cover image The Merchant of Groski: And Other Tales My Great Great Grandfather Might Tell about Life in a Ghetto of Russia in the Time of the Czars

The Merchant of Groski: And Other Tales My Great Great Grandfather Might Tell about Life in a Ghetto of Russia in the Time of the Czars

Herman I. Kantor. Fithian Press, $18.95 (176pp) ISBN 978-1-56474-034-2

Kantor prefaces his first attempt at fiction like this: ``I never knew my great-great-grandfather Shmul. . . . But if he were to discuss his experiences as a youth and after he was ordained as a rabbi, I imagine these are the stories he might tell. . . .'' This timid introduction contrasts markedly with his amusing and uplifting group of tales, spun by the cocky ghetto youth Shmul, who works for the shtetl newspaper of Orsha to earn funds for rabbinical studies. He meets many entertaining characters while commuting by train between Orsha and the city of Smolensk (where Shmul picks up a packet of international news stories from a larger-circulation newspaper), including a ``lady of the night'' who becomes a star ballerina; a wolfhound breeder who presents Shmul with a dog in defiance of a rule forbidding Jews to keep pets; and a hustling ``snake medicine'' man. After Shmul becomes a rabbi he conveys enlightening yarns about his ghetto community, including a satisfying one of political revenge by a young man for the brutal murder of his parents by Cossacks. And wise morals abound, such as ``When you meet a bird that is different from all the others, don't hang onto it. . . . Get rid of it as fast as possible!'' (Feb.)