For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges is a short story collection by Nathan Englander, first published by Knopf in 1999. It has received many positive reviews.^[1] It earned Englander a PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. The collection contains nine stories, many of which are set in the Jewish Orthodox world. The title story tells of a married Hasidic Jew who receives special dispensation from a rabbi to visit a prostitute – "for the relief of unbearable urges."^[2] The story "The Twenty-seventh Man", about Yiddish writers killed by Stalin, is an allusion to the Night of the Murdered Poets.

The contents, in order:

• The Twenty-seventh Man
• The Tumblers
• Reunion
• The Wig
• The Gilgul of Park Avenue
• Reb Kringle
• The Last One Way
• For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
• In This Way We Are Wise

References