Jewish Fairy Tales Reading Dairy A

For this week's story, I chose from the Biblical Traditions story list and selected the Jewish Fairy Tales story collection.  I decided to read this selection of stories because it seemed like an interesting change of pace.  Also, because I don't know many Jewish fairy tales, which translates to I don't know ANY Jewish fairy tales, and I think the accumulation of knowledge on subjects previously unexplored is valuable to the development of an intellectually well rounded individual.

The first half of this collection included 6 brief fairy tales, which were over all unrelated to one another.  Some stories I was familiar with the background of, certain character names or events mentioned in the story were familiar to me because of their biblical roots.  However, some covered brand new characters that I had never heard of before.

For example, the first story The Giant of the Flood.  This story is talking about the Great Flood but there’s a giant named Og who is present.  Og brings Noah a unicorn and makes a deal to be Noah’s servant in exchange for sustenance.  Also, Og blessed the grapevine with several animals, the sheep, lion, pig, and monkey, and according to this fairy tale Og’s blessing is the reason wine affects men in accordance with those various animals.

Another story in the collection was The Quarrel of the Cat and Dog.  Which was a story that I didn’t appreciate so much.  Clearly written by a dog person, as the entire quarrel is written off as the cat’s fault.  The dog is depicted as some kind of martyr and the cat is just written as some hellish demon.  However, I digress.  Cats are awesome, mine is the best, whoever wrote this is biased.         

Etching By: Hendrick Hondius
Image taken from The Quarrel of the Cat and Dog UnTextbook Version