Jewish Stories of Love and Marriage

Jewish Stories of Love and Marriage offers a treasury of tales that speak to the tenderness and passion, difficulties and blessings of love. Jewish tradition overflows with love stories from the Bible, Talmud, and Midrash. Folktales continue the tradition, and contemporary writers highlight the way their faith and love interweave and enrich each other.

From Adam and Eve to Song of Songs, from legends of Solomon to the letters of Alfred and Lucie Dreyfus, these are stories of heartbreak, devotion, and celebration. They tell of how people fall in love and how they grow in love. The narratives are as old as the Bible and as new as the twenty-first century. They come from places as far-ranging as Yemen and New York. The relationships are heterosexual and homosexual, arranged and spontaneous, young and mature. Though the stories reflect the times and places in which they were told, they have a universal message about longing and romance, relationship, respect, and commitment.

Noted storyteller Peninnah Schram and Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso collect these narratives and letters for the first time, inviting readers to delve into these stories for entertainment and inspiration, at engagements, weddings, and anniversaries, to recall what once brought people close and what continues to hold them in love.

Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso is director of the Religion, Spirituality, and the Arts Initiative at Butler University and is a national speaker on women and spirituality and the religious imagination of children. She is rabbi emerita of Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis, where she served for thirty-six years, and is the author of numerous highly acclaimed books for both adults and children. Her children’s book The Shema in the Mezuzah won the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Best Illustrated Children’s Book.

Peninnah Schram is professor emerita of speech and drama at Yeshiva University. An internationally renowned storyteller, she travels across the United States and other countries as a featured presenter at storytelling festivals and conferences and as an artist-in-residence. She is the author of twelve notable books of Jewish folktales and has received numerous prestigious awards, including a Covenant Award for Outstanding Jewish Educator and the National Storytelling Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award.