From: Viki Ash-Geisler <vashgeisler>
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2003 16:21:18 -0700

There is also a version of this story in George Shannon's Stories to Solve
(Greenwillow, 1985). Shannon offers two sources in his notes: Tales from China by Isabelle C. Chang (Random House, 1969) and Studies in Jewish and World Folklore by Haim Schwarzbaum (Berlin: Walter DeGruyter & Co., 1968).

Viki Ash-Geisler Spokane Public Library

 Message----From: Karen L. Simonetti [mailto:klsimonetti at earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 4:03 PM To: Shutta Crum; Subscribers of ccbc-net Subject: [ccbc-net] Heaven and Hell


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

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




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Received on Thu 02 Oct 2003 06:21:18 PM CDT