Introduction by Peninnah Schram THIS COLLECTION OF JEWISH FOLKTALES REVEALS MANY FACETS OF the Jewish people Throughout Jewish history Jews developed an oral expertise in their learning of Torah and Talmud In addition Jews honed necessary verbal skills in their business dealings and relationships in countries with Arabic or Christian rulers as well as their non Jewish neighbors These skills included all types of mental and verbal abilities such as clever and resourceful reasoning debating quick wit plays on words and tricky responses in tight situations In turn this virtuoso verbal mastery has determined the types of folktales that have been passed down through the generations But the wit has always been applied with wisdom never for deception or cleverness for its own sake When the stories strike a chord within us often because of surprise endings the use of metaphors vivid language exaggeration fantastic characters heroes and heroines challenging problems and other rhetorical devices they offer us this wisdom or khokhma and remain with us for easy retrieval when needed In that way when Jews have needed that wisdom the tales have been there in our well of wisdom to draw from These humorous stories do not always create a laughing
response on the part of the reader or listener They are not always ha ha funny Instead of a burst of out loud laughter the response may be more of an inner aha or ah or just a smile of recognition or a nod of the head These kinds of stories offer us a sense of perspective They might even lift a cloud from our hearts They restore hope and faith in God They put us on the right path Teaching always teaching And that is what the reteller Sheldon Oberman had intended In addition to the stories brief Jewish historical notes are interwoven throughout the book to help put the stories into a context The sequence of the stories is arranged chronologically through history as much as possible Some stories take place during a specific historical time while others might have been told during that time period However all of the stories are part of the Jewish repertoire The book begins with the biblical characters Solomon and Elijah who become transformed in folktales into two of the most important and popular folklore heroes in Jewish oral tradition Then there are stories associated with the Talmudic period including some with non Jewish heroes who actually appear in Jewish folklore such as Emperor Antoninus and Alexander the Great The next series of stories takes place after the Roman period and into the medieval centuries And finally there are many folktales that bring us to more contemporary times when Jews traveled to different countries throughout the world In this collection there are examples of many genres of stories such as legends of King Solomon the first four tales religious tales Elijah tales Enough and Golden Plates Who
with Rabbi Akiva and Shepherd's Pipe with the Baal Shem Tov medieval fables such as The Wisdom of a Bird The Wound That Did Not Heal The Mouse that Went Looking for a Husband and Teaching a Wolf wisdom tales The Best Merchandise and Never Afraid Again anecdotal tales Sharp as a Diamond and The Crowded House trickster tales Juha's Nail and What His Father Did Chelm fool stories A Lot of Sense and Wrong Kind of a Horse holy fool tale A Holy Fool riddle stories The Seven Questions of Alexander the Great and The Riddling Woman and more While many of these stories are associated only with a specific person or period within Jewish folklore one can also find versions of the same story told with a different hero Such is the case with The Coachman's Answer which is most often told with the Dubner Maggid and his coachman But there are versions found elsewhere with a different rabbi Or else the time period gets changed into more modern times as in these versions of The Crowded House and Never Afraid Again As is the case with many Jewish folktales variants are also found in world folklore Because of the fluid folklore process many tales in the Jewish oral tradition resemble tales in universal folklore While many of the tales originated in Jewish sources Torah Talmud Rabbinic tales and so on many became adapted into the folktales of other cultures and other religions The obverse is also true Many folktales that stem from other cultures and religions were transformed into Jewish stories as long as the themes values and ethical lessons in those stories also resonated
in Judaism In other words just changing the names of the characters to Jewish names will not create a Jewish version of any story without the main criteria noted above Since Jews have lived in most parts of the world there has always been a strong influence of the dominant culture on the Jews In many ways Jews are chameleon like in that there is a great deal of assimilation or melding of foods names clothing folkways and folklore from the particular culture in which they are living However the normative Jewish religion has always remained true to its core beliefs Thus there were strong cross cultural contacts for example with the Arabic culture in Spain and throughout the Middle Eastern countries especially in the realm of folkways folktales and folksongs In the telling and retelling of the adapted stories the tales began to mirror the cultural and religious contexts of the storytellers and soon became the carriers of Jewish values and traditions For example in earlier Jewish fables many of which were translated and adapted from Indian Roman and Greek sources the animals were not only endowed with human personalities but also spoke wisely about Torah quoting biblical and Talmudic passages As a further example there are several stories in this collection that embody a similar theme that especially resonates in Judaism that a person should be happy or satisfied with who he is and with what he has The Mouse That Went Looking for a Husband The Coachman's Answer The Crowded House and What Do You Want to Be There is always a compelling reason why a certain
