Shedim :: Dybbuk, Maggid and Lilith

The library, surprisingly, only has two ‘copies’ in digital format of ‘Burning Girls and Other Stories’ (March 2021) by Veronica Schanoes. All were out on loan; I had to wait for two weeks to get a digital copy. I wasn't expecting anything much, but I wanted to read it to get a feel of the writing.

The author's debut collection hold repurposed and reimagined Jewish fairy tales. 13 of them, set in different cities. As all fairy tales do, they weaved in themes of justice, oppression and queerness that marked the lives of Jews in Slavic and German towns. (Reviews here and here.)

The opening story 'Among The Thorns' is brutal and arresting. It recounted the years past where Jewish people were tortured and executed for petty crimes and major crimes alike, of stealing and selling children for gold. It recasts the famously anti-Semitic Grimm story 'The Jew Among Thorns'. The narrator Itte was seven when her father disappeared on a business trip. Her Uncle Leyb went in search of him and returned bearing news of his death. Her father was hung in Dornburg for a purported theft, and his body was "hanging from a gibbet mounted by the side of the road just outside the town." His Uncle and a few friends buried him in an unmarked grave outside of town. 

Over the years, that story, became a story of the Jew at Dornburg, of a nasty Jewish peddler and how a passing fiddler tricked the Jew into a thorn bush and played a magic fiddle to make him dance among the thorns, until he confessed to theft. However, it was the Jew who had his money stolen by the fiddler. Itte's mother died ten years later after this, when she was seventeen. And it was time to leave, to go to Dornburg to take vengeance. Her Matronit-Shekhina came to her and offered her a way. So with a magid in her altering her appearance and accent, and its magical help, she set about finding Herr Geiger, the fiddler who condemned her father to death a decade ago, and sought her vengeance on the man, and the town.

I lifted him up and helped him brush the dirty off his clothing and hands. "It's no matter, liebchen. I too knocked into my share of grown folk when I was little. They move so slowly, you know?"

We shared a conspiratorial grin.

"Were you playing a game I know, kinda? Tag? Or—" I said, noticing some crude musical instruments in the children's hands, "war? Are you piping brave songs to hearten the soldiers?"

"Neither," laughed the child. "Dance-the-Jew! I'm the Jew, and when the others catch me, they must make me dance 'til I drop!"

I recoiled involuntarily. "I—I don't know that game, child. Is it ... new?"

In the 13th final and eponymous titled story, the narrator Deborah was mentored by her grandmother and educated in the Torah, Talmud and Kabbalah, even as Jewish girls were encouraged to acquire dressmaking, cooking and skills suited to a domestic life and nothing else. That was the life for her sister Shayna. After a sacking of their grandmother's village and her death, Deborah now owned her grandmother's box, and a blood contact her grandmother made with a lilit to keep the family safe. In return, the lilit would take the next baby of the family, which was the sisters' new brother. But, their town now was sacked and burnt. Their mother, father and little brother died anyway. The sisters were the only survivors. They had enough savings to get to America for a fresh start, because Mama told them, "In America, they don't let you burn."

They managed to find jobs and made a living in America. The lilit followed them to America, and made a trade with Shayna for her first-born child. Deborah still had her skills as a 'mystic and folk healer', a practitioner of the magical arts to help women and also fight the demons. She protected her family as best as she could. The humans won the battle, but couldn't beat fate.

I searched the faces of the women pouring out of the building, running to avoid being hit by the falling girls, their friends, but I didn't find Shayna there. I ran through the street, pulling away from the men who tried to stop me, looking at the fallen, but I could not find my sister among them either. 

I looked up at the flame-filled windows. There was no more jumping now.

"I'm sorry, Mama," I whispered. 

I wept while the building flamed with girls burning, burning here in America.  

It's pretty decent storytelling. Nothing too fancy or fantastical about it. There was a matter-of-fact tone about them. I found the stories slightly patchy too, with too many elements thrown into a story. Not all 13 stories are strong. Some are a tad... incoherent. These two I extracted here, are the only ones I enjoyed.

At the end of the day, the demons weren't chilling. The humans were. And we wonder what the price of vengeance is. It's not just the holocaust now. It's not just Jews versus Gentiles or anti-Semitism anymore. It's widespread racism too. And we also need to consider the entire issue of Palestine and Israel, no thanks to political games that started before 1948, and the Allied forces screwed it up after that.