On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi!
is a 1974 science fiction novelette by William Tenn. At an Interstellar Neo-Zionist Congress convened on Venus, weird-looking aliens claim that they are Jews.
[3] The frame story is Milchik the TV repairman, the firsthand immediate witness of the events, tells a "Mr.
- deputy chairman takes over the awkward situation: "But this is really simple: No one can be a Jew who is not the child of a Jewish mother."
A High Rabbinical Court was convened and rabbi Smallman became its member after some manipulations.
Originally they were a small Orthodox community from Paramus, New Jersey looking for a quiet place, which they thought they had found on Rigel IV, where the Bulbas were at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
The Bulbas, who presented their complete genealogical charts, retorted: "Who are you going to believe, the experimental facts of biology—or your fellow Jews?"
And this turned out to be an important question: "Ruth was a Moabite, and from her came eventually King David.
"To bring a bunch of Jews—and learned Jews!—to a single decision, that, my friend, is an achievement that can stand"...
William Tenn decided to retire from writing and devote himself to professorship under his original name of Philip Klass.
However, in 1973 he met with his fans at a sci-fi convention and addressing the question why he quit, he answered there is not much market for what he wanted to write and mentioned this particular title thinking it to be an example of a non-starter.
But it turned out that one of the fans was planning a collection of Jewish science fiction, so William Tenn wrote what he described as " a small monument to Sholem Aleichem", "The result: a magisterial meditation on Jewish identity, history, persecution, and pathologies that is both deeply thoughtful and utterly hilarious.
"[4] In 1978 it was translated in German as Wir haben einen Rabbi auf der Venus and in 1998 in Russian as Таки у нас на Венере есть рабби!.
William Tenn delivered the reading of the story on WNYC's Spinning on Air with David Garland, November 22, 2002.
[10] Phil M. Cohen writes: "This hilarious story, which rings with Yiddish-inspired inflections and Sholom Aleichem's sardonic humor and style, is a romp through Jewish history, angst, and the perpetual foibles of the Jewish people as they argue over what comprises their identity.
No matter when or where Jews may find themselves — even on Venus, with tentacles or without — they will always be a contentious people, rooted in sacred text, and looking over their shoulders at the past and straight ahead into the future with a sense of humor.
[8] Nick Gevers wrote that the story shows "that even the oldest assumptions are perhaps more timeless than we think, and will make the future in their own, in this case distinctly rabbinical, image.
"[12] Walter Russell Mead, on an occasion of its republishing by Tablet, describes the story as "wry, funny, sharply observed and deeply human, it’s a story that deserves a permanent place in the annals of science fiction, American literature and Jewish fiction.
