Jewish folklore

Jewish folklore are legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales, stories, tall tales, and customs that are the traditions of Judaism. Folktales are characterized by the presence of unusual personages, by the sudden transformation of men into beasts and vice versa, or by other unnatural incidents. A number of aggadic stories bear folktale characteristics, especially those relating to Og, King of Bashan, which have the same exaggerations as have the lügenmärchen of modern German folktales.^[1]

Middle Ages[edit]

There is considerable evidence of Jewish people bringing and helping the spread of Eastern folktales in Europe.^[2] Besides these tales from foreign sources, Jews either collected or composed others which were told throughout the European ghettos, and were collected in Yiddish in the "Maasebücher".^[2] Numbers of the folktales contained in these collections were also published separately.^[3] It is, however, difficult to call many of them folktales in the sense given above, since nothing fairy-like or supernormal occurs in them.^[2]

^[6] by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, is an original synthesis of a vast amount of aggadah from the Mishnah, the two Talmuds and Midrash. Ginzberg had an encyclopedic knowledge of all rabbinic literature, and his masterwork included a massive array of aggadot. However he did not create an anthology which showed these aggadot distinctly. Rather, he paraphrased them and rewrote them into one continuous narrative that covered five volumes, followed by two volumes of footnotes that give specific sources.

The Legends of the Jews

The is a compilation of the aggadic material in the Babylonian Talmud together with commentary.

Ein Yaakov

Sefer Ha-Aggadah, "The Book of Legends" is a classic compilation of aggadah from the Mishnah, the two Talmuds and the Midrash literature. It was edited by and Yehoshua Hana Rawnitzki. Bialik and Ravnitzky worked to compile a comprehensive and representative overview of aggadah; they spent three years compiling their work. When they found the same aggadah in multiple versions, from multiple sources, they usually selected the later form, the one found in the Babylonian Talmud. However they also presented a great some aggadot sequentially, giving the early form from the Jerusalem Talmud, and later versions from the Babylonian Talmud, and from a classic midrash compilation. In each case each every aggadah is given with its original source. In their original edition, they translated the Aramaic aggadot into modern Hebrew. Sefer Ha-Aggadah was first published in 1908–11 in Odessa, Russia, then reprinted numerous times in Israel. In 1992 it was translated into English as "The Book of Legends", by William G, Braude.

Hayim Nahman Bialik

Mimekor Yisrael, by . Berdyczewski was interested in compiling the folklore and legends of the Jewish people, from the earliest times up until the dawn of the modern era. His collection included a large array of aggadot, although they were limited to those he considered within the domain of folklore.

Micha Josef (bin Gorion) Berdyczewski

Jewish mythology

a Jewish legend

Valley of the ants

[in German] (1965). "Types of Jewish-Oriental Oral Tales". Fabula. 7: 115–224. doi:10.1515/fabl.1965.7.1.115. S2CID 162323205.

Jason, Heda

Jason, Heda (1990). "Study of Israelite and Jewish Oral and Folk Literature: Problems and Issues". . 49 (1): 69–108. doi:10.2307/1177950. JSTOR 1177950. Accessed May 18, 2021.

Asian Folklore Studies

Noy, Dov (1961). "The First Thousand Folktales in the Israel Folktale Archives". Fabula. 4 (1): 99–110. :10.1515/fabl.1961.4.1.99. S2CID 162290121.