The Jewish Fairy Tale

Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend offers the following definition for folklore: “Folklore, or popular knowledge, is the accumulated store of what mankind has experienced, learned, and practiced across the ages as popular and traditional knowledge as distinguished from so-called scientific knowledge.”  The lore that is passed down from generation to generation contains all of the cumulative knowledge that the Jews’ ancestors could carry in their minds and in their hearts.  From the Israel Folklore Archives we learn:

Traditional ways of behaving, the social standards of a group, religious beliefs, social obligations, owe much of their power to their folkloristic background.  The fact that many of these traditions have been taught in the form of tales, fables and animal stories, is part of the reason why we remember them so well.  For these folktales have the power and simplicity of art.  Within the framework of an amusing and interesting story, they aim to teach and transfer lasting values.

The most lasting of the tales are those that grab us, stir our imaginations, thus planting themselves in our subconscious.  They do not achieve such immortality by recounting the details of our everyday lives;  rather, they use fantasy and enchantment, humor and magic to imprint themselves upon our communities.  As Shenhar points out,  “Folk society loves to hear and tell matters beyond the grasp of reason.  This is why precisely those stories which contain supernatural motifs are most readily accepted by society and thus remain alive, while realistic parallels are rejected and fail to be transmitted.”

In particular, then, the fairy tale—which by its very definition is rich in the magic and other facets of the supernatural—would easily capture a community’s attention.  However, to fit the technical definition of a fairy tale—in the universal sense—the story must have more to offer than simple magic.  Classically, the fairy tale takes place in a “never-never land where all kinds of supernatural events occur.”  The characters are left unnamed or have very stock names and the intention of the story is that it be fabulous beyond reality.  Yassif agrees: “The original definition of the magic fairy tale is a tale that takes place out of time and in no specific location, is dense with magic motifs, and is not meant to be believed.”  

Within the Jewish community, folklore and fairy tales have had a slightly different history because of some of the more unique realities that the community has faced.  For example, as Patai explains:

The Jews were throughout their long history a literate people who developed at an early date the habit of committing to writing whatever they regarded as important in their oral traditions.  As a result, the history of Jewish folklore is characterized, in each epoch, by a continuous process of lifting out considerable bodies of folklore from the stream of oral tradition and freezing them in written form.

The first logical conclusion from this is that the corpus of Jewish folklore is more expansive than one might think from a community so small.  Plus, Jewish folklore found its way to written form very early on.  In time, the output of written folklore rose with the onset of the printing press;  nevertheless the mass of recorded Jewish folklore that predated that revolutionizing event is astounding.  It is, therefore, jarring to find in Funk and Wagnalls the following statement: “Modern Semitic folklore, including especially that of the Arabs and Jews, has been excluded [from this periodical], on the grounds that so much of it is due to direct borrowings from other peoples and can therefore not be described as distinctive.”  This is thoroughly unwarranted of Gaster.  All communities borrow folk customs and lore.  What makes Jewish folklore distinctive is that despite the amount of borrowing, there remains to this day a consistent set of elements that set it apart as Jewish—and this, despite difference in geography, socio-economic status, or, even, language.  Part of the reality of Jewish folklore is that although the Jewish community would throughout history absorb ingredients from non-Jewish sources, as soon as the community had accepted a particular trait or story or practice, it would be transmuted until it was Jewish.  Perhaps a transformation might begin with minor changes that cluster “around ‘Judaized’ realia which replace the original ones,” as Shenhar proposes;  perhaps the transformation would change the very heart of the story or practice.  Soon enough, the non-Jewish beginnings would be forgotten and it would be written into the recipe of Jewish life.  Noy delineates these four elements that “characterize the uniquely Jewish aspects of the Jewish folktale.”

The Time

Jewish folklore connects to the Jewish year cycle the Jewish life cycle, or both.  This connection may be very direct (the story might take place on Yom Kippur or at a wedding) or it may be more subtle.  (The story might connect to a season because of a biblical verse that is associated with that season.)  Nahmad adds historical time to this element, suggesting that Jewish stories, “are set against a historical background reflecting the traditions of the Jews.”  We might therefore expect to find folklore specifically connected to distinctly Jewish eras (such as during the united monarchy, the exile, or the birth of Hassidism).  Often times, the connection between story and time is thematic.  Around Hanukah, Jews would tell stories about light, and during Passover stories about freedom abound.  For the fairy tales in the Talmud, time holds real relevance;  for example, in the story of “R. Joshua and the Witch,” all of the action is leading to the birth of R. Judah b. Batera.  The historical background is vital to the story of “King Solomon and the King of the Demons,” since the focal point of the story is the building of the Temple.

The Place

Because Jewish stories were told in the synagogue, at home and in class, they picked up the themes common to these places: rabbis, prayer, family, Shabbat, study, and learning.  These venues were also the primary settings for the tales that were told.  If a character was going on a long journey, he either began or ended up at home;  furthermore, the time away from the home or the academy or the synagogue highlights the character’s lack of safety or assurance or direction.  And so we find, in “David and the Giant Yishbi B’nov,” a hero who has lost his way.  David is dreadfully far from home and in danger.  In the “The Demon in the Study Hall” the setting indicates to the listener the wisdom and piety that will follow in the story.

The Acting Characters

As Nahmad puts it, “What makes [Jewish folklore] Jewish is their cast of characters.”  There are two points to consider with regard to the characters.  First of all, the heroes of Jewish folktales are Jews.  Whether they are biblical characters, talmudic sages or ploni ben ploni, they are always endowed with a Jewish identity.  Second of all, the characters in Jewish folklore, for the most part, behave like Jews.  Even when a character has specifically been labeled a non-Jew for the sake of the story, the character behaves within the cultural milieu of the Jewish community.  In “Solomon, the Beggar King,” not only do we find the popular character of King Solomon at the center of the tale but we find a Judaized demon, Ashmedai.  In “Shimon ben Shetah and the Witches of Ashkelon,” the hero is a well-known mishnaic rabbi, R. Shimon ben Shetah;  furthermore, there is an ongoing debate as to whether the witches of Ashkelon were gentiles or possibly disenfranchised Jewish women.

The Message

Not common in universal fairy tales, “possibly the most characteristically Jewish element of the folktale is the introduction of a moral or lesson,” Noy explains.  Nahmad agrees that at the center of Jewish folklore is “strong ethical emphasis and content…  Used to point to a lesson or give moral instruction, example and inspiration.”  This is not to say that one could not derive lessons from universal fairytales;  only that the main focus of the fairytale is not the lesson or the moral or the ethical imperative—it is the entertainment and the enchantment.  Still, because of the magical component inherent in the genre of fairytale, the stage is set for a battle between good and evil.  As Schwartz points out, this “is fully compatible with the Jewish view of the essential condition of this world, where faith in God can defeat the evil impulse.”  It is not surprising, then, that Jewish storytellers throughout the ages have taken story forms from their neighbors and simply by making them, as Nahmad illustrates, “to conform to the spirit of Judaism, to the idea of monotheism and the omnipotence of the Creator” and have made the stories as well as the forms their own.  Noy sums it up well:

Whereas the universal folktale appeals to the present psychological state of the listener, delighting him with a pat resolution in a formulistic happy ending, the Jewish folktale is future-oriented, urging the listener to adopt an ideal or goal as yet unrealized, to improve his ways and change his attitudes.

In “Yannai and the Innkeeper,” the hope is that every listener understands the humiliation that comes with playing with magic.  “This Too, is for Good” has a more positive lesson that hope and absolute faith in the divine choreography will bring about blessings in abundance.

Ultimately, the Jewish fairy tale is based on the universal fairy tale.  It is rooted in enchantment and facets of the supernatural—in its own way, it is both timeless and placeless—and, although sometimes it is based on true events, the version that is woven for the audience always carries with it an element of the fantastic.  Yassif adds that the hero triumphs over tasks meant to end in his failure, faces an enemy (preferably demonic), prevails, and is honored in the end.  But for many Jewish fairy tales, timelessness and placelessness are relative, for the story must have some clear connection to tradition (whether that be through the time, place, or characters) and it must be edifying.  More often than not, Shenhar notes, “The main plot is linked with a biblical verse and its traditional homiletic interpretations.”

This is especially true in the folklore and fairy tales of the Talmud and Mishnah.  Explains Jason, “Folk tales are here used as exempla in sermons and in discussions on legal or theological matters.”  According to Schwartz, the stories found here “remain a unique form, functioning as legendary tales and tales of the fantastic at the same time….  The fusion of the uniquely Jewish aggadic tale and the universal fairy tale can be seen to take place.”  He continues to explain that this fusion between the Jewish sacred legend and the universal fairy tale is “conditioned by the biblical and postbiblical tradition in which Divine Providence takes the place of magical devices and resolutions and the moral element is preeminent.”  And so we end up with a fusion genre—part sacred legend but mostly fairy tale, part magical but very moral, and, throughout it al,: interdependent on God.