How the Wise Men Got to Chelm: The Life and Times of a Yiddish Folk Tradition

Bernuth, director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides a detailed and comprehensive examination of the evolution of some of the best-known Yiddish folk stories—those revolving around the comically foolish men of the town of Chelm—that places those tales in historical and cultural context. She goes back centuries, looking at traditions of stories of fools as early as the late Middle Ages, and how they came to be incorporated in European Jewish culture. Her cogent analysis carries through to the present day and to non-European milieus; Woody Allen parodied the Chelm stories in a 1970 comic essay for the New Yorker, and a current blog, Chelm-on-the-Med, collects absurd soft news stories about Israel. The existence of that blog, evidence of what the author terms Chelm’s “major and still-unexplored role in Israeli popular culture and literature,” is but one of the eye-openers for readers who enjoy the stories of inept Jews who try to trap moonlight in a barrel. There are plenty of other revelations as well, including a close study of how the stories evolved between the world wars. (Oct.)