51. SOURCE: V.A. 27:2. COMMENTS: This is an example of the many tales read in the Talmud which circulated orally in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Eastern Europe. The prototype of this tale is found in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Shabbat 150b. See also Gaster (1924), no. 17, p. 210; and Gaster (1934) no. 8, p. 13.
52. TELLER: Yehoshua Yafe, n.d. COLLECTOR: Toyvye Yafe. SOURCE: V.A. 69:1. TALE TYPE: cf. 545.
53. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Sheyne Kitanik, n.p., n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 167:7. COMMENTS: See An-ski (1925) pp. 101–54 and Dov Noy (1966) on the blood libel.
54. TELLER: Meri Balkon, Grodne (Grodno), Poland. COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski. SOURCE: V.A. 26:31. COMMENTS: Focusing on another kind of slander, this Passover tale is not connected with the infamous blood libel, but rather with alleged cheating. The happy ending with Yankl made king is unusual. Most often in Yiddish tales the hero ends up viceroy to a king, not a king himself.
55. SOURCE: V.A. 27:1. TALE TYPE: 938A and 938B. COMMENTS: Elijah the Prophet is one of the most beloved characters in Yiddish folktales. A detailed analysis of sixty Yiddish Elijah stories, where his varied disguises and roles are delineated, can be found in B. Weinreich (1957). This particular tale has a long history both as a literary tale, going back to the Midrashic tradition (Ruth Zutta, Yalkut Ruth 607), and in oral tradition as well. (Cf. Ginzberg [1913], pp. 56ff., and Gaster [1934], pp. 292–94.) Peretz used this tale as a model for his artistic retelling Di zibn gute yor (Liptzin [1947], pp. 120–27). This type of tale was also popular in Poland among the non-Jewish population.
56. TELLER: A. Akives, 55 years old, Litin (Lityn), Poland, 1936. COLLECTOR: Musye Mayzls. TALE TYPE: cf. 930 (II, III, IV). COMMENTS: See tale no. 64, “Upon Me.”
57. TELLER: Yehoyshua Yafe, Sharkoyshtshine (Szarkowszczyzna), Poland, 1926. COLLECTOR: Toyvye Yafe. SOURCE: V.A. 30:1. COMMENTS: Midrashic variants appear in Hibbur Yafe (Ferrara, 1557; Amsterdam, 1745). See English translations in Bin Gorion (1976) pp. 658–59; Gaster (1924), no. 368, p. 137. Our version ends with the hero living happily ever after, while the version in Bin Gorion ends with a Biblical reference—“For He shall pay a man according to his works” (Job 34:11)—typical of printed ethical tales. The collector of our tale titled it with a rhyming Yiddish proverb: Got git dem tsadek skhar loyt zayn tsar (God rewards the pious man according to his grief). Though the teller apparently knew the tale from oral tradition, the collector seems also to have read it, stating that it is “from a midrash.” Note, too, that the older, written variant has the charitable man giving money “for the redemption of captives” and for orphans, while our version has him giving money specifically to help a poor bride and, more generally, to charity. Modern oral versions will often delete out-dated motifs.
58. TELLER: G. Aporets, Bialestok (Bialystok), Poland, 1929. COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski. SOURCE: V.A. 33:13. TALE TYPE: 832. COMMENTS: This is the kind of tale that very likely was used as a parable by preachers.
59. TELLER: Khinye Lifshits, 57 years old, Krementshug (Kremenchug), U.S.S.R., 1940. COLLECTOR: S. Verite. SOURCE: V.A. 154:28. TALE TYPE: cf. 834*. COMMENTS: Compare this tale with our tale no. 41, “The Hunchbacks and the Dancing Demons,” and others in which success is not achieved through imitation.
60. TELLER: Benyomin Pikover, 54 years old, Grodne (Grodno), Poland. COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski. SOURCE: V.A. 33:10. COMMENTS: Two typically Jewish tale types and motifs are combined here: first, a Jewish community threatened with annihilation is rescued (note that in magical/fairy tales it is an individual who is saved from danger) through the intervention of a spiritual type of hero. He is a silent, retiring, “unlikely” sort of a hero, a lamedvovnik who frequently lives in the quiet outskirts of a city or in a forest. He is the antithesis of the physically active hero of the fairy tale; through prayer, piety and fasting he achieves what folktale heroes achieve through actions. Combined with the first motif is a second one in which the Jewish hero helps uncover a plot to overthrow a king. As in the Book of Esther, recounted every Purim, such tales usually end with the noose put around the wicked minister’s head, and not the innocent man’s. This novella-tale probably had as its source one of the Yiddish chapbooks that were so popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is interesting to note that Gaster discovered a story about the annual sacrifice of a Jewish child by Christians (Gaster [1924], no. 346[9], p. 127).
61. TELLER: Anon., from Kviv (Klwow), Poland, 1906. COLLECTOR: Shmuel Lehman. SOURCE: Prilutski and Lehman (1933), no. 11, pp. 154–57. TALE TYPE: cf. 555.
62. TELLER: Mendl Berkhon, Sharkheyshtshine (Szarkowszczyzna), Poland, 1926. COLLECTOR: Pinkes Khidekl. SOURCE: V.A. 30:17. COMMENTS: The main characters are not historic figures, but simply a pious couple, and the setting can comfortably be construed as twentieth-century Eastern Europe. This tale has also had a long literary history where the protagonists were historic figures. In the Yalkut Shimeoni, possibly the earliest printed source (earliest known edition: Salonica, 1521), this tale is told about the Tanna, R. Meir, and his pious, learned wife, Beruriah, born in the first quarter of the second century. See also Gaster (1924) p. 87, and story 147, p. 217. A Yiddish variant is also found in the morality book, Simkhes hanefesh (earliest known edition, 1707), with a happy ending.
63. TELLER: Tsivye Fridman, 50 years old, Yedvabne (Jedwabne), Poland, 1927. COLLECTOR: A. Kravyetski. SOURCE: V.A. 32:88. TALE TYPE: cf. 933. COMMENTS: Other Jewish variants to this tale are listed in Schwartzbaum (1968), pp. 28–29. Christians tell this as a legend about Pope Gregory (see Aarne and Thompson [1928], p. 140.)
64. TELLER: Brokhe di tshulotshnitse (Brokhe the stocking-maker), Roslov (Roslavl), U.S.S.R., 1928. COLLECTOR: A. Tshernyak. SOURCE: V.A. 167:3. TALE TYPE: 837. COMMENTS: Here is a close variant of this international tale type, and in view of the teller’s bilingual (Russian-Yiddish) rendering of the tale, it would not be surprising if she had learned this from a Russian neighbor. This tale and no. 56, “Set a Trap for Another” demonstrate the proverb, “Ver es grobt a grub far yenem, falt in im aleyn arayn” (Dig a pit for another and fall into it yourself). This one belongs to the genre of tales that explicitly illustrate a proverb. See B. Weinreich (1964) for a study of the Yiddish proverb.
65. TELLER: Anon., from Warsaw, Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: Cahan (1957), no. 40, pp. 55–56. TALE TYPE: cf. 880. COMMENTS: Such ballads are a popular narrative form for the themes of unrequited love and fidelity in marriage.
66. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Anon., from Rige (Riga), Latvia, n.d. SOURCE: Cahan (1938), no. 25, pp. 134–36.
67. COLLECTOR: Z. Okun (Shneyer), n.p., n.d. SOURCE: Shneyer (1939), pp. 26–27.
68. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Yekhiel Shapiro, n.p., n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 136:11. COMMENTS: Jews who lived in villages far from a congregation are frequently depicted in folklore and literature as unlearned boors. Visitors to such out-of-the-way villages were generally most welcome and treated hospitably.
69. COLLECTOR: Z. Okun (Shneyer), n.p., n.d. SOURCE: Shnever (1939), pp. 23–25.
70. TELLER: Bas Shava (no surname recorded), Korets (Korzec), Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Meyer Tshidner, who heard it from a 16-year-old yeshive student, who had heard it from the teller listed above. SOURCE: V.A. 26:5. COMMENTS: Other examples of narratives about treasures appear in Part 7 of this book.
71. TELLER: Khaye Tverski, 50 years old, of a rabbinic family, Shipkov (Szybkow), Poland. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan, 1930. SOURCE: Cahan (1931), no. 17, pp. 85–88; Cahan (1940), no. 28, pp. 119–22. TALE TYPE: 875. COMMENTS: This tale, along with “Hang the Moon on My Palace Roof,” “The Bishop and Moshke,” and “Why the Head Turns Gray before the Beard” (nos. 27, 75, and 101) are all about clever riddle-solvers—a very popular motif among East European Jews.
72. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Mikhl Zaydelov, Kamenets-Podolsk (Kamenets-Podolski), U.S.S.R., n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 159:14.
73. TELLER: Borekh Godlin, a bookbinder, born in Dubrovne (Dubrovno), U.S.S.R. COLLECTOR: Sh. Beylin, 1886. SOURCE: V.A. 159:30.
74. TELLE
R: Gitl Rokhes, Grodne (Grodno), Poland, 1927. COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski, Grodne. SOURCE: C.A. 26:37. COMMENTS: The name Khaim Yankl became a generic term for a hapless fellow, a shlimazl.
75. SOURCE: V.A. 28:13. TALE TYPE: 922. COMMENTS: This particular tale type has been studied more fully than many others. See Anderson (1921 and 1923) for his pioneering comparative analyses of its Jewish and Slavic variants. Anderson had collected as many as twenty-four Jewish variants of this tale (fourteen in Yiddish) from secondary-school students in Minsk between 1918 and 1920. Applying the historic-geographic method of analysis, he concluded that the international tale type (Aarne-Thompson) 922 was originally a Jewish tale that had spread from the Near East to Europe. See also Schwartzbaum (1968), pp. 115–16, and Thompson (1946), pp. 161ff. Many oral variants of this popular tale have been noted from the seventeenth-century Mayse-bukh onward. Note, however, that the Mayse-bukh version appears to be much closer to a German folktale rendition than to the modern oral Yiddish variants of the tale. Therefore this particular variant may have been an adaptation from the folklore of Gentile neighbors who had at an earlier period adapted it from a Jewish model and changed it to suit their culture. Other present-day Yiddish tales may likewise bear the imprimatur of the Jews’ long, diverse, multicultural experience. See Gaster (1934), no. 227, pp. 571–76.
76. COLLECTOR: S. Verite, n.p., n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 159:9. TALE TYPE: 1696.
77. COLLECTOR: S. Verite, n.p., n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 159:9. TALE TYPE: 1685. COMMENTS: Similar stories are told about Khoyzek, another such numbskull: see Joseph Margoshes (1929), pp. 57–61, and Ignaz Bernstein (1908), s.v. khoyzek.
78. TELLER: A pupil in a talmed-toyre (a tuition-free traditional Jewish elementary school maintained by the community for poor children) in Korets (Korzec), Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Meyer Tshidner. SOURCE: V.A. 26:4.
79. TELLER: Tsvi Moyshe (no surname recorded), Podbrodz (Podbrodzie), Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Khaim Lunyevski. SOURCE: V.A. 30:22. TALE TYPE: 785A. COMMENTS: See Schwartzbaum (1968), pp. 56 and 452; also Blum-Dobkin (1977), Holdes (1960), and Epshteyn (1938).
80. TELLER: Anon., from Loytsk, Poland, n.d. SOURCE: Cahan (1938), no. 16, p. 200. COMMENTS: Schwartzbaum (1968), p. 181, traces the tale to Talmudic-Midrashic sources. In one Yiddish variant (Segel, 1904), Elijah the Prophet has the role that Hershele plays in this version; see B. Weinreich (1957), pp. 279–80, for an English translation.
81. TELLER: Anon., from Kolonye Kamenevke, U.S.S.R., ca. 1932. COLLECTOR: T. S. Kantor, 1937, Kalinindorf, U.S.S.R. SOURCE: V.A. 163. COMMENTS: Numerous Yiddish chapbooks were devoted to Khelm tales, which circulated widely, both orally and in written form in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed, these well-loved Yiddish tales have also been collected and retold in more modern Hebrew, Polish, English, and German collections, as well as in American Yiddish primers. But these Yiddish tales have a longer history than the last two centuries. Paucker (1973) traces the earliest Yiddish version of the stories about the Schildberg fools to an Amsterdam edition, ca. 1700, which he found to be a reworking of P. P. Filtschut’s 1650 German edition. The German literary versions of this cycle of tales in turn became material for new literary editions in Hebrew and Yiddish. See Vaynig (1929); Schwartzbaum (1968), p. 537, s.v. Helm, especially pp. 189ff.
82. TELLER: Anon., from Kolonye Kamenevke, U.S.S.R., ca. 1932. COLLECTOR: T. S. Kantor, 1937, Kalinindorf, U.S.S.R. SOURCE: V.A. 163.
83. teller: Anon., from Kolonye Kamenevke, U.S.S.R., ca. 1932. COLLECTOR: T. S. Kantor, 1937, Kalinindorf, U.S.S.R. SOURCE: V.A. 163.
84. TELLER: Anon., from Kolonye Kamenevke, U.S.S.R., ca. 1932. COLLECTOR: T. S. Kantor, 1937, Kalinindorf, U.S.S.R. SOURCE: V.A. 163. TALE TYPE: 1326.
85. COLLECTOR: I. Olsvanger. SOURCE: Olsvanger (1931), no. 348, pp. 231–32. TALE TYPE: cf. 1335A. COMMENTS: Prilutski (1917), vol. II, p. 191, records a Yiddish variant in which, amusingly, the moon is captured in a barrel of borsht.
86. TELLER: Anon., from Lublin, Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: N. Prilutski. SOURCE: Prilutski (1917), vol. II, pp. 192–93.
87. TELLER: Anon., from Lublin, Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: N. Prilutski. SOURCE: Prilutski (1917), vol. II, pp. 197–98. TALE TYPE: 1243.
88. TELLER: Anon., from Kolonye Kamenevke, U.S.S.R., ca. 1932. COLLECTOR: T. S. Kantor, 1937, Kalinindorf, U.S.S.R. SOURCE: V.A. 163. TALE TYPE: 1281.
89. TELLER: Anon., from Kolonye Kamenevke, U.S.S.R., ca. 1932. COLLECTOR: T. S. Kantor, 1937, Kalinindorf, U.S.S.R. SOURCE: V.A. 163.
90. TELLER: Anon., from Galicia (southern Poland), n.d. COLLECTOR: Benyomin Volf Segel (pen name of B. V. Shiper). SOURCE: Segel (1892), p. 29.
91. COLLECTOR: Y.-Kh. Ravnitski, n.d. SOURCE: Ravnitski (1932), no. 400, pp. 199–200.
92. COLLECTOR: I. Olsvanger, n.d. SOURCE: Olsvanger (1947), p. 117.
93. TELLER: A member of the Ozet collective farm, Stalindorf, U.S.S.R., 1937. COLLECTOR: A student in the Kalinindorfer pedshul (Kalinindorf School for Teachers), U.S.S.R. SOURCE: V.A. 163:11. TALE TYPE: 1 200.
94. TELLER: Moyshe Kador, Warsaw, Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Shmuel Lehman. SOURCE: Prilutski and Lehman (1933), no. 6, pp. 382–84.
95. TELLER: Moyshe Gross, father of collector, Kolemey (Kolomyja), Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Naftoli Gross, who writes that his father often told Froyim Greydinger stories to the children at bedtime. SOURCE: Gross (1955), pp. 9 and 196–97. TALE TYPE: 1548. COMMENTS: Froyim’s last name is sometimes given as Greydiger. Schwartzbaum (1968), pp. 176–77, discusses variants of this tale.
96. TELLER: B. Brukelman, who heard it in the yeshive of Novograd-Vilenske (Novograd-Volynski), U.S.S.R. COLLECTOR: A. Litwin. SOURCE: Yidisher folklor, vol. I, p. 17.
97. TELLER: Moyshe Sifit, Warsaw, Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Shmuel Lehman. SOURCE: Vanvild (1923), p. 75. TALE TYPE: cf. 1540. COMMENTS: This is an example of a tale that has been adapted to fit different heroes and settings. In one Yiddish variant (e.g., C.A. 26:29) the protagonist is a demobilized soldier who returns home after twenty-five years of serving Czar Nicolas I; in another (Cahan 1938, p. 202) the wag Froyim Greydinger teaches a lesson to a stingy villager.
98. TELLER: Pinkhes Bukhman, a 30-year-old worker, heard this tale from his father, who heard it from the local prankster (called a kopoytser—(lit., “head treasure”) in Komarne (Komarno), Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: Cahan (1931), no. 19, pp. 93–94; Cahan (1940). no. 30, pp. 127–28. TALE TYPE: 1287. COMMENTS: This tale is a comment on the “second-class citizenship” of women and points up their dissatisfaction with it. It is fascinating that the teller of this international tale type made it culturally specific by centering it around the motif of the prayer quorum.
99. TELLER/COLLECTOR: Khaim Sheskin, Grodne (Grodno), Poland, n.d. To this day Sheskin continues collecting Yiddish folklore and mailing his collections to YIVO. Sheskin, who now lives in New York, has possibly the longest continuous history of dedicated folklore collecting for YIVO. SOURCE: Cahan (1938), no. 13, p. 199.
100. TELLER: Anon., from Dunilovitsh (Dunilowicze), Poland, n.d. SOURCE: Cahan (1938), no. c, p. 197.
101. TELLER: Rokhl Rabin (b. 1901), Orinyen (Orinin), U.S.S.R. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: Cahan (1931), no. 23, pp. 120–24; Cahan (1940), no. 34, pp. 151–54.
102. TELLER: Peshe Rive Sher (b. 1864), Kozlovitsh (Kozlovich/Kozlovshch), U.S.S.R., heard her mother tell the tale, n.d. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: Cahan (1931), no. 14, pp. 64–66; Cahan (1940), no. 25, pp. 99–101.
103. COLLECTOR: I. Olsvanger, n.d. SOURCE: Olsvanger (1931), no. 364, p. 259. COMMENTS: Like tale no. 98, “The Ten Women,” this story also points to women’s dissatisfaction with their limited role in the religious sphere. It ends on a somewhat more optimistic note: women keep hoping that this will change with Skotsl’s return.
104. TELLER: Moyshe Zimnik, Belz (Balti/Beltsy), Rumania, who heard it from his grandfather, n.d. COLLECTOR: Y.-L. Cahan. SOURCE: Cahan (1931), no. 29, pp. 148–51; Cahan (1940), no. 40, pp. 178–81. TALE TYPE: 151 and 1159.
105. T
ELLER: Mikhoel Filrayz, Warsaw, Poland, n.d. COLLECTOR: Shmuel Lehman. SOURCE: Prilutski and Lehman (1933), no. pp. 355–60.
106. TELLER: V. Ayzenberg, who heard this tale in Eastern Europe before 1920, mailed it to Litwin from New York, COLLECTOR: A. Litwin. SOURCE: L.A. 86a:6.
107. TELLER: Toyvye Brand, 18 or 20 years old, Torne (Tarnow), Poland, 1930. COLLECTOR: Noyekh Falman. SOURCE: V.A. 26:6. COMMENTS: The rebbe in this tale is most likely Rebbe Elimeylekh of Lizhensk (d. 1787).
108. TELLER: Sh. Horenshteyn, Yanushpol (Ivanopol), U.S.S.R., n.d. COLLECTOR: Shmuel Rubinshteyn. SOURCE: Rubinshteyn (1938), pp. 106–108. COMMENTS: See Ben-Amos and Mintz (1970) and Mintz (1968) for additional legends about the Baal Shem Tov in English translation.
109. TELLER: Azriel Klaynor, a Hasid of the Stolin Rebbe, Horkhov (Horochow), Poland, 1928. COLLECTOR: B. Oksman, Poland. SOURCE: V.A. 32:37. COMMENTS: Rebbe Yisroel (1868–1923), the son of R. Asher of Stolin, became rebbe at the age of four.
110. TELLER/COLLECTOR: R. Gavriyel, Warsaw, Poland, n.d. SOURCE: V.A. 32:40. COMMENTS: The hero of this legend is probably R. Yankev Yoysef (d. 1791) of Ostrovets (Ostrowiec), Poland.
111. COLLECTOR: A. Rekhtman, member of An-ski Expedition. SOURCE: Rekhtman (1958), pp. 259–61. COMMENTS: Shneyer Zalmen (1745–1813) of Lyadi (Lvady), U.S.S.R., was the founder of Habad Hasidism, Habad being an acronym for khokhme (wisdom), bine (understanding), and daas (knowledge). See tale no. 175, “The Bridge Hobgoblin,” for another story about this rebbe.
112. TELLER: E. Zilberman, Ostrov (Ostrów), Poland, 1929. SOURCE: V.A. 32:66.
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