Everybody needs somebody to look up to — “a symbol of hope, a figure who stands for what is just and good in the world” — at least according to author Barbara Diamond Goldin.
Fourteen-year-old Mia Lieberman agrees. Both she and Goldin pick the prophet Elijah as a popular hero, and his is a story Lieberman most likely will tell during “To Life! A Jewish Cultural Street Festival” on Sunday, Sept. 9 in Palo Alto.
“Elijah the prophet tales are my favorite kind of Jewish stories, says the Los Altos storyteller, “because they have appeal to all age ranges.”
Lieberman is following the oral tradition of passing down stories from parents to children in order to preserve their culture.
“Storytelling, an ancient art, has the power to heal and transform,” she says. “It is steeped in Jewish tradition, as there are tons of Jewish tales that were handed down from one generation to another. In fact the Jews wandering in the desert told stories for many years.”
Lieberman gets her inspiration from the minds of writers. Since the age of 4, she’s had a consuming interest in reading. A librarian gave her books on folk tales from different countries. At 7 years old she attended her first South Bay storytellers meeting. Then she started performing for school audiences, including Wilcox High School in Santa Clara and the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School in Sunnyvale.
Lieberman says she learned the skill from watching good storytellers portray styles she liked at many festivals. She also has taken classes at San Jose State and Santa Clara universities.
And she’s attended a number of workshops, including the Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education at Stanford University in 1997. There she studied with such nationally known Jewish storytellers as Peninnah Schram and Cherie Karo Schwartz. She now attends storyteller meetings monthly where participants swap stories.
Referring to her repertoire, Lieberman says: “I’m a storyteller who does a variety of stories for many age groups and different audiences. I have to see something in the tale that will jump out at me. I must love the story to tell it well. My appreciation for the tale comes through in the telling.”
She researches many kinds of tales from all over the world. Often she reads several hundred stories before finding one or two that she wants to repeat. As she explains it: “One tale I never tell again. The other tale I may tell for a while, then file it to be rediscovered at a later time. I don’t memorize the story, so it never comes out the same way twice.”
Some of the stories she especially loves are those that have a moral, such as Aesop’s Fables, which model human behavior. “These fables appeal to everyone,” she says, “as children are entertained and adults may find a lesson in the stories, perhaps a hidden message, or something one can appreciate or relate in his experience of life.”
She also finds a wealth of material in Jewish folk tales and the midrashim, stories and ideas from the Talmud and the writings of sages.
Recently she’s been telling a number of twisted fairy tales. This has been a challenge because, as she says, “it is hard to find a good fractured fairy tale that you don’t have to memorize.”
Lieberman, who became a bat mitzvah at Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto, is starting her fourth year at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills this fall. She enjoys playing the piano as well as being a supernumerary in the West Bay Opera Company. She recently became a chorus member in the company. In addition, she works as an assistant at a local veterinary hospital. Lieberman says she loves animals, and her future plans include studying to become a veterinarian.
But for now — at least on Sunday, Sept. 9 in Palo Alto– she’ll stick to holding an audience under the spell of a good story.