This was a fun little read, but a bit difficult to follow. It assumes a familiarity with the characters and seems to jump straight into stories about them without much background. It feels like I missed a first in the series although I don't believe this is a series. Otherwise, it contained several cute stories about a village celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover. It would be appropriate for both adults and older children.

In this lighthearted and humorous selection of stories lies some real gems of Jewish folklore. They are all based around the Passover festival and would be wonderful and timely to share during the week of pesach.

My favourite story of the ten was Chiri Bim / Chiri Bom. I laughed all the way through this particular story, and I think both adults and children alike would enjoy it.

The remaining nine stories are similarly laced with cultural humour with multiple references to food, language and tradition. There is a useful glossary at the back of the book for readers who are unfamiliar with some of the terminology surrounding the festival.

Although the stories are based around the Jewish festival of Passover, these stories would appeal to everyone for their funny fairy tale quality.

If you’re concerned about how your Passover seders will go this year, take heart: it could always be worse. No, really, it could be much, much worse. Consider, for example, Mrs. Chaipul’s matzah balls, or better, consider the poor souls to have to eat the culinary tragedies they call Stones of Affliction, shot puts, and cast iron. It’s said, and I suppose this is meant as a compliment, that if the pyramids had been built with the dough from Mrs. Chaipul’s matzah balls, more of them would be standing today.

And yet—it’s Mrs. Chaipul’s matzah balls that save the day in “Mrs. Chaipul’s Lead Sinker Matzah Balls,” one of 10 silly, charming, whimsical, big-hearted stories in the new book The Village Feasts by Mark Binder, writing under the name Izzy Abramson. It’s the latest in Abramson’s delightful Village Life series and, if you haven’t yet had the good fortune to come across them, search them out in stores and on Amazon, Kindle, iBooks, and Google Play. You’re in for a treat.

This one is a Passover treat, because all the stories in The Village Feasts are set in and around Passover. For example, there’s “Mega Matzah Mishugas,” in which Reb Stein, the village baker, invents matzah by accident, then sets out to bake the world’s largest matzah. It’s not easy because, as Abramson explains, “One of the czars, Fyodor, The Not So Great, had commissioned, from the bakers in Moscow, an unleavened bread the size of a tabletop. Jews in London had once witnessed a hamotzi over a matzah as big as a horse cart. And it was rumored that in Jerusalem bakers had been developing for centuries a secret recipe that they claimed would permit them to rebuild the Holy Temple completely out of matzah within a week, if the Messiah should ever come and call for it. ”Reb Stein’s matzah requires four banquet tables to support it and 14 bedsheets to cover it. And it finally gets used as… but that would be spoilers.

Then there’s the seder dinner made entirely out of cabbage: cabbage matzah, cabbage ball soup, chopped cabbage liver, poached cabbage, braised cabbage, and cabbage charoses. Believe it or not, this story comes complete with a real recipe for cabbage matzah.

There’s so much more here to relish before, or during, your seder, like the unexpected origin story for one of the world’s most familiar haggadas, a cookbook made up of 1,400 recipes whose only ingredients are matzah meal and potato starch in various combinations, and the sad but comic predicament of a rabbi who unintentionally finds himself in a bakery filled with scrumptious masterpieces of the baker’s art—in the middle of Passover.

And there’s Abramson’s riff on what he presents as a real excerpt from a letter by Mark Twain, briefly mentioning Twain’s visit to a small, presumably European, village (I hope I wasn’t taken in by this). Abramson imagines what might have happened if Twain’s visit was in fact to the hometown of Mrs. Chaipul, Reb Stein, and the rest.

Which is as good a place as any to tell you that you’ve likely heard of the village at the heart of The Village Feasts. It’s Chelm, the legendary town of fools. But this is no Chelm you’ve ever visited before. In Abramson’s telling, it’s a village with “more chickens than people and a wealth of love, lore, misadventures and often silliness.” You empathize with these Chelmeners, rather than mock them.

Another quality that makes these stories so appealing and engaging is that they evoke the charm of traditional folktales. Much of this comes, I suspect, from Binder’s other day job, as an accomplished storyteller. He’s an Audie Award-nominated performer who studied storytelling with the legendary Spalding Gray, trained as an actor and playwright, and performs an average of 100 shows a year, both in the US and internationally.
Storytelling requires the performer to keep the audience’s interest and get to the point lest the audience get bored. It eschews lengthy description and interior monologue for action, emotion, humor, and suspense. All of these are characteristic too of traditional folktales which, after all, were told and retold orally for generations before they were written down and became fixed stories.

Each story in The Village Feasts contributes to a perfect Passover confection. As the village’s Rabbi Kibitz often says at dinnertime: “The brisket is tender. The kasha is toothsome. The gravy is good. Together, they are delicious.”

Mark Levenson’s novel, The Hidden Saint, is just out from Level Best Books.

An easy read that comprises of a compilation of Jewish tales all themed around Pesach.

Some were more amusing than others.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Light Publications for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A collection of delightful Jewish fables with Matzah on the cover? It’s hard not to love The Village Feasts. These short stories brought me back to reading Yiddish stories in my childhood. I would visit Chelm in a heartbeat and meet all the eccentric villagers!

The Village Feasts by Izzy Abrahmson

This is a fun book of short stories. There are a lot of characters, mostly Jewish. I’m sure we can all relate to some of them, and even without the benefit of Jewish ancestry. We can get caught up in the situational predicaments, the crazy ways of relatives when they join together for a feast. This is a people story. I enjoyed this book more on my 2nd reading than the first which is unusual for me. I generally only like to read a book once. This is a keeper. Easy to read aloud. 4 stars, only because not everyone enjoys short stories.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital advanced reading copy.

"At one Seer, Mrs. Chaipaul's grandfather Moishe had argued for six hours that if the pyramids in Egypt had only been built from his wife's matzah balls, then they would still be standing. Never mind that his son-in-law, Sam Klammerdinger, tried to convince Moishe that the pyramids really were still standing."

A gorgeous lighthearted selection of Jewish fables, filled to the brim with cultural references to food, religion and sentiments carried throughout the ages. The quick selection of short stories is absolutely delightful to read and I was giggling the whole way through.

A 5/5 read without a doubt, suitable for all ages looking for a cultural fix.

Thank you to NetGalley for the Arc!

This is a very funny book, with tales of Passover with the villagers of Chelm. I read the book in one sitting and was laughing repeatedly throughout the stories. The short stories are witty, whimsical, and absolutely tie in with the mythical village of Chelm. Do you need to be Jewish to love these stories? No, you don't. But it helps. The stories cover everything from matzah balls which are like canon balls, to how the niggun, wordless tune, was originated, to the Maxwell House Haggadah, to a wonderful tail about Mark Twain. Plus more, of course. I was not familiar with the author, but I am a big fan now. I plan to buy the book for our grandkids. It is one of the best collection of funny stories I've seen for a long time. Just fabulous. How fabulous? Don't ask. Just buy. And read.