Physical Description

Detail Description

116 short story paradoies in Yiddish. Parody was used to comment on a wide variety of themes connected to Jewish life, including Hasidism, socialism, Zionism, and socioeconomic issues. The majority of Hebrew and Yiddish parodies produced in Eastern Europe were imitative, in that they borrowed structures and language from well-known texts in order to comment on or mock unrelated topics, and did not attack the original, structural works. One of the earliest known parodies to appear in Eastern Europe was the Sefer ha-kundes (Book of the Prankster; 1824), a comic manual for pranksters based on the style of the Shulḥan ‘arukh. Published in Vilna, and commenting on the number of young pranksters there, this book was banned by the administrators of Vilna’s Jewish community, who collected all known copies and burned them, leaving only a small number to survive.

The greater part of Jewish parodies used the structure of religious or liturgical literature to mock or comment on unrelated issues. The use of liturgical material was a necessity, as this was the literature most familiar to large numbers of Jewish readers. One important aspect of Hebrew and Yiddish parody in the nineteenth century was the fact that it addressed issues not common to popular literary and journalistic discourses of the day. As a result, a forum was created to address such themes as ignorance, social inequality, and blind faith—issues often not considered by other Jewish authors.

 

Hebrew Description

 

Reference

Singerman 3880 (1 defective copy); Not in Davidson; Yivo