Synopses & Reviews
“Jewish stories,” writes Adam Biro, “resemble every peoples stories.” Yet at the same time there is no better way to understand the soul, history, millennial suffering, or, crucially, the joys of the Jewish people than through such tales—“Theres nothing,” writes Biro, “more revelatory of the Jewish being.”
With Is It Good for the Jews? Biro offers a sequel to his acclaimed collection of stories Two Jews on a Train. Through twenty-nine tales—some new, some old, but all finely wrought and rich in humor—Biro spins stories of characters coping with the vicissitudes and reverses of daily life, while simultaneously painting a poignant portrait of a world of unassimilated Jewish life that has largely been lost to the years. From rabbis competing to see who is the most humble, to the father who uses suicide threats to pressure his children into visiting, to three men berated by the Almighty himself for playing poker, Biro populates his stories with memorable characters and absurd—yet familiar—situations, all related with a dry wit and spry prose style redolent of the long tradition of Jewish storytelling.
A collection simultaneously of foibles and fables, adversity and affection, Is It Good for the Jews? reminds us that if in the beginning was the word, then we can surely be forgiven for expecting a punch line to follow one of these days.
Review
"Deftly translated by Catherine Tihanyi, this successor to Two Jews on a Train sparkles with the happy anguish of Jewish humor, with the wit of threateningly cultured protagonists, and with the 'special case' treatment that life's tangles invariably receive in this milieu between old and new worlds."
About the Author
Adam Biro is the author of Two Jews on a Train and One Must Also Be Hungarian. Catherine Tihanyihas translated numerous books from the French.
Table of Contents
Preface
Translators Acknowledgments
1. In Lieu of an Epigraph: A Brief Story Containing within Itself All the Following Ones
2. The Officers Ring
3. In Praise of Anti-Semites
4. Of Humility
5. Okuláré
6. Of Wisdom
7. Of Children
8. Wailing
9. Of Education
10. Of Numbers
11. Thirsty for More
12. Of Privileges
13. Environment
14. Of Strength (of Conviction)
15. In English in the Text
16. A Witz for All Seasons
17. Of Jews and of Others
18. Di Ganef, Di Willst Davenen!
19. Assimilation
20. You Cant Escape Your Fate
21. Two Geopolitical Lessons
22. In Someone Elses Shoes
23. He Who Hunts . . .
24. The World of Business
25. Games of Chance
26. The Emigrant
27. Of Money, Still
28. Of Us and Them, of Them and Us
29. The Negotiation
Afterword