“Live, for the truth is living; wake, for night is dead.”

[larryhammer]

I am amused by the packaging of our latest acquisition from a free subscription service for Jewish-themed books for young children. In this case, it's a picture-book adaptation of a story from the Midrash, which the flap copy defines as "rabbinic fan fiction about the Torah."

It doesn't bother defining fan fiction. The (re)publisher expects its grownup audience* to know the term as a matter of course.

Mainstreaming in action.


* Including rabbis and synagogue educators.

---L.

Subject quote from A Marching Song, Algernon Swinburne.

Comments

[cmcmck]

It's a good description of Midrash though- it also gets used by the more intellectual sort of Christian thinker!

[larryhammer]

Of some of the Midrash, it is -- there's also direct commentary, legal commentary, halakhic laws, and so on. It's essentially a cover term for the set of early rabbinic literature outside the Talmudim.