In this article, I will discuss questions of literacy and orality in the transmission of parables to, from, and within rabbinic literature. I will ask whether parables in rabbinic literature are manifestations of a folk tradition, or rather of a rabbinic bookish study-house milieu. In my investigation, I follow Yonah Fraenkel, who has already offered a method of distinguishing between folk-traditional and academically crafted parables, and have chosen a variety of parables with which to critique his method. Since Fraenkel argued that when rabbinic literature borrows from external cultures in the creation of parables, these are not examples of elite culture, but rather of folklore, and since I find that his method does not always work, I demonstrate my critique by bringing only examples of parables that have parallels in the ancient Greek fables of Aesop. In the first example, about the lean and hungry fox, I show how a story we know from Aesop, from Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, and from rabbinic literature, indeed confirms Fraenkel’s claim. My second example is from the Aesopic fable about the lion and the boar. I show how this fable, when told by the rabbis, actually contradicts Fraenkel’s thesis; it answers all the criteria he requires for a parable to be a house-of-study composition. I then show how this fable was nevertheless understood by the Babylonian editors as a product of folk literature; I also briefly discuss the Babylonian approach to folk literature in general.
I begin and end, however, with two examples of how I see folk traditions transmitted in rabbinic literature and elsewhere. In the beginning, I present not a parable but a joke, found both in rabbinic literature and in modern secular Hebrew literature, and argue that the way this joke was transmitted is a model for thinking about the transmission of parables. I end with a parable, but with one that does not have an Aesopic parallel. The parallel I use is from another well-known folk-tradition (although perhaps from not such ancient times). This is another example of a clearly folkloristic tradition that fits Fraenkel’s model of an elite parable.
1 A Joke
As promised, I shall begin with a joke. I have discussed this joke and the comments on it before,1 but it will suit the purpose of this article perfectly. I read this joke in my teens in a Hebrew novel by the Israeli author Puchu (
The forest hill was his [Yosale’s] domain. Every morning he came there with three other [kibbutz] members, and together they would work the earth of the forest … In order to sunbathe, the foresters would remove their clothes and work in underwear. Yosale, for reasons of perfection and cleanliness, preferred to remove this piece of clothing too and did not seem to care that Naama, the shepherdess, would often pass by with the herd … Things came to such a head that Naama stood up in the meeting and proclaimed: “Either Yosale wears underwear or I refuse to take the herd out.” Yosale sat at that meeting … and nodded his head to acknowledge acceptance (of this request). On the following day he continued to work as he had before. [People said to him]: “Yosale, put on something.” “What for?” [he asked]. “Haven’t we discussed this in the meeting and you agreed?” [they said to him. To this he responded:] “That is correct. In the meeting I agreed and there I will wear something.”2
I remembered this text all these years because it was very funny. We tend to remember funny things. A scientific approach explains this as a result of some chemical substance that is emitted into our blood every time we laugh, and influences memory.3 The joke came back to me in an encounter with a talmudic text, found in the Babylonian Talmud:
This story is not a Babylonian invention. It has a parallel in the Jerusalem Talmud and there it does not have a happy end. It ends with the woman finding out that her secret had been divulged and committing suicide.4 Thus, the joke, presented at the end of the Babylonian version of the story, is actually a Babylonian addition, and could even be understood as comic relief.
For the purpose of our discussion here, it is important to note that one of the two texts I have presented here is a rabbinic composition, put together in the religious rabbinic academies of Babylonia. The other is a new, secular Zionist composition. Yet I think there is no doubt that they are telling the same joke. In both, someone is promising something to somebody in a certain context, and when he is asked why he does not fulfil his promise, he points to the different context in which he is not fulfilling it. Yosale had only promised not to go about naked in the general kibbutz assembly. Elsewhere he continues to walk about exposed. Rabbi Yohanan had only promised not to divulge the physician’s secret to the God of Israel. He tells all its details to everybody else.
Is there a direct relationship between these two jokes? Or, in other words, is the joke in the Babylonian Talmud a source for Puchu’s joke? There are several possible answers to this question. One is that Puchu, a “nice Jewish boy,” may have studied some time in a yeshiveh. This is the wrong answer. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1930 and was raised in a secular Zionist-socialist environment. He only attended secular schools. Or perhaps he studied Jewish Studies at university? This too is the wrong answer. At university, he studied agriculture.5 But then, of course, he may have had teachers who attended yeshivot or friends who knew some Talmud from home or wherever. If this is the case, we observe here a rabbinic tradition that has become part of folk tradition and is transported orally, no longer through the regular channels of learning. Since we cannot, however, determine whether Puchu heard this joke from some learned yeshiveh-bocher or else received it through some other channel, we cannot even assume that the source of the joke he heard and transmitted on comes from the Babylonian Talmud. It could have been transmitted orally, as a joke, over all these generations. We cannot even know whether the Babylonian rabbis, who told the same joke, were themselves not transmitting a folkloristic tradition they had heard orally somewhere.
2 Parables and Aesopic Fables
The previous observations might help us assess the relation between fables and parables. It is common knowledge that some of the parables told in rabbinic literature are also known as fables from elsewhere in the ancient world, especially the fables of Aesop.6 The most famous is the fable of the Lion and the Egyptian Crane—or, as it is told in the Fables of Aesop, The Wolf and the Stork:
This story is told by the rabbis in Genesis Rabbah after the wicked kingdom (i.e., Rome) had promised to rebuild the temple and then went back on its word. When the Jews wished to rebel, Rabbi Yehoshua told them this fable, in order to quell their rebellious zeal. Its purpose was to explain why just managing to survive under Roman rule is reward enough. One should not expect anything more. Obviously in Genesis Rabbah, this fable is a case of rabbinic borrowing from the surrounding culture. What kind of borrowing was it? Did the bookish rabbis engage in reading non-Jewish literature, including the fables of Aesop, or did they hear this story in the marketplace and incorporate it into their own literary production? Are Aesop’s tales in general folk or elite literature? This is the question that will be the focus of this article for all the examples I present.
2.1 Yonah Fraenkel
One of the scholars who devoted much space to the question of what is folkish and what is elitist about the parables of the rabbis is Yonah Fraenkel.8 In his influential studies, he concluded that parables9 were of course used in folk traditions and oral transmission, and that, obviously, like the case of the lion and the Egyptian crane just cited,10 rabbinic literature preserved some of them. However, he also argued that the rabbis themselves invented parables, and that the parables they invented were distinctly different in literary form. He claimed that the rabbinic parable has one purpose only: to explain a specific religious problem and simplify it. Every component in the story has an exact equivalent in the religious conundrum presented. The example he offered to demonstrate such a rabbinic parable was taken from Mishnah Sukkah. In this mashal, the rabbis are concerned about rain during the festival of Sukkot, when Jews reside in booths and are exposed to the elements. In the Land of Israel, in September, this is usually no problem, but if it rains this is understood as God’s displeasure. The rabbis express this with the following parable:
Fraenkel explains that every single element in this short parable has an exact equivalent in the problematic situation of rain in Sukkot. The slave is the Israelite, whose master is God. Following the interpretation of this parable in the Bavli (b. Sukkah 27a), Fraenkel explains the cup he pours for his master as the Sukkah he has built as commanded. The filthy water he gets in his face is the rain that destroys the festival. Rain comes from God. The water in his face comes from the master. Fraenkel calls this sort of parable, in which every element has an exact equivalent, “a literary parable.”12
Fraenkel compared this parable to the fable of the Lion and the Egyptian Crane, which is obviously not a rabbinic composition, and called this form of parable “a rhetorical fable.” He argued that in this case not every element in the fable fits the situation it is supposed to describe in life. The lion is, of course, wicked Rome, and the message in the end is that, under the strong and wicked, one should be pleased just to survive, and one should not expect any reward like the (re-)building of the temple. All these are pertinent to the situation described, but the bone stuck in the lion’s throat and the assistance he receives from the Egyptian crane are absent from the real situation the fable comes to represent. These, according to Fraenkel, are the rhetorical elements of this parable.13
Obviously, according to Fraenkel, “rhetorical parables” belong to a big pool of folk literature that can be applied to different ensuing situations, while “literary parables” are invented for the specific situation they describe. The former is a folkish composition; the latter, one of the elite. It is no wonder, then, that the “literary parable” on the Sukkah is found in the Mishnah. There is no other composition in rabbinic literature that is less folkish. The term mashal, implying parable, appears in it only twice: here in m. Sukkah 2:9, and in m. Nid. 2:5, which I will address next. Some parables without this specific terminology are also present among its chapters (e.g., m. Shab. 13:7; m. Avot 4:16; 20; and perhaps also m. Nid. 9:5), but they are few and far between (and I will not discuss them here).
However, if Fraenkel was absolutely correct, we could expect the other mashal in the Mishnah to also be a literary one, in that it demonstrates a religious conundrum with the help of a simplifying picture or event. This is not the case. The second mashal in the Mishnah has a completely different purpose:
The mashal is used here as a euphemism. Like today, the use of certain words to describe sex and sexual organs embarrasses the speaker, who prefers to use images from elsewhere instead. Would Fraenkel argue that this mashal is scholarly since there is an exact correspondence between all of its components and the parable, even though there is no religious message contained in it? Or would he, for example, suggest that this is not really a parable at all, because nothing happens in it, and that it is merely a metaphor? The rabbis, in any case, were not interested in these modern literary-scholarly distinctions. For the editor of the Mishnah, both were meshalim. Thus, we should consider other possible distinctions.
2.2 Eli Yassif
Another definition of folk parables is found in an article by Eli Yassif, in which he persistently argues that one way of identifying a folk composition in rabbinic literature is to discover a parallel for it in non-Jewish literature of the time.15 When discussing parables, Yassif concentrates on Aesop’s fables and states:
The connection between Aesop’s fables and the literature of the ancient East is a familiar and, as yet, unresolved question, but more pertinent to our discussion is the allusion to these tales in rabbinic literature … In these texts the connection between the Aesopian fable and rabbinic proverb cannot be attributed to coincidence.16
In other words, we can only truly identify a folk mashal, if we have a parallel for it outside the rabbinic corpus. I bring here two examples, which Yassif did not discuss in his article. My purpose is to demonstrate (like he did) how the fable is transformed into a parable by the rabbis. I also want to ask whether Fraenkel’s a priori argument that Aesopic fables are rhetorical in nature because they were not created in a rabbinic environment can be substantiated through these examples.
2.3 The Lean Fox
For my first example, I refer to Alan A. Milne’s classic Winnie the Pooh. In the second story of his first book, Milne tells of Pooh’s visit to Rabbit’s house, and of him getting stuck in the doorway after eating too greedily and having to fast in order to get out.17 Milne must have taken the theme for this story from the Aesopic fable about a lean and hungry fox who finds food left by shepherds in the hollow of a tree, but after devouring it is unable to get out again because he has eaten so much. Another fox hears its cries of distress and advises him that he will have to remain there until he becomes as thin as before. This is the same story we find in Winnie the Pooh.
We can repeat the exercise we performed on Puchu here. Did Milne wittingly take an Aesopic fable and integrate it into his story? We cannot know. He did study in Cambridge, but not classics. He graduated in mathematics.18 Or was the story of the lean fox (or teddy-bear, or any other animal) known to him from his surroundings, from his childhood,19 from the fact that Aesop’s fables were folk literature, even before they became part of a classics curriculum? If this is the argument, it is of course no wonder that the same “rhetorical parable”—to use Fraenkel’s term—also found its way into a rabbinic midrash. In Qoheleth Rabbah, on the verse “As he came out of his mother’s womb naked, so he will leave as he came” (Qoh 5:14), the following story is told:
In answer to Fraenkel’s question as to whether this is a literary or rhetorical parable, I think we can safely say that it is the latter.20 The parable demonstrates a verse claiming that a person exits this world just as he entered it: naked. The fit with the parable of the fox is not perfect, neither with the verse nor with the original Aesopic fable. In the Aesopic tale, the fox is lean to begin with. Here he first fasts. How this explains that a person enters this world naked, as in the Qoheleth verse, is unclear. Also, there is actually more than one Aesopic fable involved in this midrashic retelling; the fox who wishes to enter a well-guarded vineyard is from another fable about sour grapes.21 Indeed, the words of the fox at the end of this midrashic tradition are also a mix of the two fables:
What I want to show in this example is that parallels to this sort of fable can be found in many unexpected places, including Winnie the Pooh and an exegesis of a verse from Qoheleth.
2.4 Two Dogs and a Wolf
The next fable I shall discuss is known as the Lion and the Boar, and it goes as follows:
In summertime, when the heat makes everyone thirsty, a lion and a wild boar had come to drink from the same small spring. They began to argue about who was going to take the first drink, and their argument escalated into a duel to the death. When they momentarily paused to catch their breath, the lion and the boar saw that vultures were waiting to snatch and devour the one who was killed. At that point, the lion and the boar put their hatred aside and said, “It is better for us to befriend one another than to be eaten by vultures and ravens!”22
A version of this fable in the Babylonian Talmud is adduced as midrash on a verse in the biblical story of the gentile prophet Balaam, who was commissioned to curse Israel when they were on the verge of entering the promised land, but ended up blessing them instead. The verse, Num 22:7, describes the elders of Midian and Moab going to Balaam to solicit his services. At this point, the rabbis state: “But there had never been peace between Midian and Moab (b. Sanh. 105a)”; or in other words: why do they go together to Balaam to request his aid? This is then explained with a parable, which is a good reworking of the fable of the Lion and Boar:
The differences between the parable and Aesop’s fable are clear. There, the protagonists were a lion and a boar. Here, they are two dogs. There, they met by chance at a watering hole. Here, they live together, tending the same herd. There, their common enemies were vultures. Here, it is a wolf. Yet the message is the same in both: two enemies team up together against a common third, just like Moab and Midian had done against Israel.
2.4.1 Intermission: Folk Sayings
To substantiate the message that this parable is supposed to convey, the Babylonian Talmud adds another comment:
This folk saying, which suggests that workers should not go out to work when there are clouds in the morning because it will rain, seems to contradict a biblical verse, according to which morning clouds are of no consequence: they will certainly not bring rain. Instead of dismissing the folk saying as being of less value than the biblical verse, the Babylonian rabbis harmonize the two, as they often do when differences of opinion between sages arise and they do not wish to decide in favour of either one of them: “There is no contradiction. One [refers to a case where the skies are] covered with thick clouds and one [to where they are] covered with light clouds.”
My second example is slightly different. It begins with a folk saying:
Rabbah bar Mari also finds the same idea in the Books of the Prophets: “Men of low character gathered about Jephthah” (Judg 11:3). The judge Jephthah was a son of a prostitute (Judg 10:1). What kind of people would join him? The rabbis interpret this social situation as generic. Because he is bad, he is joined by other bad people.
Rabbah bar Mari now wants to show that the same idea is also voiced in the third part of the Bible, the Writings, but he has difficulties finding a prooftext. He compromises by citing the non-canonical Ben Sira: “All fowl dwells with its kind, and people with those like them” (Sir 13:15).27 This really is a paraphrase of “birds of a feather” (or vice versa?).
When turning to the Mishnah, Rabbah bar Mari uses a halakhic text, which actually serves as a metaphor: “All that is connected to the impure is impure; all that is connected to the pure is pure” (m. Kelim 12:2).
Finally, a baraita which we do not know from elsewhere outside the Babylonian Talmud states even more emphatically that bad birds flock together:
2.4.2 Back to the Two Dogs and the Wolf
Armed with these insights, we can go back to the folk saying: “A rat and a cat made a feast of the fat of the ill-fated” (b. Sanh. 105a). This saying is supposed to fortify the Aesopic fable about the Lion and the Boar who become allies, which are replaced in the rabbinic parable by two dogs. The alliance between the embattled dogs brings about the defeat of their foe: the wolf. And indeed, in the present folk saying, two traditional enemies from the animal kingdom bond to create an unholy alliance: the cat and the rat. This folk saying suggests that when these two enemies get together, woe to those who oppose them. The folk saying, which probably originated in Babylonia, as were all other
We must now ask the question Fraenkel asked: is this a literary or a rhetorical parable? On the face of it, because it is an Aesopic fable, we would expect it to be rhetorical. If so, it should include much extra detail that is unnecessary for explaining the verse about the alliance between the elders of Moab and Midian pertaining to Balaam. However, it does not. In the present rabbinic midrash, there is not one unnecessary detail. Instead of two different animals, the rabbis turned Moab and Midian into two dogs; they are the same, but they hate each other. The herd that they tend together is obviously the land they share, coveted by Israel, who is the wolf attacking them. Their plot to get Balaam to curse Israel is obviously their banding together to kill the wolf. Of course, in the parable they do actually kill the wolf, while in the biblical story of Balaam their plot fails due to divine intervention. However, the parable’s task is only to expound one verse, not the entire Balaam story.
3 Another (Non-Aesopic) Example: Stone Soup
Fraenkel’s distinction between a “rhetorical” non-rabbinic adopted parable and a rabbinic “literary parable” did not work smoothly in the last example we saw. In one sense, however, he was correct. The parable in question is rhetorical because it is used not to solve a religious conundrum, but rather to interpret a biblical verse. The final example we will discuss here is an example of a rabbinic parable, which can be analyzed as a purely “literary parable” because it demonstrates a religious problem, and each component in it has its counterpart in the situation it describes. It has no parallel in the Aesopic corpus but, as I will argue, must derive from popular folk tradition. I begin by presenting the parable and exposing it to an analysis à la Fraenkel. The parable is found in Leviticus Rabbah:
This episode begins with a statement by the tanna Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai: “Israel are so successful, for they know how to please their creator.” The assumption behind this statement is, first, that Israel are successful, and, second, that they know how to appease their creator. In order to explain and simplify this premise, a parable is adduced. But before the parable, and in order to explain and simplify the parable itself, the text presents a statement by another tanna, Rabbi Yudan. According to this tanna, Israel are like the Samaritans in this, and the Samaritans are good traders. This is where the parable begins. There are two protagonists in the parable: “one of them,” and a woman. The relationship between them is that of a house-dweller and a wanderer, or between one of some means and a beggar. This is supposed to symbolize the relationship between God and Israel. Ironically, God is represented by the woman, and Israel is represented by “one of them.”28 Since the parable follows Rabbi Yudan’s statement, one may assume that “one of them” is a Samaritan. In her discussion of this parable, Galit Hasan-Rokem was fascinated by the role played here by the Samaritan, and she stated that “paradoxically, the praise to the Israelites is articulated by comparing them to Samaritans.”29 She went on to juxtapose this parable with the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke (10:25–37), and inquired about the relationships between Jews and Samaritans in Roman Palestine, as articulated by the two parables.
I want to argue somewhat against this understanding of this parable, because I claim that the Samaritan is a secondary insertion. A much more subversive paradox in this text is the representation of God by a woman. Interestingly, the power-relations between Israel and God are maintained: the woman is the house-dweller, the person of means, and the person representing the Israelite is a smart but penniless beggar. The message of the parable is thus very clear: in a power-relationship of weak against strong, the weaker party, in order to persevere, must learn to negotiate. She or he must learn to use rhetorical skills to psychologically arouse compassion and sympathy in the stronger party. In the real world, which this parable comes to simplify, Israel must learn how to petition God persuasively so as to obtain their maintenance—their daily bread. And they do so by praying.
Is there any element in this parable that is superfluous or—in Fraenkel’s terminology—“rhetorical”? Is there something in this story that plays no role in the relationship between Israel and God that it comes to simplify? I think that if we remove the words of Rabbi Yudan about the Samaritans, we are left with a perfect “literary parable” as Fraenkel would have it. The “one of them” is now not a Samaritan compared to an Israelite, but actually “one of them,” one of the Israelites. As such, all the elements are necessary. First, the situation that needs explaining: how are Israel successful, and how do they appease their maker? Second, the parable that explains it: Israel are penniless beggars. God is like a woman, because the rabbis consider women much more willing than men to dispense charity. This is also a topic I have discussed earlier. I wrote:
[The] rabbinic stereotype of women was that they dispensed charity … In the Yerushalmi, a man who has lost his fortune is urged by his wife to give charity to the sages despite this (y. Hor. 3:7 48a). In the Bavli we find, for example, Abba Hilqiah exalting his wife as having constantly dispensed charity (b. Taʿan. 23b). Imma Shalom, Rabbi Eliezer’s wife, is also reputed as having given charity (b. B. Qam. 59b). In a story of Mar Uqba giving charity, we learn incidentally that his wife also engaged in such activities (b. Ket. 67b).30
Women are, therefore, according to this stereotype, better suited than men for representing a charitable God in a parable. She is a necessary component for the parable to truly represent the religious conundrum it seeks to explain. The arguments offered by the beggar perfectly represent how Israel appease their maker. First, he makes a humble request (for an onion)—obviously, this is not a difficult request to fulfil. Yet the onion contains very little calories and does not taste very good on its own. It is a sort of spice and certainly does not dispel hunger. It must be supplemented with bread in order to provide the necessary caloric intake. Yet even so, it cannot sustain a person. Even if food is plentiful, without liquids a person will perish. The beggar speaks logically, and the woman, who began by giving him something quite humble, now provides him with all his needs.
In the same way, the Israelites expect God to provide them with sustenance, and their prayers are formulated in such a way that little is asked, but that in the end God is required to supply them with all their elementary needs. In the Jerusalem Talmud, the formulation of such a prayer is found in the words which the high priest utters on Yom Kippur, when he enters the holy of holies:
This prayer begins by asking little: it asks God only to ensure that Israel not become needy. In the second part, however, there is a list of what is required not to be in need, and the list is not short: low prices, plenty to eat and yet a surplus, economic success, and the ingredient necessary for all this, which is rain in its season. This prayer could be compared to our beggar who needs the woman’s goodwill, so that he begins with a humble request, but when it is granted, the list of items representing this humble request all of a sudden grows long:
Israel are so successful, for they know how to please their creator … One of them went to a woman. He said to her: Do you happen to have an onion to give me? When she gave it to him, he said to her: Is there onion without bread? When she gave it to him, he said to her: Is there food without drink? Thus and thus, he ate and drank.
Lev. Rab. 5:8
All are necessary elements in the argument that Israel, when petitioning God, must persuade him that he has already given them something, but that this thing is useless without something else that goes with it. Not a word is superfluous. In other words, once the Samaritan is removed, this parable perfectly meets the conditions for Fraenkel’s description of a literary parable, the production of the rabbis in their study house, an elite parable—not a folkish one. It should, however, be noted that aside from food and drink, the prayer in the Jerusalem Talmud adds that, in order not to be in need, “trade” (
Ironically, this parable does have a parallel in folk literature—not in Aesop’s fables, but in a celebrated story which we have all heard as children in different versions, and which I conveniently found on the internet under the title of “Stone Soup.”31 In this story, a traveller comes to a small village, hungry and weary. In time, he finds the village square, lights a fire under the cauldron, fills it with water and drops in a stone. Whistling, he patiently stirs the pot. A villager stops and asks what he is doing, to which he replied: “I am making stone soup. Would you like to join me?” The villager’s eyes light up and he asks if carrots are good in stone soup. “They are delicious,” the traveller replies. In time, a crowd gathers, and every person offers an ingredient of their own: mushrooms, onions, cabbage, meat.
At the end of the story, the entire village feasts with the weary traveller on his excellent soup, and when they ask him how it was achieved, he gives them the stone as a gift, but tells them not to forget the other ingredients. On leaving the village, he picks up another stone and puts it in his pocket. For me, it is crystal-clear that this folk tale is the inspiration for our parable above (and certainly not vice versa).
4 Conclusion
I therefore end this chapter with the observation that the difference between a folk parable and a rabbinic parable is much more elusive than Fraenkel would have us think. The need to account for each element in it is important and interesting, but it is not the only tool that helps us to distinguish between a rabbinic and a folkish composition. Obviously, when all the elements of the mashal fit the nimshal, this is proof that the rabbis paid more attention to detail in their interpretative endeavour. But it is clear that folk wisdom and folk traditions were highly appreciated by the rabbis. For this reason, it is logical to say that they considered the folk their teachers, alongside Scripture or the rabbis. They did not shun the use of folk parables and fables in their study-house, nor did they use them only as a last resort or for rhetorical decoration.
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Ilan, Tal. “The Joke in Rabbinic Literature: Home-born or Diaspora Humor?” Pages 57–75 in Humor in Arabic Culture. Edited by Georges Tamer. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009.
Ilan, Tal. “The Women of the Q Community within Early Judaism.” Pages 195–209 in Q in Context. Vol. 2. Social Setting and Archaeological Background of the Sayings Source. Edited by Markus Tiwald. BBB 173. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2015.
Ilan, Tal. “A Fable on Two Mosquitoes from the Babylonian Talmud: Observations on Genre and Gender.” Pages 149–159 in Parables in Changing Contexts: Essays on the Study of Parables in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Edited by Eric Ottenheijm and Marcel Poorthuis. JCP 35. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
Labendz, Jenny R. “The Book of Ben Sira in Rabbinic Literature.” AJSR 30 (2006): 347–392.
Milne, Alan A. Winnie the Pooh. 214th ed. New York: Dutton, 1958.
Puchu. Yosale, How did it Happen? Ramat-Gan: Masada, 1975 (Hebrew). “Puchu.” https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A6%27%D7%95.
Schwarzbaum, Haim. “Aesopic Fables in Talmudic Midrashim Literature.” Yeda-‘Am 8 (1962): 54–56 (Hebrew).
Yassif, Eli. “Folk Literature in Late Antiquity.” Pages 721–748 in The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 4. The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period. Edited by Steven T. Katz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Zakovich, Yair. “The Affinities between Some Biblical and Aesopic Fables.” Yeda-‘Am 20 (1980): 3–9 (Hebrew).
“61. The Lion and the Boar at the Spring.” http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/oxford/61.htm.
Tal Ilan, “The Joke in Rabbinic Literature: Home-born or Diaspora Humor?” in Humor in Arabic Culture, ed. Georges Tamer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 64−67.
Puchu (Israel Wiessler), Yosale, How did it Happen? (Ramat-Gan: Masada, 1975), 56. Translation and emphasis are mine.
On short-term memory, see, e.g., “Episode 5: Laughter and Memory. How Laughter Can Improve Your Short-Term Memory,” https://lluh.org/patients-visitors/health-wellness/live-it/online-health-show/episode-5-laughter-and-memory. On long-term memory, see, e.g., Sarah Henderson, “Laughter and Learning: Humor Boosts Retention,” Edutopia, 31 March 2015, https://www.edutopia.org/blog/laughter-learning-humor-boosts-retention-sarah-henderson.
Previously I had written about this story: “Here we have a thoroughly moral person, albeit an outsider—a doctor and a woman—who compromises her professional career in order to help someone, and on the other side we have the ultimate insider of rabbinic literature—the rabbi—behaving immorally. Furthermore, the moral person is punished for her moral behavior while the immoral rabbi comes out of the story unscathed. It is this moral dilemma that makes this story so powerful. No further comment is required in order to draw conclusions about the rights and wrongs of the story”; see Tal Ilan, “‘Stolen Water is Sweet’: Women and their Stories between Bavli and Yerushalmi,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, vol. 3, ed. Peter Schäfer, TSAJ 93 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 193.
Wikipedia. “Puchu,” https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A6%27%D7%95 (Hebrew).
I refer specifically to Aesop’s fables; see, e.g., Yair Zakovich, “The Affinities between Some Biblical and Aesopic Fables,” Yeda-‘Am 20 (1980): 3−9 (Hebrew); Haim Schwarzbaum, “Aesopic Fables in Talmudic Midrashim Literature,” Yeda-‘Am 8 (1962): 54−56 (Hebrew). For a full catalogue, see also Shama Friedman, “The Talmudic Proverb in Its Cultural Setting,” JSIJ 2 (2003): 73−82 (Hebrew).
Unless noted otherwise, all translations are my own. On this parable, see, e.g., Gedaliah Alon, The Jews in their Land in the Talmudic Age (70–640 CE) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984), 435–441.
See on a large scale Yonah Fraenkel, Darkhei ha-aggadah vehamidrash, 2 vols. (Givatayim: Yad Latalmud, 1991), 1:326–337. (Hebrew).
In Hebrew the word for “parable” and “fable” is the same (
On this story, see Yonah Fraenkel, “The Parable,” in Midrash and Aggadah, 3 vols. (Tel Aviv: The Open University of Israel, 1996), 2:402–408.
Translations based on Chanoch Albeck, Shisha Sidrei Mishna. Seder Mo’ed (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1952), 265 (Hebrew, with adaptation).
Fraenkel, Darkhei ha-aggadah, 409–411.
Fraenkel, Darkhei ha-aggadah, 411.
Translation based on Albeck, Seder Toharot, 383. On this mashal, see Charlotte E. Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 48–56; Cynthia M. Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Ancient Israel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 52–53.
Eli Yassif, “Folk Literature in Late Antiquity,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4, The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven T. Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 721−748.
Yassif, “Folk Literature,” 736, 738.
There are countless editions of this classic. I have retrieved it in the National Library in Jerusalem, from Alan A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh, 214th ed. (New York: Dutton, 1958), 20–31.
“A.A. Milne,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._A._Milne.
Books with Aesop’s fables were published in English since 1484; since the eighteenth century, the fables were adapted for children. See “Aesopica: Aesop’s Fables in English, Latin, and Greek,” http://www.mythfolklore.net/aesopica.
Fraenkel, Darkhei ha-aggadah, 368.
I owe this astute observation to my friend Reuven Kiperwasser.
I used the translation of the Aesopic fable of the Lion and the Boar at the Spring from the following online database: http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/oxford/61.htm. The original translation is from Laura Gibbs, ed. Aesop’s Fables (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
In a slightly different wording, also in Aramaic (
I have not found a detailed discussion of these sayings. For a discussion of a selected few, see Fraenkel, Darkhei ha-aggadah, 410−425. I have also had the occasion to look at this sort of text; see Tal Ilan, Massekhet Ta‘anit, FCBT 2/9 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 193–194; Tal Ilan, “A Fable on Two Mosquitoes from the Babylonian Talmud: Observations on Genre and Gender,” Parables in Changing Contexts: Essays on the Study of Parables in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, ed. Eric Ottenheijm and Marcel Poorthuis, JCP 35 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 149−159, esp. 152.
On this saying, see Fraenkel, Darkhei ha-aggadah, 420–421.
For a discussion of the two and their mutual connection, see Carol Bakhos, Ishmael on the Border: Rabbinic Portrayals of the First Arab (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006), 13–30, 54–64.
On the nearly canonical status of Ben Sira among the rabbis, see Jenny R. Labendz, “The Book of Ben Sira in Rabbinic Literature,” AJSR 30 (2006): 347–392.
I touched on this parable briefly in Tal Ilan, “The Women of the Q Community within Early Judaism,” in Q in Context, vol. 2, Social Setting and Archaeological Background of the Sayings Source, ed. Markus Tiwald, BBB 173 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2015), 206–208.
Galit Hasan-Rokem, Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity, TLJS 4 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 42–48.
Tal Ilan, Silencing the Queen: The Literary Histories of Shelamzion and Other Jewish Women, TSAJ 115 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 165.
See D.L. Ashliman, ed. “Stone Soup: Folktales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 1548,” https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type1548.html. Cf. “Stone Soup,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup where I read that this is a European folk tale with variants from Germany, Russia, Hungary, France, Portugal, and, ironically, also China. In light of our parable, I doubt if this is the complete list.