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”).