The Hebrew Folktale in Premode Morality Literature (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology)

by: Vered Tohar (author) (Author)

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Publication Date: 14 Nov. 2023

Language: English

Print Length: 176 pages

ISBN-10: 0814347045

ISBN-13: 9780814347041

Book Description

This pioneering exploration shows that in the early mode world, printed works on morality and ethics served as an important conveyor of classic Jewish folktales and as an important channel of leisure reading in premode Jewish culture. Utilizing a corpus of over 400 Musar tales, author Vered Tohar carefully opens a path to understand the thematic and poetic features of those tales. This innovative reframing of early mode Musar texts reveals a new history of Jewish folklore and emphasizes the continuity of Hebrew literature from medieval to mode era. Tohar classifies these stories, which she calls "the Musar folktales," into four genres adapted from classic poetic studies:tragedy, comedy, parable or social exemplum, and theological allegory. As parables of vice and virtue, the works featured here were originally printed and circulated in early mode Jewish communities, and each contained themes of love and hate, good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, or life and death. Beyond their traditional function of ethical and moral edification, Tohar advances the Musar texts as an archive of Hebrew tales and their ideological traditions. This innovative reframing of early mode Musar texts reveals a new history of Jewish folklore and a new way to read those texts.