BY ROBERT A. COHN

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF EMERITUS

Howard Schwartz, professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who last week was the Fred and Elsie Deutsch Scholar-in-Residence at Congregation Shaare Emeth, has been selected to receive a National Jewish Book Award for his latest book, Tree of Soul: The Mythology of Judaism. The prestigious award, whose previous winners include Cynthia Ozick and Philip Roth, is presented annually to Jewish authors in recognition of the excellence of their work. Schwartz's latest award, in the reference category, is his third National Jewish Book Award. He received the prize in the children's books category in l996 for Next Year in Jerusalem and in 2003 for The Day the Rabbi Disappeared.

Schwartz, who has been a featured speaker at the Greater St. Louis Jewish Book Festival and the Midwest Popular Culture Association and the Midwest American Culture Association, spoke extensively about his l2-year process to write Tree of Life: The Mythology of Judaism, a 6l8-page volume published by the Oxford University Press, which Schwartz says "had to be cut by 300 pages at the insistence of my very patient editors."

Schwartz, who with Barbara Raznick, director of the Saul Brodsky Jewish Community Library, has served as co-editor of several editions of The Sagarin Review, First Harvest and New Harvest, the local Jewish literary magazine, has explored virtually every form of Jewish storytelling, Midrashim, text interpretations, folk tales and children's stories in his prolific writing, teaching and lecturing career. He began his four-lecture presentation last weekend at Shaare Emeth by sharing two examples of Jewish legends, one of them called "The Cottage of Candles," about a man who set out on a journey to find justice, and the other about Reb Nachman of Bratzlav, who discovered that his nightmares in an inn were caused by the fact that it was built from saplings cut down before their time.

Schwartz told the stories in a compelling manner, which held the audience in rapt attention, illustrating with his enthusiastic retelling why Jewish folk tales, legends and myths fascinate him so much. He credited Prof. Zvi Blanchard of Washington University for introducing him to the area of Midrashim, Jewish stories told by rabbis and sages to "fill in the blank spaces in the biblical texts," and Prof. Dov Noy of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who has collected and published more than 20,000 Jewish folk talks from around the world.

Having explored Jewish poetry, short stories, fiction, the Bible and Talmud in his previous book, he recalled his fascination over whether the Jewish people can be said to have a distinctive mythology. "Other peoples have myths; we have truths, is the way most peoples regard their own narratives," Schwartz said. "There is no doubt in my mind that there is a powerful mythic impulse in Judaism, just as there is among other peoples, religions and cultures."

Schwartz became the first major Jewish scholar to explore Jewish legends and myths since the late Louis Ginsberg's seven-volume work, Legends of the Jews, which attracted him to the genre. Previously, Schwartz recalls, "when I was just a little kid, I was fascinated by all kinds of myths -- Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse -- but I had not encountered Jewish myths. I would often ask my teachers from third grade on, why is there no Jewish mythology, and always got the same answer, 'Because there is no Jewish mythology!'"

Schwartz, who credits his late father for inspiring his connection to Judaism, studied the mystical theories of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell in college, and later, in Israel, met Prof. Dov Noy, as well as his wife, Tsila, a noted Jewish artist and calligrapher on the same trip. During this period, he published Elijah's Violin, a collection of Jewish folk tales, which was followed by Miriam's Tambourine, a collection of short stories, and Lilith's Cave, which explored Jewish demons, especially the female demon of the title, who according to Jewish legend, Midrashim and the Talmud was Adam's first wife, before Eve.

At this point, Schwartz took on the challenge of his magnum opus on Jewish mythology, noting that except for Louis Ginsberg, Michael Fishbane and Yehuda Liebes, very little had previously been published specifically on the mythology of the Jews.

"The process began with finding a working definition of mythology; then coming up with categories into which to fit the various myths; find the sources and research them and finally, to make sure it all came together. It took l2 years, and fortunately I had very supportive editors," Schwartz said.

To find a succinct definition of myths, Schwartz went to the Miriam Webster dictionary, which included the entry, "Myth refers to a people's sacred stories about origins, deities and ancestors. Myth and ritual are inextricably bound, and within a culture, myths serve as the divine charter."

Schwartz found "this definition met the projects needs perfectly, and from there it was not difficult to find countless examples of Jewish myths. Clearly we have a divine charter, the Torah, both written and oral. We also have the Talmud and the Midrashic tradition, and of course we have numerous rituals which are indeed inextricably bound to our divine charter. Why do we observe the Sabbath? Because on the seventh day, God rested. We kindle the Sabbath lights, we have the Havdalah to mark the separation between Shabbat and the work week."

For sources, Schwartz said his approach was "very inclusive; beginning with the sacred texts, the Torah and Talmud, I also included myths from the Karaites, who split with Rabbinic Judaism because they do not accept the oral tradition. I also included stories of the Samaratins, an ancient sect going back to the Northern Kingdom, which still exists in modern Israel."

In addition to the Bible and Talmud, Schwartz also mined the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, and its holy book, The Zohar, which was a rich source of material for his massive project.

Schwartz concluded, after "drawing on the full range of Jewish sources, sacred and nonsacred, there are 10 major categories of Jewish mythology that can be identified: myths of God, myths of creation, myths of heaven, myths of hell, myths of the Holy Word, myths of the holy time, myths of the Holy People, myths of the Holy Land, myths of exile and myths of the Messiah."

In his four talks, which included leading Shaare Emeth's weekly Torah class, Schwartz explored all aspects of Jewish mythology, introducing his audience to the mythic Jewish angel Metatron, who is sometimes described as being 500 feet tall and related to the biblical figure Enoch, who had an entire mythic sect based on his life and legends about him, and revisiting the Talmudic account of the Four Sages Who Entered Paradise, which was the subject of one of his previous books.

Schwartz regaled his audience with legends about Lilith, Adam's first wife, who according to one Midrash knows the secret name of God, and that after she was banished from the Garden of Eden, she landed at the Red Sea, where she gave birth to baby demons. "There is one description of Lilith with l0,000 demons on her left hand and l0 million demons on her right hand." To this day, Schwartz said, many observant Jewish communities, including Mea Shearim in Israel, sell amulets to ward off Lilith, who has also become a kind of heroine to Jewish feminists, who named a magazine after her.

The only regret Schwartz has about his massive project was the need to cut over 300 pages from his already massive manuscript. Many among those who attended his lectures encouraged him to publish a second volume so that those myths could also be made available to the public.

Among the many accolades Schwartz has received for his award-winning book on The Mythology of the Jews, was that of Wendy Doniger, author of the acclaimed book The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was: Myths of Self-Imitation, who said, "Howard Schwartz offers a resounding rebuttal to the old accusations that the Jews have no mythology: hundreds of myths, in an unbroken line, from the Tanakh itself to many new, previously untranslated, contemporary retellings from the Middle Ages and throughout the Diaspora .... This is that rare book that is both a fascinating read for the non-specialist and turning point for scholarship."