Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction

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When I was asked to do the introduction to this collection, that was the question I asked.

“Why me?”

One answer is that I am suspected of being Jewish. At least, my mother is Jewish and my father’s mother was Jewish, and that makes both my father and myself Jewish by definition.

I don’t do anything about it, you understand. I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never even undergone that curious puberty rite, the bar mitzvah. It doesn’t matter. I am Jewish.

How can that be? Oh, well, even without the kosher stamp of religion, I bear the cultural stigmata (you should excuse the expression). I was born in a Russian shtetl, and I was brought up in Brooklyn in the very last decade in which you could still find pushcarts lining the streets and candy stores on every corner. In fact, I worked for thirteen years in my father’s candy store. What’s more I can tell jokes in a Yiddish dialect like a master, and I can speak Yiddish itself quite fluently. I like music in the minor, and turn faint when my favorite person places butter on her corned-beef sandwich. “Mustard,” I whisper. “Mustard!”

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