AUBURN — The Temple Shalom Library, in conjunction with the Auburn Public Library, will present the second annual Maine-ly Jewish Storytelling Festival at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 14, at Temple Shalom, 74 Bradman St.

Local storytellers, writers, poets and bloggers will be joined by storytellers from as far away as New York City and Philadelphia to share traditional and contemporary tales.

Renowned storyteller Ben Izzy said, “Storytelling is the most human of the arts — it’s between a teller and the audience. I think especially as the world gets more high tech, people are also becoming more hungry for that. People are realizing that the acts of talking and listening can be spiritual, can be healing.”

Hasidic teaching explains that one must tell a story so it becomes alive in the telling, and the listener must also conjure up a living picture and visualize himself in the action. Elie Wiesel writes that as a boy he accompanied his hasidic grandfather to the synagogue, and he loved the storytelling there.

“And when, at the conclusion of the Sabbath, I listened to the old men speak about their respective spiritual masters I closed my eyes to see what they were seeing,” Wiesel wrote.

All are welcome regardless of denomination.