Singer, Aleichem... Englander?

Reb Kringle and Charles Luger, a Jewish Santa Claus and a Christian Jew, are Just of unusual characters in Nathan Englander's new collection of short stories. In each of the nine tales of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Englander explores the tensions and the humor of a secular modern world inhabited by deeply traditional Orthodox Jews. These are stories of people trapped in unhappy marriages, the seemingly mundane fantasies of housewives, the strange behaviors of old and young men in crisis, and the fateful coincidences which save or end a life. Englander imbues his stories with a wry, intelligent sense of humor and a fresh perspective on the burdens of daily life, Neither depressing nor exactly uplifting, these bittersweet tales intersperse laugh-out-loud moments with serious and troubling revelations.

In the collection's title story, Englander follows the sufferings of an Orthodox man who must seek alternative satisfaction when his wife refuses to make love to him. Finding his sexual desires "unbearable," Dov Binyamin receives a "special dispensation" from the Rebbe to visit a prostitute. In theory, this excused adultery will save the marriage by reducing sexual pressure. Not surprisingly, the Rebbe's solution causes as many problems as it solves, and after a series of funny and uncomfortable dialogues with two prostitutes and a cab driver, the story ends with a sorrowfully ironic twist rather similar to that in O'Henry's "The Gift of the Magi." Alternately poignant and humorous, this story is perhaps the best in the collection.

Drawing on the traditions of Yiddish storytelling and on his visions of nearly identical Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and in Jerusalem, Englander presents a group of stories relevant both in and outside of the religious sphere. The readers may find some of Englander's untranslated Yiddish and Hebrew phrases and his references to Orthodox Jewish customs unfamiliar, but the collection is accessible to anyone. It is not necessary to come from a demanding religious tradition in order to empathize with his characters.

Unfortunately, Englander has a tendency to overstate the sufferings of the Jewish people. Though he writes stories which are genuinely and interestingly sad, the author often insists on adding a manipulative twist, making the occasional phrase sound whiny and trite. While his stories are always engaging, holding attention up to the last moment, Englander's endings are often abrupt and unsatisfying.

Despite some structural weaknesses, Englander has succeeded in revealing a vibrant collection of lives. Ending the book with "In This Way We Are Wise," a story treating a different subject matter and using a different style from that employed in the rest of the collection, Englander brings his readers into the violence of the present moment. While most of the stories contain middle-aged characters dealing with mid-life types of problems, this story follows Natan/Nathan, a young American living in Jerusalem who Narrowly avoids a nearby suicide bombing. The story, divided into numerous short segments, is told in choppy, metaphorical phrases: "Like wild birds frightened. Like people possessed, tearing at their forms trying to set something free." The separations of the text and the style of Englander's sentences capture the fragmentation of Natan's world as he struggles to put the pieces back together and act as if life went on normally and uninterrupted.

As the only story to take place outside of the Orthodox world, this tale serves as an interesting complement and contrast to The Twenty-seventh Man, the first in the collection. Both stories feature a young man trapped in a situation outside of his control; one survives and the other does not, but more important than the outcome of the plot are the ways in which these two characters cope with their circumstances. One, Pinchas, is trapped in Stalin's vengeful Russia, and the other, Natan, lives in a nation experiencing a different sort of convulsive conflict. One story is told in the voice of a Yiddish storyteller, and the other in the voice of an up-to-date journalist/poet. Framing the collection, these two stories delineate Englander's troubled path from history to modernity and between Orthodoxy and secularism.