Paskudnyak - A Short Story

I chose to read the story "Paskudnyak" for our class discussion on Jewish fiction.  It is written by Sonia Pilcer, and is part of a compilation of Jewish fiction.  It is first important to know what Paskudnyak means.  It is from Polish and Ukrainian language, and means "a man or woman who is nasty, mean, odious, contemptible, rotten, vulgar, insensitive and dirty."

From the first line of the story, I could tell that it would be one with many Jewish references.  "We live in Brooklyn," it says, an area in New York that has always been prominent with Jews.  The characters in the story also have very European and possibly Yiddish names, such as Genia, Heniek and Zosha.

The way the story is written and what the characters do and how they interact with others brings out a lot of things that could be seen as Jewish.  Jews are all about storytelling and what not, and I think this story is a perfect example of the love Jews have for telling stories from the past, like the narrator is in this story.  

The story takes place in the 1960s, soon after the Holocaust.  To me, the most interesting thing about the story is that Zosha, who is brought up in a Polish-Jewish family rebels against all she has been taught to join a Latino gang.  This is something that is not common at the time, and to hear it from a Jewish perspective makes it all the more interesting and compelling to read.  It is not your typical Jewish story, but I believe it just adds to the excitement in reading it.

I hope that in class I will be able to learn about each story, and learn what distinguishes fiction to be Jewish, and if there are stories that are more subtle about the religious background in which the story is set to.