By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
As part of my chaplaincy work, I often read or tell Jewish stories. They’re a great way to teach a lesson or get a point across without sounding pedantic. Many of them are also great fun and I have favorites that I tend to repeat. However, there are very few women in these tales and the ones who are are portrayed as ignorant, mean or overbearing. To correct this, the Jewish Women’s Storytelling Collective has published a collection of stories titled “The Rooster Princess and Other Tales: Jewish Stories Re-populated with Spunky Heroines, Wise Women, Brave Crones, and Powerful Prophetesses” edited by Debra Gordon Zaslow with Gail Pasternack and Deborah Rosenberg (Monkfish Book Publishing Company). 
The Jewish Women’s Storytelling Collective is a group of maggidot (women storytellers) who have adapted older stories to feature women protagonists, in addition to creating new stories and offering personal tales to share. In her introduction, Zaslow notes that “the purpose of the anthology is not to eliminate the stories that highlight male characters, but to offer an alterative version that is equally inspiring to girls and women.” The storytellers don’t change the basic meaning of the tales and each adapted story features information about the original that inform them. 
As with any collection, some stories appeal more than others, but every story has something to offer. Some of my favorites include:

• “The Thirty-Sixth Night of Chanukah” by Cassandra Sagan, which is a delightful, original tale that takes place in Chelm during a pandemic. The heroine, Zelda, very cleverly uses the argument about whether one should increase or decrease the number of candles lit each day to create order in her own home. 
• Zaslow’s “Holding Her Own,” which offers a different ending than the tale on which it’s based. In this case, the husband of a woman who wants to also observe mitzvot discovers the true worth of his wife and helps to make her religious practice possible.
• “The Shekhinah is in Exile,” also by Zaslow, which is a lovely variation on owe of my favorite stories. In the more traditional version, it is a boy who is inspired to play his flute as a way of praying to God. In this case, it’s a girl who doesn’t fit the mold, preferring to run wild in the forest and make music. When she plays her music in the synagogue, Zaslow writes a beautiful and moving description of the sound: “The music flowed out sweet and melodious, pouring forth with tears of the deepest sorrow and laughter of angels. The melody filled the room with the whispers of the ancestors, and the voices of the women, kolay ha nashim... it lifted all the prayers in all the hearts... strait up through the gates of heaven.”
• Gail Paternack’s “Esperanza and the Twelve Loaves of Challah,” which is an adapted version of a tale about someone who secretly leaves loaves of challah in the synagogue’s ark for God. What she doesn’t realize that someone desperately poor finds them and believes God is feeding their family. What makes this story stand out is that Esperanza is a converso who emigrated from Spain so she could live openly as a Jew. Her desire to perform a mitzvah is the reason behind her actions.
• “They Will Call Me Naamah” by Batya Podos, which tells the story of Noah’s wife and their time on the ark. There are midrash (rabbinic stories) that give her the name of Naamah, but few I’ve read portray the idea that perhaps God should have had more patience with humankind. Her story ends with hope for the future and tells of the need for resiliency. 

Anyone interested in Jewish stories will want to add “The Rooster Princess and Other Tales” to their bookshelves. Those searching for stories to tell their families and children will be inspired by these works. The collection also proves that there is more than one way to tell a tale and that every tale can be adapted to fit the needs of its audience.