Folktales of the Jews

by Ben-Amos, Dan

• ISBN13: 9780827608290
• ISBN10: 0827608292
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-30
• Publisher: Jewish Pubn Society

Summary

One of only 28 titles chosen in 2007 by The Association of University Press Publishers as "The Best of the Best: Books You Should Know About." The first volume in a new literary landmark; Tales from the Sephardic Dispersion begins the most important collection of Jewish folktales ever published. It is the first volume in Folktales of the Jews, the five-volume series to be released over the next several years, in the tradition of Louis Ginzberg's classic, Legends of the Jews. The 71 tales here and the others in this series have been selected from the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA), named in Honor of Dov Noy, at The University of Haifa, a treasure house of Jewish lore that has remained largely unavailable to the entire world until now. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the IFA has collected more than 20,000 tales from newly arrived immigrants, long-lost stories shared by their families from around the world. The tales come from the major ethno-linguistic communities of the Jewish world and are representative of a wide variety of subjects and motifs, especially rich in Jewish content and context. Each of the tales is accompanied by in-depth commentary that explains the tale's cultural, historical, and literary background and its similarity to other tales in the IFA collection, and extensive scholarly notes. There is also an introduction that describes the Sephardic culture and its folk narrative tradition, a world map of the areas covered, illustrations, biographies of the collectors and narrators, tale type and motif indexes, a subject index, and a comprehensive bibliography. Until the establishment of the IFA, we had had only limited access to the wide range of Jewish folk narratives. Even in Israel, the gathering place of the most wide-ranging cross-section of world Jewry, these folktales have remained largely unknown. Many of the communities no longer exist as cohesive societies in their representative lands; the Holocaust, migration, and changes in living styles have made the continuation of these tales impossible. This volume and the others to come will be monuments to a rich but vanishing oral tradition.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction to Folktales of the Jews	p. xv
Introduction to Volume 1	p. xxvii
A Note on the Commentaries	p. xli
Legends
The Tenth for the Minyan (IFA 16408)
The Wedding Attended by the Patriarchs (IFA 6471)
Hebron Purim (IFA 17063)
The Miracle of the Torah Scrolls (IFA 15346)
The Adventures of Raphael Meyuhas (IFA 15348)
A Story about My Great-Grandfather (IFA 8807)
The Sanctification of God's Name (IFA 8419)
"Our Teacher Moses" and the King of Spain (IFA 13110)
Maimonides and the Study of Medicine (IFA 4905)
Why Maimonides Is Buried in Tiberias (IFA 549)
The Merchant and Rabbi Meir Ba'al ha-Nes (IFA 8391)
The Coin from the Collection Box of Rabbi Meir Ba'al ha-Nes (IFA 9158)
Sol Hachuel of Tangier (IFA 14964)
The Awesome Tale of Rabbi Kalonymos (IFA 16405)
A Blood Libel in Jerusalem (IFA 15347)
The Ba'al Shem Tov and the Sorcerer (IFA 863)
On Passover (IFA 7000)
Hakham Eliyahu Is Born through the Special Virtues of the Cave of the Prophet Elijah (IFA 2830)
The Two Orphans of Istanbul (IFA 17068)
Three Hairs from Elijah's Beard (IFA 2420)
The Man Who Unintentionally Made His Fortune from the Devil (IFA 2605)
The Gilgul (IFA 2634)
The Prince's Gilgul (IFA 2644)
A Letter from Morocco to the Western Wall (IFA 556)
Rabbi Jacob the Storyteller; or the Power of Repentance (IFA 2623)
The Immigration Pangs of Rabbi Chilibon Franco of Rhodes (IFA 13405)
How the New Immigrant Doychon Torres Got Rid of the Cheese He Brought with Him without a Kashrut Certificate (IFA 13404)
Moral Tales
God Loves the Heart (IFA 10089)
The Honest Merchant (IFA 6295)
The Rich Man Who Avoided Giving Charity but Later Mended His Ways (IFA 2604)
The Pregnant King (IFA 14043)
The Rich Man and His Two Sons (IFA 4441)
Folktales
Noah's Daughter (IFA 660)
The Angel Who Descended to Put the World in Order (IFA 19910)
Satan's Son (IFA 16395)
The Astrologer-King and the Rabbi (IFA 10086)
A Bear Makes a Poor Musician Rich but Is Insulted by the Musician's Wife (IFA 1709)
An Old Man's Advice Makes a Poor Man Rich (IFA 3576)
Half a Friend (IFA 16403)
The Man Who Knew All about Animals, Diamonds, and People's Character (IFA 6402)
This, Too, Shall Pass (IFA 4425)
Letters from the Angel of Death (IFA 9704)
There Is No Escaping Heaven's Decree (IFA 10084)
What Heaven Ordains Must Surely Take Place (IFA 6591)
The Rabbi's Son and the King's Daughter (IFA 4735)
The King's Wise Daughter (IFA 12549)
The Trained Cat and the Rabbi's Wise Daughter (IFA 7602)
The Rabbi's Son and the Priest (IFA 10085)
King Abdul-Aziz, the Jewish Builder, and the Wicked Painter (IFA 3977)
The Miracle of Tu b'Shevat (IFA 10103)
The Old Woman and the Wind (IFA 10101)
King Solomon's Judgment (IFA 11093)
Anything to Find Favor with a Woman (IFA 2254)
King Solomon, His Ethiopian Wife, and Her Lover (IFA 2666)
The Miser Mohel and the Demon (IFA 9182)
The Miraculous Circumcision (IFA 10087)
The Disciples' Envy of the Rabbi's Son (IFA 4904)
Humorous Tales
The Story of the Baklava (IFA 13)
A Porter Saves Maimonides' Life (IFA 5503)
Blinder Than a Blind Man (IFA 12727)
A General Note on the Tales of Djuha
Djuha Helps His Mother (IFA 12729)
Djuha's Face (IFA 12548)
Why Djuha Never Got Married (IFA 12726)
Djuha Plays Dead (IFA 12551)
Camel Seeds (IFA 12724)
Djuha Counts the Donkeys (IFA 12552)
Djuha and the Mules (IFA 8509)
A Recipe for Fish (IFA 12716)
A Fair Division (IFA 9240)
A Bad Man's Desserts (IFA 332)
The Rabbi and the Priest (IFA 14039)
Abbreviations	p. 593
Narrators	p. 596
Collectors	p. 604
Bibliography	p. 610
Motif Indexes	p. 676
Tale Type Indexes	p. 703
General Index	p. 716
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