm their way into his graces, it is only his wife Vashti who understands the true, rotten nature of absolute power. She implores her sister Zeresh to content herself with "industry"- something she can't exercise- but doesn't push it; she also understands better than anyone the nature of ambition.+ Saul's Daughter, aka Michal, moved me deeply. This was the one story that wasn't told from the perspective of a woman, but rather her husband and the town she lived in. While I can't speak to why the author made that choice, I felt it worked, in part because the truth of Michal's existence and what she knew would be her ultimate fate was too painful for such a noble character to narrate herself.+ Finally, I loved the story of Lot's Wife because it, like Zeresh, shined a light on a question that always bothered me when reading the biblical stories: why was Lot more concerned with travelers than he was his own daughters, and why is he thanked for that? His wife explains a little bit, but it's more what she does to show her concern that is literally breath taking.While I loved the book overall, I did not understand Lemberger's choice to Hagar thisclose to mentally challenged nor her inclusion of the story of Caleb's daughter Achsah. While I approved of the character's actions- mostly- the story itself lacked the punch of the other stories and read more like a parable than the others. In other words, it felt instructive, but not illuminating.Despite those concerns, this is an incredible book, and I would recommend it to anyone who has ever read the Torah or Bible with some discomfort.

A number of years ago, after many trips to Israel, my wife and I travelled to Jordan for a very short visit. Under a moonlit sky, we drove swiftly past the Dead Sea—a place we had seen countless times before from the Israel side. As familiar a scene as the Dead Sea was, however, this new view was surreal. The water and the hills rising above it were all there, seemingly just as we always remembered them. But the perspective was flipped, the angles uncomfortable and skewed, and what once seemed utterly predictable was now a landscape littered with the unknown, peppered with surprise. It was familiar, yet at the same time fascinating and new. We couldn’t get over what an unforgettable experience that was.I felt that same exhilaration reading Michal Lemberger’s brilliant new compilation, After Abel. Few characters in literature are as familiar as Eve, Lot’s wife, Pharoah‘s daughter, Hagar, and others. We know their stories; they have fixed orbits in the Bible stories we have all known since childhood. Lemberger, however, has taken what little we know of their stories—the skeletal outlines of their narratives—and woven them into a fabric bringing new life and vitality to their characters. Each story is essentially midrash, a Hebrew term that implies a commentary, or storytelling that lends layer and meaning to a more established narrative. Women who once served as mere window-dressing to the moral male heroes of the Bible are now magnificent, heroic, flawed, complex characters themselves. They are breathtaking.I read these stories in just a few sittings—they were impossible to put down. I hope that this is the first of many opportunities to access Michal Lemberger’s unique perspective on life and literature—finding nuance in the mundane, and hidden worlds hidden to all but her own fertile imagination.

I’d been looking forward to this book of short stories for months, ever since I read the piece titled “Lot’s Wife” in Lilith magazine. Shortly thereafter, I enrolled in a Jewish-writing class myself that shared some parallels with Lemberger’s project in its approach.So what is Lemberger’s project? In a post for the Jewish Book Council’s blog, she explained:“We are all the heroes of the stories of our own lives, but the women of the Bible aren’t given the chance to play those roles. (That’s even true of some of the women—like Yael or Hagar—who do get to play active roles; their stories often advance the interests of others.) The questions that my book, AFTER ABEL, attempts to answer are: what are their stories? How would they think? What would they say if we gave them a chance to speak? What would be important to them—would it be the same as what the men value? Or would there be a shadow world, one that exists next to the officially sanctioned account, in which the details of inheritance or war don’t preoccupy their minds, but would instead be filled with the smell of food, the feel of a newborn’s skin, and the close ties of family and friendship that hold communities together?”Some of the protagonists in this book—like Eve, or Hagar, or Miriam, or Lot’s Wife—are personages I’d at least thought about before, although I had certainly never thought about them in the contexts that Lemberger has created. But (and maybe this has something to do with the fact that I sense myself deficient in my Jewish education) I’m perhaps especially grateful for the stories that feature characters I don’t think I was even conscious of prior to picking up this book: Zeresh, “Saul’s Daughter,” Achsah.Enriched by Jonathan Kirsch’s foreword, Lemberger’s own afterword, and a writing style that seems exquisitely and perfectly attuned to the stories’ ancient settings, AFTER ABEL AND OTHER STORIES is a collection I've been recommending to others, enthusiastically.

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