Have We Got a Story for You

This summer, Leonard Nimoy, Walter Matthau and Lauren Bacall are giving performances that are out of this world. They are conjuring other worlds that have vanished or never quite existed, which flash to life full of joy, suffering and strange transformations, which rarely finish without ambiguity or irony.

This is the realm of “Jewish Short Stories From Eastern Europe and Beyond,” a series of 13 radio programs--every Sunday at 6 p.m.--which recently started on KCRW. Collectively, these 32 stories form a fictional guide to the perplexed, models of intimate narrative by writers from I. L. Peretz to Phillip Roth. “It took us quite a long time to get from the conception to the actual recording,” says Lori McGlinchey, one of the series’ producers. “It was a difficult process.”

In fact, one can even imagine a Jewish short story about the making of this series. It takes place in a mythical village called Santa Monica, where the famous public radio rabbi, Ruth Seymour has produced series on Mexican short stories and Japanese short stories.

One day, two wandering scholars arrive: Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, and Aaron Lansky, founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, an enterprise in South Hadley, Mass. that preserves Yiddish culture. All three go to kibbitz at a local restaurant where someone shouts: “Let’s do a series of Jewish stories!”

“Yes, but who would perform?” one of the scholars worries.

“Oh, there’s no shortage of Jewish actors in town,” says the other. “If I threw this bread stick, I’d hit six of them at once.”

Soon, leading actors are jumping at the chance to do a mitzvah for public radio by vocalizing fiction for bare equity wages. Joan Miklin Silver, known for her cinematic fables, “Crossing Delancey” and “Hester Street,” signs on as director. Klezmer musician Hankus Netsky composes original music to frame each story.

“We started with about 100 stories,” says McGlinchey. “At one point there was a pile reaching from the floor higher than my desk.”

There are regrets, of course. Saul Bellow’s stories were too long for radio. Kafka, likewise, ended up on the cutting room floor. The reading of Delmore Schwartz’s pivotal story, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” wasn’t good enough to air.

But Matthau as Tevye, in a classic Sholom Aleichem story, proved luminous. Jeff Goldblum had a knack for the buried intensity of Isaac Babel. And Grace Paley, who withheld the rights to her story “Goodbye and Good Luck” until she heard it on tape, was wowed by Rhea Perlman.

Still, a Yiddish trouble-maker examining the series might ask: “Where’s Malamud?” More than any other writer of his generation, Bernard Malamud made Jewishness a palpably universal condition but his stories aren’t included. “We went back and forth about Malamud,” laments Johanna Cooper, another producer. “We recorded ‘The Angel Levine,’ but the actor didn’t work out.”

Says Seymour: “I told them that leaving out Malamud was a mistake. Not having a story by Malamud, in my view, is a shande. “ A shame. . . .

A disagreement always spices up the drama. But how does it end our story about KCRW and Santa Monica and the radio rebbe and the many stories chosen and unchosen? Will the series be a hit? Will there, as the programmers hopes, be another series?

“The truth is I’m sick of short stories!” exclaims McGlinchey. “I’ve read and listened to so many I’m sick of them and these days I’ve promised to read nothing but novels.”

And that--hinting at disillusionment and renewal--is how a good Jewish story should end.