The stories in Nathan Englander's collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges all address issues of Jewish identity. In general, the stories tell tales of individual people and families who do not fit into society because of their religious background. Englander's Jewish characters are, for the most part, orthodox in their beliefs, so they stand out from the crowd even more than secular or less strict Jews might. Because Englander's stories span a large period of time, the social concerns addressed are not particular to a single era; instead, they address the persecution of Jewish people that has occurred since ancient times. Thus, Englander's stories strive to capture the totality of Jewish experience.

The first two stories consider the social concern which has, historically, most directly affected Jewish people: persecution.

Set in World War II Poland and Stalinist Russia respectively, "The Tumblers" and "The Twenty-seventh Man...