Reading Notes: Jewish Fairy Tales (Part A)

This week I've begun to read some of the stories from the Jewish Fairy Tales section. This compilation of stories included a piece on Noah, which I read about last week, as well as some new tales I had not heard of. Since I read the story of Noah recently I didn't spend too much time breaking that story down and decided to look more into the other tales.

The Beggar King

• The arrogant king does not like what the word of God says and tears pages out of the Holy Book
• God aims to teach the king humility for shunning Him
• The king goes out to hunt a dear, which tricks him into following to a place where no one could see the king
• The deer turns to a man and switches places with the king, taking his cloak and copying his image
• Maybe consider utilizing that type of character in a story to teach a lesson or trick the main character into doing something good or evil
• Or that character could change reality or trap the main character in a loop til the lesson is learned

The Water Babe

• This is a rendition of the story of Moses from the Bible
• One of the advisers to pharaoh gives the princess a staff that she uses to make sure Moses passes the test and lives
• The adviser, Reuel, tells her that the staff was owned by Adam and he received it when he left the Garden of Eden
• since then the staff was handed down to Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and finally Joseph before he received it
• Some story material may involve doing a backstory on the current owner of the staff and talk about what the staff is made of
• the staff was planted in the ground and grew before Moses became old enough to read the inscription on it and obtain it for himself
• a side story could be written on the magical powers of the tree that the staff grew into while Moses was growing up

Bibliography

Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends by Gertrude Landa