Yiddish Folktales

by Beatrice Weinreich

  With the advent of print, Jewish publishers issued not only sacred Hebrew texts for prayer and study, but also a large variety of books in Yiddish, which could be read widely. Perhaps the most popular of these collections was the Mayse-bukh (Book of Tales), compiled some time in the sixteenth century.2 The publishers of the Mayse-bukh sought to provide Jewish men and women with a wholesome alternative to the current “ungodly” worldly literature by presenting them with over two hundred edifying tales and legends drawn from a variety of oral and literary sources. Some of the stories in the present collection are related to tales found in the Mayse-bukh, some of which are themselves variants of Talmudic agodes. Thus the rich sample of twentieth-century Yiddish tales printed here in English translation comprises one more link in the extensive interaction between the spoken and the written in Jewish culture.

  If the compilers of works such as the Mayse-bukh saw Jewish tales as a means of reinforcing the traditional pious life, the collectors of the tales presented in this book were inspired by quite different motives. These modern folklorists saw their work as part of the neo-Romantic, nationalistic movement popular among Jewish cultural activists at the turn of the century. Like other nationalists of the time, these folklorists and amateur collectors gathered lore from those who preserved the greatest number of distinctive folk traditions so that these traditions could serve as the basis of a modern national culture. Classic Yiddish writer Y.-L. Peretz, for example, reworked Yiddish folktales into stories for the modern Jewish reader. Our “Seven Good Years” is one such story, a variant of a Talmudic legend which is the basis for one of Peretz’s Folkstimlekhe geshikhtes (Folktale-like Stories).

  The most famous enterprise to gather the folklore of East European Jews was certainly the ethnographic expedition organized in 1912 by writer-folklorist Sh. An-ski (pen name of Shloyme Zanvl Rappaport). An-ski and his colleagues set out with the ambitious goal of finding and preserving all genres of Yiddish folkways, including oral tales and legends, throughout Jewish communities in the Ukraine. Over the next three years, the expedition, which was cut short by the outbreak of World War I, gathered some 1,800 tales and legends, among other folklore materials, from sixty-six villages and towns in Volhynia and Podolia.3 An-ski later drew on some of this lore when writing his famous play, The Dibbuk.

  Avrom Rekhtman, a member of the An-ski expedition, 1912–1914, recording a legend in Brailov, in the Ukraine. (YIVO Photographic Archive)

  The most enduring effort to collect and publish Yiddish folklore—one which continues to this day—came with the establishment of the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut—YIVO (the Institute for Jewish Research) in 1925 in Vilna. YIVO was committed to the scholarly study of East European Jewish culture in Yiddish. Folklore and ethnography were seen as central to the task, and soon after its founding, YIVO established an Ethnographic Commission, whose major responsibility was to collect and publish Yiddish folklore. YIVO’s scholars and students were conversant with the latest international theories in the study of folklore, and these had direct implications for what they set out to collect and the methods they used.

  At first YIVO’s efforts to record Yiddish folktales were largely carried out by amateur zamlers (collectors) from all walks of life. Tailors, shopkeepers, artisans, school teachers, rabbis—all responded to YIVO’s appeal to “listen attentively to the stories people tell each other in traditional Jewish homes, in Jewish neighborhoods, in cities, as well as in isolated little towns.”4 Collectors’ circles were established in cities and towns throughout Eastern Europe, and by 1929 such societies were sending local folklore to YIVO. Yiddish folklore was being collected on an unprecedented scale. According to one account, in 1938, after little more than a decade of concentrated collection, YIVO’s folklore archive contained over 100,000 items: 32,442 proverbs, 4,989 folk beliefs, 4,673 children’s tales, 4,311 folksongs, 3,807 anecdotes, 2,340 folktales, 1,009 customs, 630 nigunim (songs without words), 79 Purim plays, etc.5

  Shmuel Lehman, folklorist, recording a story from an old woman in Warsaw, in 1931, while her family watches. Lehman is known for his unique collections of folktales about Elijah the Prophet, of cante fables, and of underworld lore. (YIVO Photographic Archive)

  In an effort to promote effective and uniform collecting, the Ethnographic Commission issued a series of informal anketes (questionnaires) and a guide to novice zamlers entitled Vos azoyns iz yidishe etnografye (“Just What Is Jewish Ethnography?”). A good picture of who the best storytellers were likely to be is found in one of the early anketes:

  They are the merchants who travel to fairs and meet all kinds of people and get to hear a variety of tales and bring these home together with their hard-earned groshn. Then there are the village artisans and craftsmen, who travel with their tools from village to village; klezmorim [musicians]; badkhonim, specializing in humorous and sentimental semi-improvised rhymes, who go from one wedding to another in neighboring towns and villages; shadkhonim [marriage brokers]; mendicants; blind musicians; street singers. There are also the Hasidim, who go on visits to their rebbe, or stay a while at his hoyf [court], where they hear many tales about Hasidic rebbes and about pious, saintly men.6

  The ankete goes on to warn the folklore collector:

  People tend to be shy (in today’s world of newspapers and sophisticated books!) about telling such bobe-mayses [old wives’ tales], current among children and old-timers. People may think you want to make fun of them. Therefore, it is important first to gain the complete confidence of the person from whom you wish to write down a tale, and to explain, if necessary and if it seems appropriate, that these tales are not as silly as they themselves may feel they are in today’s world. Also tell them that many of these folktales, in all their charming simplicity, and with their wealth of colorful fantasy, may, in fact, surpass stories that get printed in books.

  The YIVO publication also lists the most common Yiddish folktale motifs and heroes, which the commission felt would help the collector to prod the memory of storytellers:

  Everywhere mothers still tell wondrous tales to their children about gute yidn [Hasidic rebbes; literally, “good Jews”] who help poor people in hard times. Grandmothers still like to tell about the days of yore; or about the shretelekh [elf-like creatures], who bring good fortune to the home; about evil men who invent libelous stories about Jews; about the Prophet Elijah, who does not forget the poor man. And in the small houses of worship and study where ordinary folk gather to pore over sacred works or huddle near the stove, stories are told, with equal fervor and enthusiasm, about miracles performed by Hasidic rebbes … and about the hidden tsadek [saintly man] who wanders over cities and small towns, disguised as a water carrier or a poor tailor or sexton, and who brings with him consolation and redemption.

  The ankete closed by urging the collectors: “Please do not make the stories prettier while writing them down. Set them down exactly as the teller tells them, including all asides and aphorisms.”

  In 1930 a group of young collectors at YIVO in Vilna received some formal training from Y.-L. Cahan,7 head of YIVO’s Ethnographic Commission and editor of its folklore publications. After his visit to Vilna in 1930, Cahan, who by then was living in New York, continued his instruction of the young folklorists via a lively correspondence. Shmuel Zanvl Pipe, represented in this volume by some legends about Napoleon, was one of Y.-L. Cahan’s students and correspondents. In early letters to his brother we learn of this young tailor’s infatuation with Yiddish folklore. While the impoverished Pipe was serving in the army, he wrote that he had received some money, but instead of spending it on himself, he used it to buy stamps to mail folklore materials to YIVO. “I guess you could call me a passionate zamler,” he observed.8

  As the YIVO guide suggested, eloquent storytellers were to be found in all parts of Jewish society. Thanks to the efforts of some of the collectors, we know a little bit about the life and art of individual storytellers. One early collector, A. Litwin, who went on to become a Yiddis
h journalist in America, offered the following description of a particularly good teller of tales, the woman who told him “In Heaven and Hell” and “A Balshem Drives Out a Dibbuk.”

  In the province of Mohilev there lives an amazing old woman known as the town’s khakhome [wise woman], whom I met by accident. Her name is Sonye Naymark. She is eighty years old, takes good care of herself, looks healthy, and is so lively and cheerful that it’s a pleasure to spend time with her. I spent several hours with her. It wasn’t easy for me to get that much of her time. She comes from a family of status, and considers herself well-born. At first it was hard for me to approach her; later she began to trust me. She started to feel at home in my presence and spoke freely. And then the proverbs and stories began to flow. She tells her stories like an artist. Her language is unusually rich and colorful, and her style is sharp and peppery. She makes use of a rhyme, a Biblical verse, even a Talmudic proverb. It was from her that I learned that there were once women badkhentes. Such a badkhente, she said, once paid her three rubles for a story that she taught her and which the badkhente then used at a wedding. Sonye, however, is anything but a badkhente. She is a very proud woman and commands everyone’s respect. Old and young are happy to spend time with her and enjoy her stories and proverbs.9

  Whereas “Sonye the Wise” had a fixed place in her shtetl, another prized storyteller, Sholem Troyanovski, traveled extensively in his life and held numerous different jobs. His varied experiences may well have enhanced his repertoire:

  Sholem Troyanovski is sixty-two years old. He is a shoemaker in Yevpatoriye, Crimea, and a former longshoreman and member of a collective farm in Peretsfeld. He came over to the Crimea in 1930 from Skvir, near Kiev. He is not highly literate, and uses a great many Russian words in his daily life. Troyanovski tells tales well. He has a rich repertoire of around fifty folktales. There was a time, he says, when people trailed after him, begging, “Sholem, tell us a story.”10

  Storyteller Sonye Naymark, called “Sonye di Khakhome” (Sonye the Wise), circa 1915. (YIVO Photographic Archive)

  Troyanovski’s wonder-tale “Forty Hares and a Princess” appears in this volume.

  Not all great Yiddish storytellers lived in small towns or on remote farms, like Naymark and Troyanovski. The larger cities contained whole enclaves of Jews who had recently migrated from shtetlekh and villages, and were still a rich source of small-town and rural folkways. In addition, there was a folklore of the city, of the “beardless,” the “modern,” the “enlightened” Jews; even tales of the Jewish underworld.

  Finding gifted storytellers was not the zamler’s only challenge, however. Documenting the art of the storyteller was limited by the pen-and-paper technology of the time. Though some Yiddish folk songs have been recorded on wax cylinders, no Yiddish tales seem to have been preserved in the same manner.

  Zusman Kisselhof on the An-ski ethnographic expedition, 1912–1914, to Volhynia and Podolia. Here he is seen making sound recordings of Yiddish folksongs. (YIVO Photographic Archive)

  Some zamlers were quite ingenious in their efforts to render the authentic performances of the tellers. S. Verite, for example, invented an original way of noting speech patterns. In order to convey what words or phrases were stressed by the teller, he devised a system of dots and dashes to indicate emphases and pauses. Still, collectors remained poignantly aware of the difficulties of “writing everything down exactly as the teller told it, not adding or subtracting an iota,” as Litwin put it. For him, the written form of the storyteller’s art was “but a weak echo of what I heard from her mouth. What’s missing is the pose she strikes as she narrates, her gestures, her alertness, the naive enthusiasm with which she spins her yarns, the sound of her voice, her uncontrived yet artistic manner, which cannot be conveyed in words.”11

  Most of the stories in this volume were deposited in the archives of the YIVO Institute in Vilna between 1926 and 1940.12 They are part of the hundreds of thousands of books, documents, and other artifacts miraculously recovered following World War II—something of a wonder-tale itself. In 1941, when Vilna was occupied by the Germans, YIVO’s extensive collections were expropriated; some materials were destroyed, others designated for transfer to the Nazis’ Institute for Research on the Jewish Question in Frankfurt am Main. These were discovered after the war by Allied officers, and, with the help of the U.S. State Department, some 50,000 bound volumes and 30,000 archival folders were shipped to YIVO’s headquarters in New York City.

  As a student at YIVO in the autumn of 1948 I witnessed the dramatic arrival of the huge wooden crates. I remember hoping to work with these precious materials some day; and in preparing this book, I began my research by combing through the historic files. I never knew just what I would come across in a folder. Paper was a precious commodity in interwar Eastern Europe, and whatever snippet was available at the moment had to suffice. Some folders contained typed manuscripts; others, tales scribbled in schoolboy’s notebooks. Many of the various handwritings were quite difficult to decipher; on the other hand, there were a few collectors who wrote like calligraphers, with elaborate perldike shrift (pearl-like script).

  Crates of archival materials and books from the Vilna YIVO as they arrived in the New York buildina in 1948. (YIVO Photoqraphic Archive)

  The materials in these files were not organized by genre. Instead, jokes, wonder-tales, pious tales, and legends might all be found in a single file. There was no way to predict which genres would be well represented and which not. This complicated considerably the process of selecting the tales for this volume. I wanted to include stories representing all of the Yiddish folk narrative genres, as well as stories told by men and women of different age groups, professions, and religious backgrounds. Thus the tales in our collection include samples from the repertoire of a young kheyder-student in Vilna (“Little Bean”), an artist from Zhitomir (“The Luck That Snored”), a Hasid of the Stoliner Rebbe (“Yisroel, the Child Rebbe”), a night watchman Manuscript of “The Happy Pairr and the Baal Shem Tov.” (YIVO Archive) (“The Naughty Littly Girl”), and a member of a collective farm in the Soviet Union (“Sowing Salt”)

  Manuscript of “The Happy Pairand the Baal Shem Tov.” (YIVO Archive)

  I also wanted this collection to give a sense of the geographic distribution of the Yiddish folktale, so I have included stories from farming communities and villages, shtetlekh and major cities throughout Eastern Europe.

  A hallmark of oral tradition is the coexistence of multiple variants of a single tale. When selecting among variants I have given preference to a never published version from the archival sources over a published one. Where there were several unpublished variants, I chose the most skillfully told, the one that preserved the greatest number of features of local color and oral tradition: rhymed introductions and endings, narrator’s asides, idiomatic language, and rhetorical questions.

  Finally, there was the question, What constitutes a “Jewish tale”? Some scholars insist that the only tales that are truly “Jewish” are those with a muser haskl, i.e., a moral message, and that all others are ultimately foreign. They therefore limit themselves to fables, allegories, parables, and pious tales. Other folklorists, like Y.-L. Cahan, thought the only true Jewish folktales were the secular, non-moralistic wonder-tales. My own view, as reflected in this collection, is that whatever stories East European Jews told one another in Yiddish are “Yiddish folktales,” regardless of whether or not they contain Jewish cultural markers or impart traditional moral values.

  The Yiddish folktale provides us with a unique opportunity to glimpse the rich inner-life of East European Jews in the art and in the words of its storytellers. Each folk narrator, each generation of tellers, shapes anew both the tales and the literary and cultural heritage that they embody. And there is an invitation implied in this process of creation. An invitation best expressed in the style of nineteenth-century Yiddish chapbooks: Un itst, tayere leyeners, iz ayer rey ibertsudertseyln di mayses in ayere eygene verte
r—“And now, dear readers, it is your turn to retell these tales in your own words.”

  Amol iz geven. Once upon a time.

  In the besmedresh*—the House of Study—between afternoon and evening prayers one could often hear an itinerant preacher deliver a sermon embroidered with beautiful mesholim, parables. Even women used to come then: in summer they filled the women’s section, and in winter, wrapped in many shawls, they used to stand along the walls or fill the anteroom of the besmedresh. Some older pious women would boldly enter the besmedresh itself and stand by the oven and listen from there.

  —Memoir from Tishevits, Poland, ca. 1930

  The Yiddish folktale, no matter how pleasing, is often busy giving its readers moral or spiritual instruction. The favorite form such instruction takes is the moshl, a tale that employs examples or analogies to make its point. Broadly conceived, the moshl (mesholim is the plural) is a simple parable in which the deeds of ancient heroes or even ordinary folk serve to illustrate a moral. It can also be a fable in which animals who act like people provid a commentary on human affairs; or it can be a formally patterned allegory in which abstract concepts like “wisdom” or “truth” or “luck” become characters whose actions illuminate moral issues.