From: Karen L. Simonetti <klsimonetti>
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2003 18:03:12 -0500

At 06:09 PM 10/2/2003 00, Shutta Crum wrote in part:

I am not familiar of a Jewish variant of this story, but would be interested in knowing about same.

Nonetheless, Margaret Read MacDonald has a wonderful version in her book
-Peace Tales: World Folktales To Talk About- (Linnet Books, 1992); the story "Heaven and Hell" is in Chapter 2 ("Pathways to Peace" under "Helping One Another") on p.72. MacDonald's retelling is attributed to being "A Tale from China" and differs from the above in the following details:

In hell, all the diners are starving despite "the finest foods piled high on the table" as each diner had been given chopsticks which were three feet long; ie, there was no feasible means for them to bring the food to their mouths. In heaven, the man sees people sitting at dining tables also with three-foot-long chopsticks. "But here everyone was happily consuming the delicious food. The residents of heaven...were using their yard-long chopsticks to feed each other."

Karen Sue...



We have art so that we may not die of reality.
-Nietzsche Karen L. Simonetti phone: 312.337.7114 email: klsimonetti at earthlink.net
Received on Thu 02 Oct 2003 06:03:12 PM CDT