“There’s magic in bread,” she says, “but the magic is more in the doing. If you can’t do this, do something else. Doing something is always going to help, even if it doesn’t help.”
A short story by Effie Sieberg, first published in the March 2023 edition of Fantasy Magazine. It tells the parallel stories of the narrator, struggling to cope with the anxiety and isolation brought about by the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic by trying (and failing) to bake bread; and of their grandmother Ruth, who struggles to keep the family bakery running as the horrors of the Holocaust close in around her family and community.
It can be read online at Fantasy Magazine's website
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Tropes in There's Magic in Bread:
- The Cavalry: Ruth's accidental golem comes to her rescue just as the murderous Polizia threaten to shoot her.
- Darkest Hour:
- For the narrator, it's six months into the pandemic. They've been fired from their job and have run out of savings to pay rent or buy groceries. A close friend of theirs has died, other friends are burnt out caring for the endless stream of sick and dying patients with no end in sight, everything feels hopeless... and they still can't figure out how to bake a loaf of bread.
- For Ruth, it's when the Polizia murder her senile father and vandalize the family bakery. They return looking for members of the Jewish resistance, convinced that Ruth has had a hand in helping them escape from the work camps, and threaten to kill her if she doesn't reveal the escapees' whereabouts.
- Dirty Cop: The Polizia have been exploiting Jewish residents of the ghetto for years, demanding protection money on the threat of vandalism or worse.
- Golem: Ruth inadvertently builds a golem out of bread and cookie dough. She's shocked that the creature is alive, considering she's not a rabbi and golems are supposed to be a folktale.
- Historical Fantasy: The half of the story that follows Ruth takes place during the Holocaust, focusing on the real-world persecution that her Jewish family and community faced. There's a pinch of fantasy in the form of an accidentally-created golem that helps Ruth escape the Polizia.
- La Résistance: Ruth tries not to get involved in the Jewish resistance beyond selling bread to Chaim, but when her father is killed and the Polizia trash her bakery she has nowhere else to turn. The Polizia even come banging on her door to find out if she knows anything about Chaim's escape.
- Lethal Chef: The narrator tries baking bread during the the pandemic... and fails miserably. They forget to add sugar to the yeast, find their dough melting out of the pan, or failing to rise, or bursting into flames.
- No Communities Were Harmed: Ruth's experiences in the fictional town of Svatislavia are based on the experiences of Sieberg's grandmother in Poland during WWII.
- Police Brutality: The Polizia have been extorting Ruth's family for years, but the Holocaust has given them indiscriminate power to steal from or kill the Jewish citizens of Svatislavia. They arrest and deport anyone suspected of working with the resistance, murder Ruth's senile father for speaking "disrespectfully," and nearly kill Ruth because they think she was involved in Chaim's escape.
- Title Drop: The narrator's grandmother repeatedly tells them that bread, or at least the action of making it (or doing anything at all in a crisis) is it's own type of magic.“There’s magic in bread,” says my bubbe. Her voice is tired, like it had to walk the whole distance from Israel to the US in order to reach my ears. “A good challah is worth more than its weight in flour, oil, and eggs.”
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The parallel stories of the narrator navigating the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic and of their grandmother's experiences at the onset of the Holocaust are told in alternating segments.
