Intro to Jewish Folktales

Hey guys! For those of you who celebrate, I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving, and that you survived the frenzy of Black Friday. Happy Cyber Monday, by the way! The Kindle version of Hammerfall is on sale for today only; you can check it out here.

Today we're taking a look at the rich and complex stories told by the Jewish people. Their faith, known as Judaism, is often simplified when talked about as being “just the Old Testament”. In reality, Judaism is far more than their 24 books that make up what Christians term the Old Testament (which is actually 39 books for Protestants, because they split several of the books from the Hebrew Bible into smaller books). Let's take a look at some of the different writings found in Judaisim.

The 24 books I mentioned above form what is called the Tanakh.

 

(If you guys have never seen written Aramaic...well, it is gorgeous, as you can see above.)

The first five books of this series of writings are termed the Torah, or the Pentateuch. In addition to these core tenants of their faith, Jews have an enormous amount of literature that they consider central to their religion. These writings most notably include laws, but also can be songs, proverbs, and stories. As with many old religions, all of the books of Judaism began as oral traditions. They were not recorded for many centuries.

Now, I do not feel I have studied enough of religion to tell you about the Jewish faith. The series of posts I have planned aren't going to talk about the Jewish God, called Yahweh, or their prophecies, or anything central to Judaism. I focus on mythology, so talking about religions that are still widely practiced today is a little difficult for me. Instead, I plan on talking about the stories found in Jewish literature. Because of this I have dubbed this series of posts “Jewish Folktales”, because they are about the tales those folks tell (see what I did there?).

Next week I'll be talking about the story of Esther, one of the strong women found in the Tanakh. Her actions and bravery led to the celebration of what is called Purim – a festival that is still celebrated in modern times. Since Monday the 14^th is the last day of Hanukkah this year, I plan to talk about the origins of that holiday on that day. After that I have a special post planned, and then we'll hop back into Jewish folktale with the beautiful story of Reuben and Penina to round out the year.

 

I'm really excited for this, guys! I think the stories are absolutely lovely, and there's such a wide variety for me to choose from. I hope you're looking forward to this as well. I'll see you guys next week!