Celebrating the diversity of Jewish Buffalo.
Nora Gold
January 12, 2025 @ 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
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Dr. Nora Gold is the prize-winning author of five books and the founder and editor of the prestigious literary journal Jewish Fiction.net. Her books have won both The Canadian Jewish Literary Award and The Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award, and her writing has been praised by Alice Munro, Cynthia Ozick, and Dara Horn.
Title: Jewish Stories Translated from 18 Languages
Readers who are tempted by slim volumes of short stories will take great pleasure in 18: Jewish Stories Translated from 18 Languages. Edited by Nora Gold, the book delivers on its promise to share beautifully crafted fiction that transports readers across the globe in fifteen minutes or fewer. Instead of trying to answer the age-old question, “What makes a Jewish story a Jewish story?,” the collection allows the diverse stories and voices of the authors to take center stage. Certainly Jewish holidays, community leaders and institutions, important historical events, and antisemitism appear as threads throughout the book, but they serve more as an organizing and thematic tool than as a statement about the Jewish canon.
These short stories don’t provide escape from current events. If anything, the intensity of our moment only heightens the complexity and nuances of these works. The result is that although these stories can be read in just a few minutes, they are deeply thought-provoking; we must spend more time with them in order to appreciate them in full.
This book serves as a testament to the power of translation. The majority of the stories were originally written in European languages, and some readers may be disappointed not to see more representation from non-Western Jewish cultures. Nevertheless, Gold’s collection is the perfect example of why creating a place for such works is a valuable exercise. With any luck, Gold and other talented authors and translators of Jewish stories will bring us more volumes in the future.
