ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two folktales for middle-elementary aged children, published in the early 1920s, by Bundist Yankev Pat and cultural Zionist Yaakov Fichmann respectively, whose protagonists rise to the challenge of observing a Sabbath in trying and vulnerable circumstances. The prominence given to halakhic Sabbath observance in these tales prods us to reconsider and complicate our understanding of the relationship between religious and secular in 1920 Jewish Eastern Europe. With respect to the Sabbath tale, adopting Biale's dialectical view allows us to notice not only the surprising degree of halakhic punctilio in these tales, but also the accent on non-legalistic values that dovetail more obviously with the concerns of modernizing reformers. Indeed, modernizing Jewish culturists employed lyrical descriptions of nature, especially the Sabbath and holidays, in order to synchronize Jewish liturgical time with natural time as marked by universally recognized days and seasons.
