Sunday, December 14 | 12 – 1:30pm
Join us for a book reading and signing event with the Jewish Women’s Storytelling Collective! Members of the Collective will read stories from the newly published The Rooster Princess and Other Tales: Jewish Stories Repopulated with Spunky Heroines, Wise Women, Brave Crones and Powerful Prophetesses. The Jewish Women’s Storytelling Collective is a group of ordained Maggidah (Jewish storytellers) who came together to offer Jewish stories from a uniquely female perspective and to make those stories accessible to modern audiences.
In this innovative collection of Jewish tales, women take the center stage. Books will be available for purchase and signing after the storytelling.
About The Rooster Princess and Other Tales:
Female protagonists turn Jewish folktales on their heads. What happens when stories with traditional male protagonists are updated with female characters? Timeless plots and values remain, while old tales transform to inspire and captivate a new generation. When Debra Gordon Zaslow first ventured into Jewish storytelling in the mid-1980s, she was surprised at how difficult it was to find Jewish tales featuring powerful female characters. This seemed odd, given the obvious strength of Jewish women. Over the years, she found herself slipping female characters into stories and changing male protagonists into females. Her criterion was simple: if it didn’t change the basic meaning or plot of the story, the character could be female. There was always the sense, however, of meddling with something sacrosanct. These Jewish stories have been handed down for centuries, and who was she to change them? Decades later, comes this collection of stories. The maggidot (Jewish women storytellers) who wrote and compiled this innovative anthology have created a collection to honor Jewish values while featuring female characters in every central role. Some stories are female-centered versions of traditional tales (e.g. “The Fishmonger and the Shiviti” and “The Shekhinah Is in Exile”), others are original fiction inspired by perennial Jewish themes (“A Queer Soul in the Shtetl”).
About the Panelists
- Gail Pasternack is a writer, storyteller, and educator, who was ordained as a maggidah by Maggidah Debra Gordon Zaslow and Rabbi David Zaslow. Her writing has appeared in magazines and anthologies, and Publishers Weekly has praised her clever story adaptations. Gail is a board member and the President Emeritus of Willamette Writers.
- Melissa Carpenter graduated from ALEPH’s Davennen Leadership Training Institute in 2009 and was ordained as a maggidah by Debra Gordon Zaslow and Rabbi David Zaslow in 2012. She teaches Torah classes, writes and delivers Torah monologues, and shares commentary in her weekly blog, Questioning Torah.
- Rivkah Coburn is a rabbi, storyteller, dancer, spiritual director, and Jewish embodiment facilitator. She was ordained as a maggidah from Rabbi David Zaslow and Maggidah Debra Gordon Zaslow and received her rabbinic and spiritual director smicha from the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal. Rivkah infuses her sacred stories with a magical physical quality, delighting the inner child of any age.