by
SEYMOUR LEVITAN
Translator and Editor
The
Chelm stories that
John Lazarus retells
are one type of Yiddish
tale in an abundance
of folktales that gathered
and evolved over the
centuries. As Beatrice
Silverman Weinreich
says in her collection
Yiddish
Folktales,
this body
of folklore “offers
us a privileged entry
into a vibrant and
vital community”– the
world of Eastern European
Jews,
“
some seven million
people by 1939”,
as Weinreich points
out, living from the
Baltic to the Black
Sea, from Poland
in the west to Russia
in the east, united
by religion, by the
use of Hebrew and Aramaic
for prayers and religious
study, and by Yiddish
as the language of
daily life.
A
great variety of Jewish
folktales accumulated
from Talmudic times
onward: there are
legends
about Elijah the
prophet and other biblical
figures; demon tales
and tales of possession
by dibbukim; tales
of golems, clay figures
animated by sacred
formulas; of “the
red Jews”, survivors
of the Lost Tribes
living beyond the legendary
River
Sambatyon; of lamed
vavniks, the thrity-six
righteous men whose
goodness sustains the
world; wonder tales
of
Hassidic rebbes, and
comic and sentimental
tales.
Folklorists
trace the Chelm stories
to German
folktales about
the fools of Schildberg.
These stories,
published
in a
German literary version
in 1650, were retold
and reworked in Yiddish
versions. As Chelm
tales, they circulated
widely orally and in
written form in the
19th and 20th centuries.
The
Chelm tales tend
to follow a predictable
pattern. Faced
with a problem,
the Council
of Chelm sits in
deliberation “
seven days and seven
nights”. They
either theorize the
problem away or solve
it by hitting on an
apparently simple
manoeuvre that is impossible
in practice. A nearby
mountain is casting
too long a shadow.
What can be done? The
wise men of Chelm determine
that the mountain has
to be pushed back.
They remove their coats
and push with all
their might, and while
their backs are turned,
their coats are stolen.
When they discover
that their coats are
gone,
they reason thus: If
our coats are out of
sight, we must have
pushed the mountain
quite a distance.
In
the introduction to
A
Treasury of Yiddish
Stories, Irving
Howe
and Eliezer Greenberg
point out that “Jewish
humor is overwhelmingly
social”. For
them, the Chelm stories
are a way of mocking “the
excessive intellectuality
of the Talmudic mind”.
They see these tales
as an example of Jewish
humour turned inward
satirically. Of course,
in Village of Idiots
John Lazarus finds
a completely different
kind of meaning in
the Chelm stories.
He uses Chelm
as an alternative to
the world of practical
good sense and rational
self-preservation.
And, in fact, his admirable
fools
are something like
the hapless, self-deluded
heroes of a number
of classic works of
Yiddish literature. |
|
intrudes,
the world of Tsarist
power. The heroes
are abducted into the
imperial army, and there
they speak out, very
much like the sages of
Lazarus’s play. “We
would like to inform
you,” says Benjamin
at his court martial
trial,, “that we
don’t know anything
about waging war, we
never did know and we
never want to know. We
are married men and our
thoughts are devoted
to other things.” In
the end they are laughed
out of the army.
Another
hapless hero is Sholem
Aleichem’s Menachem
Mendl, forever impractical
and hopeful, the luftmentsh
living on air, trying
to make a go of one occupation
after another and encountering
adversity, mishap and
catastrophe every time.
He writes home to his
wife Sheyne Sheyndl,
the practical one of
the pair, in a series
of fictional letters
published over the course
of twenty years and gathered
into an epistolary novel
a few years before the
First World War. Menachem
Mendl lives in Tsarist
Russia in a time of harsh
anti-semitism and official
restrictions against
Jews, including severe
economic restrictions,
but he is inherently
hopeful. He is berated
for his impracticality
by Sheyne Sheyndl, forever
trying to bring him down
to earth, but he persists
in his optimism.
A
third classic schlemiel
story is Isaac Bashevis
Singer’s “Gimpel
the Fool”, written
after World War II and
brilliantly translated
into English by Saul
Bellow.
A
third classic schlemiel
story is Isaac Bashevis
Singer’s “Gimpel
the Fool”, written
after World War II and
brilliantly
translated into English
by Saul Bellow. An
entire community unites
to manipulate
and humiliate Gimpel,
but in order to preserve
his innocence and his
belief in goodness,
he resists hatred and
violence
and the temptation
to take revenge. And
in
the end, he rejects
the belief in what is
ordinarily
considered reality. “No
doubt”, he says.”the
world is entirely an
imaginary world, but
it is only once removed
from the true world.” Benjamin
III, Menachem Mendl
and Gimpel are discussed
at length in Ruth R.
Wisse’s pioneering,
integrative study,
The Schlemiel As Modern
Hero.
She observes of Gimpel, “As
the story progresses,
(his) decision to remain
gullible becomes ever
more deliberate.” He
is, if you care to
see it that way, the
admirable,
self-deluded fool.
Which
brings us back to Village
of Idiots. Chelm, as
John Lazarus presents
it, is a place of admirable,
self-deluded fools who
reject ordinary reality
in order to protect their
innocence and their belief
in goodness. Lazarus
retells many of the traditional
Chelm stories pretty
much as you would find
them in the collections
and anthologies – Barreling
the Moon, Knocking on
the Shutters, Looking
for a Lost Ruble, Protecting
the New Fallen Snow,
Leaving for Warsaw and
Finding Yourself in Chelm – but
in the play all these
stories illustrate resourceful
innocence. If only all
the world did as Chelm
does. As Feyvel declares, “If
other men were like Chelmniks,
we wouldn’t have
to defend ourselves in
the first place.” Still
and all, we are left
at the end with questions
that come from a more
prosaic state of mind:
is this benign wonderland
innocent or suicidal,
ethically admirable or
passive and cowardly? |
