This folktale anthology was created, first in Hebrew (2005) and now in English, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Israel Folktale Archives, which houses over 24,000 tales. Fifty-one narrators are represented in the present work, which contains a total of fifty-three tales from twenty-five different ethnic groups. Most of the narrators immigrated to Israel: the stories come sometimes from the narrator’s place of origin (Morocco and Poland being the most common) and sometimes from the experience of adjusting to or living in a new country. In addition to Jewish tales, there are a few tales from other groups: Bedouin, Druze, and Muslim.
Rather than being grouped by theme or genre, the tales are presented in the order in which they were collected (or, as it the editors put it, transcribed). The result is that when you begin to read a tale, you often do not know what to expect: you have to take it as it comes. The range of tales is quite broad. There are legends about miracles, about sacred places and about how places got their peculiar names. There are some magic tales, but they are outnumbered by the “realistic” novella tales where the existential threat comes from a non-magical source. And there are genuinely realistic personal experience narratives about very credible but memorable crises.
The lack of deliberate organization makes it somewhat difficult for the reader to conceptualize the contents of collection as a whole. If one tale seems particularly appealing, how can you find a similar tale? The general index can be useful for identifying tales with similar themes. For example, entries on demons, humor, persecution, redemption, and salvation (and many other subjects) lead to multiple narratives with those motifs or themes. The index of ATU tale types is applicable to only about half of the tales in the book. (One tale, beginning on page 159, which is not identified by type, turns out to be an excellent example of the Mediterranean tale ATU 879, The Basil Maiden, used in this case to illustrate a proverb that says women are twice as smart as men.) Many of the tales are composed of sections of several different types or are atypical in other ways. The whole collection proves that folktales need not be generic: some conform to tale types and recognizable genres, and others simply do not.
Each tale is followed by a commentary from one of thirty-eight folklorists who chose what tale or tales to discuss. This format ensures that the commentaries convey information that their authors find particularly meaningful. Some of the commentaries were written by the transcriber, who can offer extra insight based on acquaintance with the narrator. A couple are written by a child of the narrator. Many of the commentaries are significantly longer than their subject tales.
Having each folklorist choose a tale to present results in an interesting range of interpretive strategies that correlates with the range of tales. Overall, the interpretations explain how the tales reflect or guide the life experience of the narrator or of the narrator’s ethnic group. For belief legends, the history and associated folklore of the sacred place or person may be explained, and parallels from ancient literary sources may be invoked. Some commentaries follow the pattern of exegesis or close reading, talking through what the narrator actually said, point by point, and filling in things that were left unsaid. Tales in which a woman is the prominent character may be elucidated by a feminist interpretation: for example, the strategy the character uses to prove herself in difficult circumstances, or the way she manages to reverse the power dynamic or the prejudice that oppressed her. Some commentaries explain the spiritual, psychological, or maturational developments that characters undergo related to their spiritual condition or their life cycle, or some other sort of adjustment to a difficult or unfamiliar situation.
The book is dedicated to Dov Noy (1920-2013), who, having earned a PhD in folklore under Stith Thompson, singlehandedly founded Israeli folklore studies and, by presenting Jewish folklore in a positive light, caused it to be incorporated into the academic discipline of Jewish Studies. The contributors are mostly his students and grand-students. As a whole, this book is a showcase for their—and by extension, Noy’s—work, a demonstration of the achievements of the Israel Folktale Archives.
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[Review length: 718 words • Review posted on May 6, 2021]