For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
Book description
Ruchama, a wigmaker from an ultra-orthodox Brooklyn enclave, journeys into Manhattan for inspiration, frequenting a newsstand where she flips through forbidden fashion magazines. An elderly Jew with a long, white beard reluctantly works as a department store Santa Claus every year - until he can take it no longer. And…
Why read it?
2 authors picked For the Relief of Unbearable Urges as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
The story of many American Jews is a story of tension: between assimilation and continuity, universalism and particularism, Jewishness and Americanness.
The stories in Nathan Englander’s debut collection, a number of which are set in the sealed-off world of Orthodox Jews, center on tensions between the spiritual and the secular, the sacred and the profane.
To wit: the title story is about a Hasidic Jew whose rabbi permits him to see a sex worker “for the relief of unbearable urges.” Englander, who grew up Orthodox himself, is a master of the short story form, and his work gives readers a…
From Andrew's list on Jewish life in America.
While Nathan Englander (especially his novels) weighs in a little heavier on the horror side of my humor-horror scales, his collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges does have a thread of humor running through it that juxtaposes that darkness in such a beautiful way as to make it all the more terrible.
The story “Reb Kringle” is about a cantankerous Jewish man who works as Santa in a department store.Or "The Tumblers", a story about a group of Polish Jews on a train headed for the death camps, who, realizing something is terribly wrong, pretend to be a group…
From Thersa's list on a mix of wry humor and real horror.
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