Abstract

On the Cooking Stove is the literal English translation of the European, pre-Holocaust Yiddish folksong, Oifen Pripitchik. The lyrics tell of a rabbi teaching his students the Torah, hinting at the old Yiddish expression: “the history of the Jews is written in tears.” These narratives explore the ways in which the past permeates the present. They are about the lingering effects of WWII on Jewish culture. Generations have been moulded by this period of time, therefore so has the understanding of family, love and death. The narrator of these stories, Gabrielle, confronts a point in her life where moving forward seems impossible without taking a step back and considering how the past has come to inform the identity of her family members. She searches for ways to understand, repair, or figuratively resurrect parts of her loved ones that she sees as damaged. Some of these narratives experiment with magic realism. All of these narratives have the common theme of the difficulty of letting go.