My fascination with stories about the Sambatyon started when I was a child, probably originating with a book called The Secret of Sambatyon by Gershon Winkler (published in the 1980s, as you might guess from the title). Then, a few years ago, I heard a lecture by Dr. Chaviva Levin of Yeshiva University, in which she talked about the specific myth I retold here—the tale of Rabbi Meir, author of the Akdamot, a liturgical poem read by Ashkenazi Jews during the holiday of Shavuot. The Akdamot is a beautiful poem that I have always loved, and the combination of the two spurred me to seriously attempt a retelling. I started buying and reading books about the Sambatyon and the Ten Tribes, and wrote a retelling of the story in picture book form. That manuscript ultimately didn’t come together, primarily because it’s not really a children’s story.
So when I was contacted about writing a myth retelling for this anthology, the Sambatyon was one of the first ideas to spring to mind. Since I had spent so long trying to formulate it as a children’s story, it took me a bit of time to come up with a new approach that would be appropriate for Saga. I pulled up a lot of the books I’d read previously and reviewed them; in one, I came across a reference to a medieval man who claimed he had some of the Sambatyon water trapped in a glass flask. Even though that particular story was entirely separate from the Akdamot legend, I knew immediately that I had to incorporate it; and after that, the entire story came together in less than a day.
LEAH CYPESS