This collection of short stories follows the great Yiddish storytelling traditions in tone and style: tackling life’s questions, big and banal, with an evocative, humorous and thought-provoking authority. From Melbourne to the Gold Coast, from Montreux to Jerusalem the tales examine the question of whether it is better to be chosen or ignored by a capricious creator. The stories are discrete but connected by their representations of various generations of the tormented. A mediaeval legend taken from the Talmud is gentle with gender ambiguity yet follows it to its unforeseen end. A tale of magical realism tells of a rabbi, a student who falls in love with him and a shadow-soul from a distant era. The three of them dance together in the present but the shadow-soul takes the rabbi back to a time of corruption and evil. Judaism -- Fiction. | Jews -- Fiction. | Faith -- Fiction. | Folk literature, Yiddish -- Fiction. | Australian fiction.