How the Wise Men Got to Chelm is the first in-depth study of Chelm literature and its relationship to its literary precursors.
When God created the world, so it is said, he sent out an angel with a bag of foolish souls with instructions to distribute them equally all over the world—one fool per town. But the angel’s bag broke and all the souls spilled out onto the same spot. They built a settlement where they landed: the town is known as Chelm.
The collected tales of these fools, or “wise men,” of Chelm constitute the best-known folktale tradition of the Jews of eastern Europe. This tradition includes a sprawling repertoire of stories about the alleged intellectual limitations of the members of this old and important Jewish community. Chelm did not make its debut in the role of the foolish shtetl par excellence until late in the nineteenth century. Since then, however, the town has led a double life—as a real city in eastern Poland and as an imaginary place onto which questions of Jewish identity, community, and history have been projected.
By placing literary Chelm and its “foolish” antecedents in a broader historical context, it shows how they have functioned for over three hundred years as models of society, somewhere between utopia and dystopia. These imaginary foolish towns have enabled writers both to entertain and highlight a variety of societal problems, a function that literary Chelm continues to fulfill in Jewish literature to this day.
"Bernuth...provides a detailed and comprehensive examination of the evolution of some of the best-known Yiddish folk stories--those revolving around the comically foolish men of the town of Chelm--that places those tales in historical and cultural context." - Publishers Weekly
"[Von Bernuth] provides a comprehensive survey of all the collections of Chelm stories and their predecessors published since 1700, shows how the tales explored Jewish identity, community and history, and delivers a few punch lines." - The Jerusalem Post
"von Bernuth succeeds admirably in showing how the mythic locale allowed for the expression of various Jewish fantasies and anxieties over the past century and a half, and indeed continues to do so today." - Times Higher Education
"How the Wise Men Got to Chelmshows how these stories have changed over time to include debates about the efficacy of Zionism or communism, or to discuss the apparent silliness of Hasidic traditions." - Times Literary Supplement
Формат: Скан PDf
When God created the world, so it is said, he sent out an angel with a bag of foolish souls with instructions to distribute them equally all over the world—one fool per town. But the angel’s bag broke and all the souls spilled out onto the same spot. They built a settlement where they landed: the town is known as Chelm.
The collected tales of these fools, or “wise men,” of Chelm constitute the best-known folktale tradition of the Jews of eastern Europe. This tradition includes a sprawling repertoire of stories about the alleged intellectual limitations of the members of this old and important Jewish community. Chelm did not make its debut in the role of the foolish shtetl par excellence until late in the nineteenth century. Since then, however, the town has led a double life—as a real city in eastern Poland and as an imaginary place onto which questions of Jewish identity, community, and history have been projected.
By placing literary Chelm and its “foolish” antecedents in a broader historical context, it shows how they have functioned for over three hundred years as models of society, somewhere between utopia and dystopia. These imaginary foolish towns have enabled writers both to entertain and highlight a variety of societal problems, a function that literary Chelm continues to fulfill in Jewish literature to this day.
"Bernuth...provides a detailed and comprehensive examination of the evolution of some of the best-known Yiddish folk stories--those revolving around the comically foolish men of the town of Chelm--that places those tales in historical and cultural context." - Publishers Weekly
"[Von Bernuth] provides a comprehensive survey of all the collections of Chelm stories and their predecessors published since 1700, shows how the tales explored Jewish identity, community and history, and delivers a few punch lines." - The Jerusalem Post
"von Bernuth succeeds admirably in showing how the mythic locale allowed for the expression of various Jewish fantasies and anxieties over the past century and a half, and indeed continues to do so today." - Times Higher Education
"How the Wise Men Got to Chelmshows how these stories have changed over time to include debates about the efficacy of Zionism or communism, or to discuss the apparent silliness of Hasidic traditions." - Times Literary Supplement
Формат: Скан PDf
https://www.yakaboo.ua/ua/how-the-wise-men-got-to-chelm-the-life-and-times-of-a-yiddish-folk-tradition.html