"In selecting these fifty-two stories, written originally in about a dozen different languages, I set my starting mak circa 1860, when Sholem Jacob Abramovitsh, the grandfather of Yiddihs letters, began writting novels for the Jewish masses in Eastern Europe, thus consciously initiating the tradition this anthology strives to represent... From then on, I sought only to include Abramovitsh's grand children, writers engaged in deciphering their Jewish identity, responsible for stories of high artistic value that serve as mirrors to major transhistorical themes like anti-Semitism, assimilation, interreligious relations, mysticism and the tension between politics and faith"
-from the Preface
"Since his emergence, the modern Jewish writer has seen himself as another version of the rabbi: a depository of popular memory, an elevated soul with the intellectual tools capable of analyzing all human affairs, a preacher a counselor, a decipherer of ancient truths, and a interpreter of sacred texts-in a short, a living mirror"
-from the Introduction
