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Jewish fables and tales
In Yiddish there is a word majse, describing both a fairy tale, and a tale, a story. The same word in Hebrew (pronounced differently – maase) has a broader meaning and derives from verb asa – to act, to make, to create. This verb is used to describe the creation of the world by God. Therefore Hebrew word maase also means an event, a creation.
Ilustracja do bajki żydowskiej o Szabatowym Lwie, rysunek Roberta Sawy
Jewish tale "A Sabbath Lion", illustration by Robert Sawa
Index[Collapse]
Types of fables
Fables sensu stricto
Jewish fables and tales in literature and film
Types of fables
The word majse ususally does not appear on its own. For instance – folks majse – a folk fable, wunder majse – a fairy tale, not unlike tsjober majse – a fable of supernatural powers and spells. There are kinder majses – fables for the children, szabes majses – Sabbath stories, awantur majses – adventure stories.
We also have bobe majse – literally it means a grandma tale, but in reality it describes nonsense, tall tales. There is also lign majse – a tale, which hides a fictional story under the guise of a real one.
There is also a great variety of facetious tales: witsik majsele, szpasik majsele, chochmele, sztuke, szpitsele. Sometimes a term chsidisze majse is used or – regarding Hassid stories (also known as sipurim), or others – mesojres (legends).
There is also majser szeoje – a true story. The classification of Jewish stories was made by the editor and publisher of many Jewish fable anthologies, Howard Schwartz, who distinguished four main categories. He also stressed that in the Jewish tradition – in fact: since the Biblical times – there had always been a dynamic relation between oral tales and their written accounts; fables were being written down, then told again to be written down once again later. Such was the case with the famous tales from Chełm, for instance – Menachem Kipnis asked his readers to send stories to the "Hajnt" paper he wrote for. He would publish them there, so that they came back to their tellers.
According to Schwartz we can distinguish:
1. Fairy tales
2. Folk fables
3. Supernatural stories
4. Mystical tales.
Each of these categories serves its own specific purpose.
Fairy tales are magical stories, folk fables depict the lives of common folk, often enriched with divine or magical intervention. Supernatural tales express fear of evil forces – such as dybbuks, demons (especially the widespread stories of demoness Lilith, reflecting male fears about a beautiful woman able to cast an evil spell). Mystical tales on the other hand show wondrous deeds of great people, usually prominent rabbis: rabbi Akiwa, the Seer from Lublin, or Ari (Izaak Luria).
Ad 1. Jewish fairy tales, just like the fairy tales of other peoples, speak mostly of striving to reach a goal and overcoming many obstacles during that journey. Usually they have a happy ending, which cannot be said about other categories of Jewish tales. For instance in the tale "King – beggar" king Solomon, forced to travel on a gifted bread only, overcomes successive obstacles on the way to reclaiming his throne. In a Jewish fairy tale from India "A Golden Tree" a king goes on a search for a tree of his dreams.
In Jewish fairy tales there often is a distinctive mesh of magical and spiritual elements. King Solomon – the protagonist of a great many tales – owns a ring with an engraved unpronounceable Name of God (Tetragrammaton). By using the ring Solomon defeats the lord of demons, Asmodeus, performing many miracles on his way there. Therefore the power of king Solomon is limited to being able to speak the Name of God, while the miracles in fact are performed by God.
Ad 2. Folk fables. Actually about all the four categories distinguished by Howard Schwartz one could say they are the folk fables, although in a broad meaning of the term. Here it means a story which is neither a fairy tale nor a supernatural or mystical tale. Miracles happen in here too, although not in an enchanted world (as is with fairy tales), and are performed by wise men. For instance in a tale about a Pesach feast (seder) at rabbi Chaim Pinto's place "a magical goblet of wine" grows to an enormous size. In a tale "A Sabbath Lion" Queen Sabbath sends a lion to guard an abandoned boy who refused to travel on Sabbath (as it is forbidden).
A source of many tales is Talmud itself, as well as collections of midrashes and haggadahs (legends), constituting "fictionalised" commentaries to the Torah or filling the gaps in the Biblical narration. They are the basis or models for many versions created throughout the centuries until today.
Ad 3. Supernatural stories. They usually do not have happy endings, and tell of conflicts with evil and – often, but not always – invisible powers. They speak of the travelling souls of the dead, which sometimes appear as ghosts, other times possess people's bodies, usually these of women. They are the dybbuks, which have to exorcised, which can only be done by a rabbi knowing the proper ritual. Demons are waiting for people they could lead astray. Their lord is Satan, sometimes called Samael, other times: Lucifer. Sometimes it is said that demons are ruled by kind Asmodeus, whose wife is demoness Lilith.
The best known are various versions of a tale about a man (usually a goldsmith from Poznań), who married Lilith and lived with her in the basement of his house, simultaneously living with his real wife and children. After their deaths the house was taken over by demon offspring of Lilith, which various miracleworkers, with Joel from Zamość at the forefront, attempted to banish.
Lilith also appears in Hassid fables, where she lurks and waits for the most righteous of tzadiks. One of the stories, "A Woman from the Forest" speaks of something that happened to rabbi Elimelech from Leżajsk, when one day he wondered in a forest and strayed from his usual path. He saw a light between the trees, and when he came closer it turned out it was coming from a wooden house, in its window a young woman with long, black hair, and wearing a nightgown. She asked him to come in, and he did not refuse, as he thought it was about a favour of some kind. The woman asked him to sin with her, saying she is pure, so the sin would be slight. With these words, she loosed the gown. Elimelech fought against himself, and though the fight was not easy, he still managed to say "no". At once the house disappeared, and Elimelech was standing alone in an empty forest. There is no doubt that this holy man was being harassed by Lilith herself.
It must not be forgotten, that an overwhelming majority of tales about Lilith expressed the fears of men, but there are known stories of Lilith, which depict women who do not fear the demoness, or even take up a fight against her. Such is a story from Yemen, for instance, "A Hair in the Milk" – about a midwife who protected a newly born child from Lilith by catching her in a bottle. The motif of a wise and brave midwife is quite frequent in fables.
A great part of folk tales come from the written accounts of oral tales (compare Jewish art of storytelling), created by a group of Jewish folklore researchers (the so–called zamlers) – the ones who took part in the ethnographic expedition organised by Sz. An–ski, by collectors gathered around the JIWO (Jidiszer Wisnszaflecher Institut) in Vilnius in the 1920s and 30s, as well as by others acting individually, like Menachem Kipnis mentioned previously.
Ad. 4 Mystical tales are about exceptional characters –Talmudic sages, Kabbalists, and mystics, as well as tzadiks. In these stories they were attributed a wondrous power. Sometimes they act alone, other times they work in tandem with such characters as prophet Elijah – one of the most popular characters, the tales of whom would be enough to fill a sizeable book. Almost every one of those sages is like a successor of a miracleworker of old. And so Izrael Luria of Safed took after Szymon Bar Jochal, while Baal Szem Tow after Izrael Luria. Baal Szem Tow was in turn an inspiration for all Hassidic masters.
One of the most important motifs, present in many versions of mystical tales, is the thirty six righteous ones (lamed wow tsadikim), thanks to whom the world exists, and who exist in every generation. They are hidden, anonymous, they appear as common men, unrecognised by others.
In other mystical tales appears a motif of a golem created by a Praha rabbi and Kabbalist Maharal. The golem was made of clay and animated by a piece of paper with the Name of God written on it. In many versions of this tale the golem is created to protect the Jewish community from a real threat of a pogrom, but it rebels against his creator who has to destroy it.
What decides whether these are Jewish tales – fables? Or rather: in which elements should we seek the distinctive Jewish characteristics? A distinguished Jewish ethnologist Dov Noy established four such factors:
1. Time
2. Place
3. Characters
4. The message.
Ad 1. A Jewish tale takes place in the time defined by a Jewish calendar: one of the Jewish holidays is mentioned – Rosh Hashanah, Pesach, or Yom Kippur – or things happen on Sabbath.
Ad 2. The action takes place in either the Land of Israel, in a synagogue or Beth Midrash, a Jewish cemetery, in a Sukkot hut etc. The settings can be Jewish districts, or towns themselves, such as Chełm for instance.
Ad 3. The protagonist is one of Jewish Patriarchs, tzadiks, prophets, kings, or even a common man.
Ad 4. The message is usually a moral or teaching in some way connected to the ethics of Judaism and that – in Dova Noya's opinion – is the indispensable trait of any Jewish tale.
Of course there are many Jewish tales and stories of a more universal character, with no Jewish element to extract from them by Noya's key. Such is almost a half of the collection gathered in Israel Folktale Archives. The Jewishness of these tales – aside from the fact that they were gathered from Jewish sources or storytellers – is evidenced by the message. Sometimes in a single tale there are elements both Jewish and universal. Just like in the Jewish version of the Cinderella, "The banished Princess". A rebellious daughter of a king runs from home, gets lost in a forest and then is taken in by rabbi's wife as a servant. The princess in her regal garments is present at Jewish wedding receptions, but nobody recognizes her. Rabbi's son falls in love with her, ignorant of the fact that she is his parents' servants. The rabbi allows his son to marry this non-Jewish girl, without demanding her conversion to Judaism, which makes the tale improbable in a realistic Jewish context.
All Jewish tales are woven around mythological motifs constituting their foundation. They usually derive from Torah and one could distinguish ten basic categories.
1. Myths about God;
2. Myths about the Creation;
3. Myths about the Heavens;
4. Myths about Hell;
5. Myths about the Sacred Word;
6. Myths about the Sacred Time;
7. Myths about holy people;
8. Myths about the Holy Land;
9. Myths about the Banishment;
10. Myths about the Messiah.
There are tales, where we can find several myths, but there are also such ones, where one could find elements of any of the aforementioned ten. Such is for instance a mystical tale "A Vision at the Wailing Wall":
Rabbi Izrael Luria (known as holy Ari or holy lion) was gifted with an incredible mystic power. When he looked at the forehead of a person he could see what lay in that person's soul. He could also overhear the voices of angels. He could point to a stone in a wall and say whose soul in captured in it. On the first day of the new year he could also foresee who will be written down in the Book of Life and who will not.
He tried to not abuse his skills, although he once made an exception. Seeing rabbi Abraham Beruchim he said: "I know that it may be the last year of your life, but it can be changed if you do what I tell you to". As Beruchim express willingness to follow, Ari told him to go back home, fast for three days and nights, and repent. Then he should go to the Western Wall of the former Temple of Solomon, called the Wailing Wall, and pray there to his soul's contents. If Shekhinah (God's presence, female aspect of God) appears before him, he should live twenty two more years, but if she does not appear, then it means that Beruchim will have to die.
Rabi Beruchim did as he had been told, even more so, as after a three-day fast he went to Jerusalem on foot, even though he could have ridden a donkey. When he arrived at the Western Wall, he found a crowd of great many people, as it was a time between the New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). With some trouble he found a place at the wall and started to pray fervently. He saw a woman in mourning, and when he stared into her eyes he felt sadness and grief so great that he had never felt before, as it was the pain of a mother who felt sympathy for her children in banishment. Rabi Abraham fainted and fell on the ground and experienced a second vision of Shekhinah. This time it was a beautiful woman in a wedding gown. She embraced him and whispered in his ear: "Do not worry, Abraham, my son. My banishment shall soon come to an end, and my legacy will not be for naught, as it is said: '"There is hope for your future," [..] "And your children will return to their own territory'" (Jr 31,17) Beruchim regained consciousness and rose light as a feather and returned to his hometown of Safed. When holy Ari saw him, he said: "You do not have to say anything, I can see by the halo around your head that you saw Shekhinah You shall live twenty two more years". And so he did.
In this story there are directly or indirectly present all categories of mystical Jewish motifs.
The God Myth – it is said that during the new year God makes an entry in the Book of Life or the Book of Death. In accordance with Kabbalistic doctrine, one of the authors of which was Ari, it is also said that God has a female aspect, Shekhinah.
The Creation Myth – present (indirectly) through Ari, as a creator of the concept of the world emanating from the Divine Being – some vessels holding God's light got broken, and the sparks of the light were held up in these vessels' remains. It is people's task to free these sparks to let them return to God.
The Heavens Myth – in the heavens there are the Book of Life and the Book of Death, from which Ari could read, and which are mentioned in the tale. It is God who with black fire makes an entry on white fire.
The Hell Myth – it appears indirectly, as Beruchim is supposed to fast, wear a sackcloth and have ash on his head, as well as to show repentance for his sins. After death the soul repents in Gehinom (hell) and only after the cleansing it can experience paradise.
The Sacred Word Myth – as it was previously said, Ari could read from the most sacred of books – those of Life and Death, where entries are made by the Supreme.
The Sacred Time Myth – the events take place between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. During that time God makes decisions regarding the life and death of every human and only then can this decree be changed.
The Holy Man Myth – it is represented here by rabbi Izrael Luria, the creator of the so–called Lurianic Kabbalah, which was in a way presented to him by prophet Elijah.
The Holy Land Myth – the action takes place in the two most sacred towns in the land of Israel – Safed and Jerusalem, while the most sacred of places is the Western Wall surviving the destruction of the Temple.
The Banishment Myth – Beruchim has a vision of Shekhinah, who like mother Rachel in the Book of Jeremiah mourns the children of Israel going on a Babylonian banishment. And just as in that vision she is comforted and reassured that the children will return from the banishment (compare above).
The Messiah Myth – Shekhinah speaks in the words of Jeremiah that the banishment will be over, and according to tradition it is the coming of the Messiah that ends the banishment.
These myths one can find in Jewish fables and stories, regardless of the place they were created – whether in Mid-Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, or in Africa (Maroko, Tunisia), or in the Middle East. It is so because they all take from the sacred book of Judaism – the Torah (the Bible), Talmud, midrashes (which were being created until late Middle Ages), or from later collections.
One can say with confidence, that they were not subject to evolution, but consistently, in various versions, repeated the same motifs. We also find them in the literature closer to modern times and that of the most recent years – both created by Jews and by non–Jews.
Fables sensu stricto
Fables in the strictest sense, according to the majority of accepted definitions, are stories, the protagonists of which are animals, plants, or inanimate objects, and they contain a moral, a teaching. These fables, just like other ones, also grew out of oral folklore. The researchers hold an opinion that Hebrew fables are among the oldest ones preserved in a written form, and they may date back to the 15th or 14th century BC, or even earlier.
Fables of this kind are described by a Hebrew word maszal – a parable, aphorism, allegorical story. We can find examples of them in the Torah (Hebrew Bible), eg. in Ez 17 3 – 12 we have an allegorical tale about two eagles, in II Sm 12 1 – 14 there is a parable of a rich man and a beggar, which Natan told to David. We can also find a tale in Judges 9, 8 – 15, it is a tale of how trees decided to elect a king from among them.
Of course a source of these fables is predominantly Talmud and midrash literature. As the two most distinguished storytellers Talmud nominates rabbi Hilel and Jochanan ben Zakaj. Jochanan specialised in tales of foxes, fables "from under a palm tree", but as the foremost storyteller remained rabbi Meir, who – as the tradition holds, probably with some exaggeration – knew three hundred tales of foxes which he would tell his students. It is worth stressing that the majority of fables from the Talmudic period is about foxes, and in the Great Midrash for Genesis (78, 7) we can read that it is the fox who tells the best stories.
In the opinion of Jehuda Lejb Gordon, a poet and expert on folklore, R. Meir's stories were in a way borrowed from Aesop, as R. Meir learned them thanks to his teacher Elisza ben Awui knowledgeable of Greek culture. Indeed many fables show similarities with those of Aesop, although in the Hebrew ones the moral is more clear and supported with a quote from the Scripture.
In Medieval literature we can find fables about animals too, for instance in the apocryphal Alphabet of Sirah we find an interesting story about a fox and Leviathan. In the 11th century there was a collection of rabejnu Nisim of Kairuan (currently in Tunisia) written in Arabic. It is known in Europe thanks to the Hebrew translation from 1519 – Maasijot sze baTalmud.
Foxes are the protagonists of one of the most popular collections, Miszlej Szualim, composed in the late 12th century by Berachia haNakdan. They allude to midrashes and Talmud. The fable quoted the most often is one about a fox and fish, and was supposedly taken from rabbi Akiwa. Certainly this collection exhibits similarities to Western European fables about foxes, especially Marie de France.
Miszlej Szualim were translated to Yiddish in the late 16th century and were often published, among others in Warsaw. They were also circulated in Latin, and some of them were translated to German by Gotthold Efraim Lessing himself (Abhandlung ueber die Fabel), there is also an English translation, Fables of a Jewish Aesop from 1967.
A Jewish Aesop was a name attributed, with some exaggeration, by Mojżesz Mendelson to maggid of Dubno, Jakow Kranc (compare Hassid fables), as it was noted that some of his stories were woven around Aesop's fables, such as "A Dog, Rooster, and Fox". However in Kranc's commentaries to the Chapters of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot) there are fables about animals as well.
Aesopic tradition also includes Hebrew fables of Izaak haLevi of Satanów, whose Miszlej Asaf are similar in style to the Wisdom of Sirach. Szlojme Etinger of Zamość fashioned his Yiddish fables after German literature, predominantly after Lessing.
In the second half of the 19th century poet Jehuda Lejb Gordon published Miszlej Jehuda, which were first of all a translation of Jean de La Fontaine. In the 20th century translations and adaptations appeared, both Hebrew and Yiddish, of the fables by Aesop, Lessing, and Iwan Kryłow. The best known adaptations and translations to Hebrew came from Chananii Reichman. He also translated to Hebrew the most original fables to ever be created in Yiddish whose author was Elizer Sztejnbarg of Czerniowce (Meszolim).
An important publication was Jalkut Meszalim (1952), a collection of stories from one of the Jewish coryphei, Chofec Chaim (Izrael Meir haKohen), who included religious fables among them. Three years later appeared a collection in Yiddish of 540 fables gathered from oral tradition by Naftali Gross, Majselech un Meszolim, although stories about animals constituted a minority (24).
In the largest collection of fables and tales – Israel Folktale Archive – there are not many stories about animals either (about 2%). They had basically disappeared from oral tradition, and they remain the most present in Talmudic and Midrash literature, as well as in the collections from the Middle Ages.
Jewish fables and tales in literature and film
The best known author of tales woven around the motifs from Jewish fables and legends, creating within the limits of the Ashkenazi Jews, was Icchok Baszewis Singer. But before and next to him there were others still, for instance: Icchok Lejbusz Perec, Micha Josef Berdyczewski (Bin Gorion), Sz. An–ski, Elizer Sztejnbarg, Jechiel Jeszala Trunk, Icyk Manger.
Currently novels and movies are created, where motifs from Jewish tales appear. The one most frequently used is the legend of the thirty six righteous ones. It is hard to mention all of the examples, but I will at least address some of them:
Films: "Men in Black" by Barry Sonnenfeld, Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man", Werner Herzog's "Invincible", and "Time of the Wolf" by Michael Haneke. This motif also appears in Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Jodi Picoult's Keeping Faith, or The Righteous Men by Sam Bourne.
A character frequently used is the Golem, starting with the probably the best known of its incarnations, one by Gustav Meyrink. But even contemporary fantasy writers use that character, such as Andrzej Pilipiuk in Księżniczka [Princess], Terry Pratchett in his novels Feet of Clay or Going Postal, even Andrzej Sapkowski in Boży Bojownicy [Warriors of God] or Lux Perpetua. "Golem" motifs also appeared in two episodes of TV show X-Files – "Kaddish" and "Arcadia". **** FABLE, an animal tale (according to the most general and hence most widely accepted definition), i.e., a tale in which the characters are animals, and which contains a moral lesson. The genre also includes tales in which plants or inanimate objects act and talk.
Introduction
Definitions vary according to the importance ascribed to the thematic factor (the animal story) or the functional factor (its didactic tendency). As a literary creation, the fable developed out of oral folklore, and it can thus be asserted that the thematic element is closely related to those popular origins, while the didactic quality is the product of a more sophisticated cultural level, usually of an individual whose specific aim is to educate (e.g., the Greek pedagogues, the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud, the darshanim, and the priests of the various churches during the Middle Ages). Because the earliest sources of the European literary fable and the oldest known collection are connected with the name of the Greek Aesop, the animal fable has often been called the Aesopian fable.
While the animal society of the fable operates very similarly to its human analogue, the activity, in general, remains exclusively within the realm of the animal world. Some fables, however, do depict interaction between humans and animals. A similarity between the fable and the fairy tale (maerchen, Heb. ma'asiyyah) is seen in this fanciful conception of animals functioning as human beings. Yet within the fable itself, the plot is usually realistic and seldom contains magical elements, such as metamorphoses, revivals of the dead, and ghosts. The fable further differs from the fairy tale in its being mono-episodic. A series of episodes related or written together have developed into the beast epic, but each of those episodes can be isolated from its wider context. Like the fairy tale, though, the fable too uses universal motifs and stock characters. The latter are either stereotyped or endowed with conventional functions within the animal society.
The source of the fable lies in the observation of animals in their natural setting, and the tale often remains etiological. More sophisticated plots and the didactic application of the concrete story to the realm of ethics result from the tendency to draw obvious parallels and to develop potential analogies. In these cases, the two possible narrative forms are the metaphorical and generalizing fables.
Among various conjectures as to the origin of the fable, the 19th-century scholar, Julius Landsberger, maintained that the fable originated with the Jews (Hebraeer), pointing out the similarity between the names Aesop and Asaph. While this theory has been contradicted (by Joseph *Jacobs and others), some of the Hebrew fables are nevertheless among the most ancient that are extant in literary form. These are traced back to the 15th–14th centuries B.C.E., and a still earlier oral tradition can be assumed.
The Hebrew term for fable, mashal (מָשָׁל), is linked, in popular etymology, to the two homonymic roots mshl, meaning respectively "to liken," and "to rule." This is explained by the fact that meshalim were narrated by rulers or related to future rulers in order to instruct them in just ways.
In the Bible
The biblical term refers to the proverb, aphorism, and to allegorical prophecy. Later interpretation applied the term to allegory (Ezek. 17:3–12), to the parable (II Sam. 12:1–4), and to the fable. Of the latter there are two prime examples: Jotham's fable told to the citizens of Shechem on Mount Gerizim (Judg. 9:8–15), in which he likens their king, Abimelech, to the bramble which became the king of the trees; and the fable of the thistle and the cedar of Lebanon in the answer given by Jehoash, the king of Israel, to Amaziah, the king of Judah (II Kings 14:9; II Chron. 25:18). One interpretation of II Kings 5:13 (where Solomon is said to have spoken of trees and animals) is that it refers to Solomon's writing of fables, a field in which the Semitic wise man (e.g., *Ahikar ) characteristically engaged.
In the Talmud and Midrash
A much richer source of fables is the talmudic-midrashic literature, which mentions several outstanding fabulists, notably *Hillel (Sof. 16:7), and his pupil, *Johanan b. Zakkai (Suk. 28a; BB 134a; Sof. 16:6). Johanan mastered three genres: fox tales, palm tales (lit., "the talk of palm trees"), and washerman tales. (The last, mishlei kovesim, has been interpreted by Landsberger (see bibl.) as referring to the first century C.E. Libyan fabulist, Kybisses, a view rejected by D. Noy (see bibl. Mahanayim, 91), and others.) According to the Talmud, the most prolific of the fabulists was R. *Meir , a tanna in the last generation (Sanh. 38b–39b); he was reputed to have known 300 fables, but only three were transmitted to his students. (The numbers are formulistic and perhaps exaggerated.) It is even said that when he died "the composers of fables ceased" (Sot. 49a). J.L. *Gordon argues that R. Meir's fables were Aesopian and that he had heard them from his teacher, *Elisha b. Avuyah , who was acquainted with Greek culture. *Bar Kappara , in the following generation, is said to have known as many fables as R. Meir (Eccles. R. 1:3). It is interesting to note that the fox, the hero of a great number of European fables, is a central figure in the talmudic tradition of animal fables. In the Midrash, the fox himself is depicted as a teller of fables (Gen. R. 78:7).
The same period reflects an increased affinity with the Aesopian tradition and the Indian animal tales (as they are known from the Jatakas and the Panchatantra). According to Jacobs, of 30 talmudic fables only six lack Greek or Indian parallels; many show both. I. *Ziegler maintains that the fables as taught by the rabbis were adapted to their audience more than their Greek counterparts: the insistence on moral and theological teaching is stronger with the rabbis, as seen in the following comparison of epimythia (i.e., the proverb-like statements concluding the narrative). In the fable of the fox who ate too many grapes and was required to fast before he was able to leave the vineyard, the Aesopian version concludes that time takes care of everything, whereas Ecclesiastes Rabbah brings a moralizing quotation from Ecclesiastes (5:14): "As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return."
In the Middle Ages
THE ALPHABET OF *BEN SIRA
Among the stories in this work are the fable of Leviathan and the fox, an etiological fable about the enmity between cat and mouse; and other stories containing motifs from international folklore and possibly based on folktales. The 1698 Amsterdam edition was printed with "Musar al-pi ha-Ḥidah," a fragment of a collection of fables, printed in the early 16th century under the name Ḥidot Isopeto. ("The Riddles of Isopet"). The name Isopeto, for Aesop, appears in other Jewish writings, and parallels the name Ysopet in the Romance languages.
ḤIBBUR YAFEH MIN HA-YESHU'AH ("The Book of Redemption")
In the 11th century Rabbenu Nissim, from Kairouan (see *Nissim b. Jacob b. Nissim ibn Shahin ), wrote this book of tales, which also includes two fables. The work, originally written in Arabic, was discovered in 1896; prior to that, only the Hebrew translation (Ma'asiyyot she-ba-Talmud, Constantinople, 1519) was known.
KALILA AND DIMNA
Translated into Latin as Directorium Vitae by the apostate *John of Capua, this composition was of great importance to European fable literature; it became the basis of all translations. According to A.S. Rappoport, the Greek translation of Kalila and Dimna (ed. by J. Derenbourg, 1881) was also made by a Jew, Simeon, in 1080. The original is to be traced back through the eighth-century Arabic translation to an origin in the Indian Panchatantra. This line of influence from India nourished the prose fiction of the Jews of Muslim and later of Christian Spain and of Provence.
SEFER SHA'ASHU'IM ("Book of Delights")
Written at the end of the 12th century by Joseph b. Meir *Ibn Zabara – whose cultural environment was clearly Muslim – this work bears some relation to the Taḥkemoni of Judah *Al-Ḥarizi , and to the maqamat of the Arabic poet Al-Ḥariri. It contains a fable which deals with a conflict between the strong leopard and the sly fox and which in turn forms the framework for another fable and for four other stories, describing faithless women (one of them the widow of Ephesus, which also appears in Petronius' Satyricon). One of the stories is a version of the fable of the fox in the vineyard, completely devoid, however, of the homiletic bent of the Midrash. The book shows traces of Arabic, Greek, and Indian culture, and has parallels in collections of medieval exempla literature. It was translated into English by M. Hadas as The Book of Delight (1960).
BEN HA-MELEKH VE-HA-NAZIR ("The Prince and the Hermit")
Translated into Hebrew by Abraham ibn Ḥisdai in Spain at the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century (first printed edition, Constantinople, 1518), this work was discovered by Steinschneider to be a translation and adaptation of the Greek "Barlaam and Joasaph." Indian in origin (c. eighth century), it is a typical example of lndian wisdom literature, in which the stories are told by a wise man as he tutors a young prince.
MISHLEI SHU'ALIM ("Fox Fables")
This work was written by R. *Berechiah b. Natronai ha-Nakdan who lived during the creative period of Jewish fable literature (end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century), and was printed in Mantua in 1557. The use of the name Mishlei Shu'alim, identical with a genre of fables mentioned in the Talmud (Suk. 28a; Sanh. 38b), is explained on the title page by the statement that the fox is the most cunning of animals, and therefore the cleverest. The number of fables included in this collection varies between 107 and 115 with the different manuscripts. They are written in the form of maqamat, in a clear, lively style; structurally each has an epimythium, the first two lines of which comprise the promythium as well (i.e., a proverb-like statement at the opening of the narrative). The religious tendency of the Midrash, totally absent in Sefer Sha'ashu'im, appears vaguely in Berechiah's composition. Its tone is clearly Jewish: biblical references are numerous, other sources are echoed in it, mythological creatures are changed to men. A talmudic reference to R. *Akiva (Ber. 61) is the source of Berechiah's story of the fox and the fish. On the other hand, the work also displays many parallels to the West-European Aesopian tradition, including the Old-French compilation of Marie de France and the Directorium Vitae. Some parallels also appear in the popular late-medieval beast epic Roman de Renart (High German, Reinhart Fuchs; Low German, Reynke de Vos). It is possible that Marie de France and Berechiah had common sources in the West European Isopet traditions, in which case the title and the printer's remark can be explained by the immense popularity of fox fables at that period.
Mishlei Shu'alim became part of European Jewish culture: a Yiddish translation by Jacob Koppelman appeared as early as 1588 in Freiburg, and was reprinted several times in Prague, Vilna, and Warsaw, Several reprints in Hebrew were also rendered in different parts of Europe. Popular among non-Jews as well, it appeared in a Latin translation by Melchior Hanel (Prague, 1661), and the German author, G.E. Lessing, translated seven of the fables into German (Abhandlung ueber die Fabel, 1759). M. Hadas published an English translation, Fables of a Jewish Aesop (1967).
MESHAL HA-KADMONI ("The Fable of the Ancient")
The Spanish Hebrew writer, Isaac ben Solomon ibn *Sahula , aspired to create a Hebrew fable independent of foreign influences, and titled his book Meshal ha-Kadmoni, so as to stress the fact that its sources were in the Talmud and Midrash. In fact, however, he did not succeed in completely eliminating foreign influences. Written in the form of a maqama, the fables are cast in dialogue. Their moral lessons are Jewish, and the animals, well versed in Jewish learning: the deer is an expert in Talmud, the rooster, a Bible scholar, and the hare knows the posekim. They are also knowledgeable in such fields as logic, grammar, and biology. Neither characterization nor plots are fabular in the popular or traditional sense, which, according to Heller, renders Sahula's fables less important than those of Ibn Zabara or of Berechiah. Meshal ha-Kadmoni was first printed in 1480. The Venetian edition of 1546 is amply and imaginatively illustrated with pictures of the disputing animals. The book, which gained popularity, was translated into Yiddish by Gershon Wiener (Frankfurt, 1693).
SEFER HA-MESHALIM ("The Book of Riddles")
The 13th-century kabbalist Joseph *Gikatilla compiled this non-kabbalistic collection of approximately 140 riddles, essentially didactic in nature, and often lacking the ingenuity of a genuine riddle. (Some manuscripts, however, include only about half the number of riddles.) The basis of comparison in these riddles varies among plants, animals, and inanimate objects. It was published by I. Davidson in 1927.
IGGERET BA'ALEI ḤAYYIM ("The Animals' Collection")
A translation by *Kalonymus b. Kalonymus (Arles, 1316, in seven days) of the end of the 25th book of a Muslim encyclopedia, its first printed edition appeared in Mantua in 1557 (ed. by J. Landsberger, 1882). Its sources include Greek and Arabic but are primarily Indian. Several elements of this work are not characteristic of the fable: the animals, for instance, dispute throughout the book with human beings before the king of ghosts, and the plot is not mono-episodic. On the other hand, the context of law courts and the depiction of animals functioning like human beings do resemble the fable. The Jewish element in the translation is the addition of a Jew to the Muslim who represents men in the trial. There is clearly a relationship between Iggeret Ba'alei Ḥayyim and the Bidpai literature, and parallels to some of its "characters" are found in Kalila and Dimna. The popularity of this work is evidenced by the fact that it was printed several times and translated into Yiddish.
MISHLEI SENDABAR ("The Tales of Sendabar," Sindbad)
Translated into Hebrew the same year as Iggeret Ba'alei Ḥayyim (1316), these tales exist in eight Oriental versions (Greek, Syriac, Old Spanish, three Persian ones, Arabic, and Hebrew), all under the same name. (In all the major Western languages they appear as The Seven Sages.) M. Epstein suggests the possibility of a Hebrew origin on the basis of a similarity to Vashti the Queen in the Book of Esther. The wickedness of women is the central theme of both the frame tale and those told by the sages. One of the sages of the Hebrew version, Lokman, is, according to tradition, the Arabic Aesop. The distinctive feature of the Hebrew Mishlei Sendabar is the freeing of the woman at the end; in other versions she is killed or otherwise severely punished. The intermediary between the Indian and the Arabic versions is generally held to be Pahlevi. Epstein points out, however, that the Hebrew alone bears some features which distinguish the Western from the Eastern version. According to others, the bridge is either the Byzantine Empire or the Crusaders. A.M. *Habermann 's view is that the book was translated to Hebrew from Arabic, although this has not been proved to be the only possibility. Modern editions include M. Epstein's (Tales of Sendebar, 1967) and A.M. Habermann's (Mishlei Sindbad, 1946). (See *Sindabar .)
MISHLEI IRASTO ("Tales of Irasto")
Translated by the early 16th century rabbi of Amsterdam, Isaac *Uziel , this work is very similar to Mishlei Sindabar, but the coarse elements have been excluded. It was translated, according to Habermann, from Italian; according to A. *Elmaleh (editor of Mishlei Irasto, 1945), from Latin.
In the Post-Medieval Period
THE KUHBUCH
This most popular collection of Yiddish fables in Europe is known only in Moses Wallich's edition (Frankfurt, 1687). Its name is taken from an earlier compilation of the same name, no longer extant, which was printed in 1555 by Abraham b. Mattathias. While it apparently included parts of Mishlei Shu'alim and Meshal ha-Kadmoni, its fables are not direct translations; it also includes stories in the typical Renaissance style of Decameron. A modern German translation by R. Beatus was published by A. Freimann in 1926.
DARSHANIM
The various ideological schools of medieval Jewry employed fables as religious exempla. The rationalists, the Hasidei Ashkenaz, and the representatives of the Kabbalah in its various stages all used fables allegorically or metaphorically to support and to exemplify their ideas. It is quite likely that fables were used by darshanim after the Middle Ages as well, although few examples are extant. Fables with a clear homiletical tendency appear among the meshalim of Jacob of Dubno ( Jacob *Kranz , better known as the Dubno Maggid), one of the outstanding darshanim of the Musar Movement. It is somewhat exaggerated, however, to call him "the Jewish Aesop," as M. *Mendelssohn did, since he drew the background material for his fables primarily from everyday life; as H. Glatt (He Spoke in Parables, 1957) has said, "he was more of a parablist than a fabler." One of his fables is the Aesopian "One Donkey for Two People." Other classical fables in his repertoire include "The Crafty Woodcock" (i.e., the Aesopian "The Fox, the Cock, and the Dog") and "The Utensils that Gave Birth" (cf. Kalila and Dimna and Panchatantra). The stories in his commentary to Pirkei Avot also contain fables.
In Modern Hebrew Literature
EARLY PERIOD
Modern Hebrew literature, highly didactic in its early stages (late 18th–early 19th centuries), found the fable a useful literary device. Isaac ha-Levi *Satanow wrote the pseudepigraphic Mishlei Asaf (2 vols., Berlin, 1788–91). Imaginatively attributed to Asaph b. Berechiah (I Chron. 6:24), the work is stylistically imitative of Proverbs and the Wisdom of *Ben Sira . Its animal fables, which tend to be allegorical, are composed in the talmudic and the Aesopian traditions. In the same period, such writers as Joel *Loewe and Isaac Euchel dealt with the fable from a theoretical standpoint.
Shalom ben Jacob *Cohen 's Mishlei Agur (Berlin, 1799; 1911) includes verses and verse-dramas, which sometimes have fabular characteristics. The Yiddish satirist Solomon *Ettinger , who associated with the Zamosc maskilim, differed from most of his contemporaries in stressing style more than ideology. Influenced by German drama and fable literature (Lessing, Gellert), Ettinger added Jewish content to the foreign themes. Many of his fables are essentially epigrammatic.
LATE 19th CENTURY
Later in the 19th century, the poet J.L. Gordon published Mishlei Yehudah (1860), a collection mainly of translations of La Fontaine's fables. In the preface to this work, he gave a history of the Hebrew fable. Gam Elleh Mishlei Yehudah, another collection of fables, appeared in 1871. While Gordon essentially collected and transmitted fables from the European tradition to Hebrew, A. *Paperna wrote a book of fables Mishlei ha-Zeman (1894), essentially a long discourse among various animals on the question of who was the happiest of them all. Irony is the dominating tone of the work, and amusement apparently its primary purpose, although it may also have some practical implications. In verging on the comic, this work resembles the 18th-cen-tury German fables. In 1893 Joshua *Steinberg published his Mishlei Yehoshu'a which are mainly epigrams. Collections of East European Jewish fables such as these were published as far east as Baghdad.
HEBREW TRANSLATIONS OF FABLES
A number of (He-brew) translations of fables appeared in the 19th century, including: I.L. *Jeiteles ' translation of Lessing's fables; Solomon Pundy's (b. 1812) of the German folklorist Pfeffel's fables; Benjamin Kewall's (1806–1880) adaptation of 52 of Aesop's fables Pirḥei Kedem (1843). The Italian Jewish writer S.D. *Luzzatto in Kinnor Na'im (Vienna, 1825), translated fables by Aesop and Lessing. Krylov's fables were translated by Meir Wolf Singer (1885) and by Chayim Susskind (1891). In the beginning of the 20th century a new translation of Lessing's fables was made by Moses *Reicherson (1902), and a translation of Krylov by S.L. *Gordon (1907). More than 400 years after its translation into Hebrew, Kalila and Dimna was retranslated by Elmaleh (1926).
THE 20th CENTURY
Few literary fables have been written in the 20th century. Among Jewish works, the most important is probably that written by Eliezer *Steinbarg and published in Romania (Shriftn, 2 vols., 1932–33), shortly after the death of the author. The two volumes, written in rich, rhythmic Yiddish verse, include 150 fables of animals and inanimate objects alike. (His fables were published earlier (1928) with wood-cuts by A. *Kolnik .) Some of the fables have epimythia; others convey the moral lesson through the tale itself.
Hananiah Reichman, who translated the fables of Krylov (1950), includes in his epigrammatic collections much fabular material, adapted to his own concise and ironic verse form. His books include Mi-Mishlei ha-Ammim u-mi-Pi Ḥakhamim (1941), Pitgamim u-Mikhtamim (1955), and Devash va-Okeẓ (1960). He also translated Steinbarg's fables into He-brew (1954). An interesting contribution is E. *Fleischer's Meshalim (1957), a book of fables which was sent to Ereẓ Israel from a prison camp in Eastern Europe. The author used the pseudonym Bar-Abba. Written basically in the classical vein of La Fontaine and Krylov, these fables have new themes and combine humor with bitter social satire.
The religious fables (a minority among parables, as Yalkut Meshalim (ed. S. Sheinfold) generally in the case of exempla) of the Ḥafez Ḥayyim ( R. *Israel Meir ha-Kohen from Radin) were published in Tel Aviv in 1952. From the oral tradition, Naphtali Gross' Mayselekh un Mesholim (1955, 19682) shows a low percentage of fables in the East European Jewish tradition. Less than five percent (27 of the 540 fables) in the collection are fables. H. Schwarzbaum's commentary shows that these few have a great affinity to both the European Aesopian tradition and to the traditional Jewish sources. The percentage of animal fables is still lower (less than two percent) in the collections of the Israel Folktale Archives.
Summary
The fable in general, and Jewish fable in particular, has almost disappeared from the oral tradition. The largest number of Jewish fables is found in the talmudic-midrashic literature in the Near East, and in the medieval European Jewish collections. Foreign influences upon these fables are decisive, but it is clear to both reader and scholar that some of the early stages of the history of the fable, as far as it can be reconstructed at the present, point to Ereẓ Israel. ***** Yiddish (ייִדיש, יידיש or אידיש, yidish or idish, pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ], lit. 'Jewish'; ייִדיש-טײַטש, historically also Yidish-Taytsh, lit. 'Judeo-German')[9] is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originates from 9th century[10]: 2 Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic) and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages.[11][12][13] Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet; however, there are variations, including the standardized YIVO orthography that employs the Latin alphabet.
Prior to World War II, there were 11-13 million speakers.[14][15] Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers,[16] leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However, the number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim", whose population was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million.[17] A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of the world (for a total of 600,000).[2]
The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז (loshn-ashknaz, "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש (taytsh), a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn, lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קודש (loshn koydesh, "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic.[18] The term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh ("Jewish German"), did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today.[19][17]
Modern Yiddish has two major forms: Eastern and Western. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas.
The term "Yiddish" is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer).[20].[1] . ebay6309../215