Jewish science fiction?!! YES! And why should we be surprised? After all, how much of a stretch is it between Noah collecting paired biological samples and sailing off in an ark to unknown lands following a cataclysmic natural disaster and the Starship Enterprise boldly going where no one has gone before?
Some of the stories in editor Jack Dann’s collection are enduring and familiar; some read like a Yiddish theater group cast to play an episode of “Star Trek.” The authors included range from Bernard Malamud and Isaac Bashevis Singer to Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison with contributions from William Tenn, Pamela Sargent, Avram Davidson and Carol Carr.
In William Tenn’s “On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi” Milchik the closed circuit TV repairman tells a visiting journalist how Rabbi Joseph Smallman saved the Neozionist Congress. (The Neozionists are followers of the late Dr. Glickman who had a vision of buying back the Holy Land from the Vegan Dayanist Aliens.)
The organizers of the First Interstellar Neozionist Conference plan to hold their meeting in Basel, Switzerland. The Vegans block it, but given that attendees are already on their way from around the galaxy, they have to have some place to meet and that ends up being Venus.
From there things get messy. The Venusian Viceroy claims so many incoming Jews will strain the hotel system, so all the arriving Jews must stay in the homes of resident Jews.
“The Williamsburg Ashkenazim object. To them, some of these Jews aren’t even Jews; they won’t let them into their burrows, let alone their homes. After all, Shomrim in khaki pants whose idea of a religious service is to stand around singing “Techezachna,” Reconstructionists who pray from a siddur that is rewritten every Monday and Wednesday, Japanese Hasidim who put on tefillin once a year at sunset in memory of the Great Conversion of 2112 – these are also Jews?, ask the Williamsburg Ashkenazim.
“Exactly, these are also Jews, say the government officials of Venus.”
Once that gets resolved, the conference has to deal with the issue of who can be a delegate; given that all delegates must be Jewish, this discussion quickly becomes a debate about who is a Jew. The discussion goes into a stall when six Bulbas request delegate status.
The Bulbas “look like three brown pillows, all wrinkled and twisted, with some big gray spots on this side and on that side, and out of each gray spot there is growing a short gray tentacle,” Milchik reports. A rabbinical council is called to decide, statements are taken, Torah and Talmud are consulted, and there is much debate about what the essence of a Jew is.
Hardly is that issue resolved (no spoilers here – you’ll have to read the story to find out how) than the Venusian Viceroy abolishes it, saying they have gone on too long and stirred up too many bad feelings.
Not all the stories are funny. Avram Davidson’s eerie story “Goslin Day” reads like a cross between a ghost story and Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” poem. Goslins are thieving mischief-making supernatural beings. Faroly, the narrator, recognizes what kind of a day it’s going to be in the “warbled agony of the shriekscream.” He senses “an element present which was more than the usual ketzelkat expression of its painpleasure syndrome . . .there was (this morning, (something) different from all other mornings.”
Some of the stories are old and familiar like Bernard Malamud’s poignant story “The Jewbird.” In this story, a Jewish appliance salesman, Harry Cohen, treats a “Jewbird,” as badly as the anti-semites treat Jews. Although the clumsy old bird tells Cohen that he is trying to escape the “anti-Semeets,” the man is unmoved. Every day Cohen gives the bird less to eat and pushes him from the house to the balcony until eventually he throws him into the freezing winter wind. When the snow thaws, Cohen’s son Maurie goes looking for the bird. He find him dead in a lot near the river with signs of torturous injuries. Maurie sobs and asks who did this to him? His mother later says, “Anti-semeets” as if the family’s treatment of the bird had nothing to do with its death.
This book was originally published in 1974, after the 1969 landing of astronauts on the moon, but before the 1981 flight of the first space shuttle and well before U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly lifted off for an 11-month stay on the International Space Station in 2015.
The Author: Jack Dann
Jack Dann is a writer, editor and writing teacher best known for his science fiction. “Wandering Stars” was the first anthology he edited. The collection was followed by “More Wandering Stars: Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction” in 1981.
He has published more than 70 books, mostly as the editor or co-editor of story anthologies in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror. He has published nine novels and numerous works of short fiction, essays and poetry. In addition to science fiction, fantasy and horror, Dann has also written works of magical realism, history and alternative history.
He has lived in Australia since 1994, where he has become a major influence in speculative fiction. He is a frequent speaker, panelist or guest of honor at conventions as well as contributing to seminars and workshops on writing.
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