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She's an iconic Jewish storyteller. She's a widely acclaimed
professor and folklorist. She's the one and only Peninnah Schram,
and Peninnah's World: A Jewish Life in Stories is her authorized
biography, told through individual stories. What is a biography
told through stories? Because Schram's art form is storytelling,
Peninnah's World dramatizes in vivid scenes her extraordinary
trajectory from the New London, Connecticut-born child of immigrant
parents steeped in Jewish tradition in the 1930s and '40s to
award-winning, New York-based performer, writer and scholar. The
book features landmarks such as the old Mohican Hotel in New London
and Stern College for Women in Manhattan. Along the way, Schram
enjoys close encounters with such luminaries as Noble Laureates
Elie Wiesel and Isaac Bashevis Singer, as well as famed
Yiddish-theater actress Molly Picon, actor Jeff Goldblum,
singer/ethnomusicologist Ruth Rubin and others. Written by
storytelling studies professor and performer Caren Schnur Neile,
the stories are in a form tailor-made to enjoy and share aloud. At
the same time, they serve as models for all those interested in
creating their own life and family stories, whatever their
background, whether on the page, on the stage, or among neighbors
and loved ones. Welcome to Peninnah's World. Prepare to explore
your own.
By defining folklore as artistic communication in small groups, Dan
Ben-Amos led the discipline of Folklore in new directions. In
Folklore Concepts, Henry Glassie and Elliott Oring have curated a
selection of Ben-Amos's groundbreaking essays that explore folklore
as a category in cultural communication and as a subject of
scholarly research. Ben-Amos's work is well-known for sparking
lively debate that often centers on why his definition
intrinsically acknowledges tradition rather than expresses its
connection forthright. Without tradition among people, there would
be no art or communication, and tradition cannot accomplish
anything on its own-only people can. Ben-Amos's focus on creative
communication in communities is woven into the themes of the
theoretical essays in this volume, through which he advocates for a
better future for folklore scholarship. Folklore Concepts traces
Ben-Amos's consistent efforts over the span of his career to review
and critique the definitions, concepts, and practices of Folklore
in order to build the field's intellectual history. In examining
this history, Folklore Concepts answers foundational questions
about what folklorists are doing, how they are doing it, and why.
Works on Jewish humor and Jewish jokes abound today, but what
formed the basis for our contemporary notions of Jewish jokes? How
and when did these perceptions develop? In this groundbreaking
study and translation, noted humor and folklore scholar Elliott
Oring introduces us to the joke collections of Lippmann Moses
Büschenthal, an enlightened rabbi, and an unknown author writing
as "Judas Ascher." Originally published in German in 1812 and 1810,
these books include jokes and anecdotes that play on stereotypes.
The jokes depict Jews dealing with Gentiles who are bent on their
conversion, Jews encountering government officials and
institutions, newly propertied Jews attempting to demonstrate their
acquisition of artistic and philosophical knowledge, and Jews
engaged in trade and moneylending—often with the aim to defraud.
In these jokes we see the antecedents of modern Jewish humor, and
in Büschenthal's brief introduction we find perhaps the earliest
theory of the Jewish joke. Oring provides helpful annotations for
the jokes and contextualizing essays that examine the current state
of Jewish joke scholarship and the situation of the Jews in France
and Germany leading up to the periods when the two collections were
published. Intended to stimulate the search for even earlier
examples, Oring challenges us to confront the Jewish joke from a
genuine historical perspective.
Works on Jewish humor and Jewish jokes abound today, but what
formed the basis for our contemporary notions of Jewish jokes? How
and when did these perceptions develop? In this groundbreaking
study and translation, noted humor and folklore scholar Elliott
Oring introduces us to the joke collections of Lippmann Moses
Buschenthal, an enlightened rabbi, and an unknown author writing as
"Judas Ascher." Originally published in German in 1812 and 1810,
these books include jokes and anecdotes that play on stereotypes.
The jokes depict Jews dealing with Gentiles who are bent on their
conversion, Jews encountering government officials and
institutions, newly propertied Jews attempting to demonstrate their
acquisition of artistic and philosophical knowledge, and Jews
engaged in trade and moneylending-often with the aim to defraud. In
these jokes we see the antecedents of modern Jewish humor, and in
Buschenthal's brief introduction we find perhaps the earliest
theory of the Jewish joke. Oring provides helpful annotations for
the jokes and contextualizing essays that examine the current state
of Jewish joke scholarship and the situation of the Jews in France
and Germany leading up to the periods when the two collections were
published. Intended to stimulate the search for even earlier
examples, Oring challenges us to confront the Jewish joke from a
genuine historical perspective.
By defining folklore as artistic communication in small groups, Dan
Ben-Amos led the discipline of Folklore in new directions. In
Folklore Concepts, Henry Glassie and Elliott Oring have curated a
selection of Ben-Amos's groundbreaking essays that explore folklore
as a category in cultural communication and as a subject of
scholarly research. Ben-Amos's work is well-known for sparking
lively debate that often centers on why his definition
intrinsically acknowledges tradition rather than expresses its
connection forthright. Without tradition among people, there would
be no art or communication, and tradition cannot accomplish
anything on its own-only people can. Ben-Amos's focus on creative
communication in communities is woven into the themes of the
theoretical essays in this volume, through which he advocates for a
better future for folklore scholarship. Folklore Concepts traces
Ben-Amos's consistent efforts over the span of his career to review
and critique the definitions, concepts, and practices of Folklore
in order to build the field's intellectual history. In examining
this history, Folklore Concepts answers foundational questions
about what folklorists are doing, how they are doing it, and why.
The diary as a genre is found in all literate societies, and these
autobiographical accounts are written by persons of all ranks and
positions. The Diary offers an exploration of the form in its
social, historical, and cultural-literary contexts with its own
distinctive features, poetics, and rhetoric. The contributors to
this volume examine theories and interpretations relating to
writing and studying diaries; the formation of diary canons in the
United Kingdom, France, United States, and Brazil; and the ways in
which handwritten diaries are transformed through processes of
publication and digitization. The authors also explore different
diary formats, including the travel diary, the private diary,
conflict diaries written during periods of crisis, and the diaries
of the digital era, such as blogs. The Diary offers a comprehensive
overview of the genre, synthesizing decades of interdisciplinary
study to enrich our understanding of, research about, and
engagement with the diary as literary form and historical
documentation.
The diary as a genre is found in all literate societies, and these
autobiographical accounts are written by persons of all ranks and
positions. The Diary offers an exploration of the form in its
social, historical, and cultural-literary contexts with its own
distinctive features, poetics, and rhetoric. The contributors to
this volume examine theories and interpretations relating to
writing and studying diaries; the formation of diary canons in the
United Kingdom, France, United States, and Brazil; and the ways in
which handwritten diaries are transformed through processes of
publication and digitization. The authors also explore different
diary formats, including the travel diary, the private diary,
conflict diaries written during periods of crisis, and the diaries
of the digital era, such as blogs. The Diary offers a comprehensive
overview of the genre, synthesizing decades of interdisciplinary
study to enrich our understanding of, research about, and
engagement with the diary as literary form and historical
documentation.
The essays in Folklore Genres represent development in folklore
genre studies, diverging into literary, ethnographic, and taxonomic
questions. The study as a whole is concerned with the concept of
genre and with the history of genre theory. A selective
bibliography provides a guide to analytical and theoretical works
on the topic. The literary-oriented articles conceive of folklore
forms, not as the antecedents of literary genres, but as complex,
symbolically rich expressions. The ethnographically oriented
articles, as well as those dealing with classification problems,
reveal dimensions of folklore that are often obscured from the
student reading the folklore text alone. It has long been known
that the written page is but a pale reproduction of the spoken
word, that a tale hardly reflects the telling. The essays in this
collection lead to an understanding of the forms of oral literature
as multidimensional symbols of communication and to an
understanding of folklore genres as systematically related
conceptual categories in culture. What kinship terms are to social
structure, genre terms are to folklore. Since genres constitute
recognized modes of folklore speaking, their terminology and
taxonomy can play a major role in the study of culture and society,
The essays were originally published in Genre (1969-1971);
introduction, bibliography, and index have been added to this
edition.
In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov is the first complete English
translation of the tales surrounding the Besht, a rabbi and
kabbalistic practitioner whose teachings bolstered the growing
Hasidic movement in the eighteenth century. An important source on
the life, philosophy, and mystical works of the Besht, In Praise of
the Baal Shem Tov also reveals the daily life and concerns of
eastern European Hasidic Jews in the late 1700s. Though portions of
the book have been in print since its original publication in 1814,
this edition avoids the common practice of reshaping Hasidic tales
according contemporary expectations. With this commitment to
accuracy and authenticity, In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov offers
readers an unsullied look at the Besht through the eyes of his
contemporaries.
Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of the
books in this series possible: Lloyd E. Cotsen; the Maurice Amado
Foundation; National Endowment for the Humanities; and the National
Foundation for Jewish Culture. The second volume in a literary
landmark Folktales from Eastern Europe presents 71 tales from
Ashkenazic culture in the most important collection of Jewish
folktales ever published. It is the second volume in Folktales of
the Jews, the five-volume series to be released over the next
several years, in the tradition of Louis Ginzberg's classic,
Legends of the Jews. The tales here and the others in this series
have been selected from the Israel Folktale Archives at The
University of Haifa, Israel (IFA), a treasure house of Jewish lore
that has remained largely unavailable to the entire world until
now. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the IFA has
collected more than 20,000 tales from newly arrived immigrants,
long-lost stories shared by their families from around the world.
The tales come from the major ethno-linguistic communities of the
Jewish world and are representative of a wide variety of subjects
and motifs, especially rich in Jewish content and context. Each of
the tales is accompanied by in-depth commentary that explains the
tale's cultural, historical, and literary background and its
similarity to other tales in the IFA collection, and extensive
scholarly notes. There is also an introduction that describes the
Ashkenazic culture and its folk narrative tradition, a world map of
the areas covered, illustrations, biographies of the collectors and
narrators, tale type and motif indexes, a subject index, and a
comprehensive bibliography. Until the establishment of the IFA, we
had had only limited access to the wide range of Jewish folk
narratives. Even in Israel, the gathering place of the most
wide-ranging cross-section of world Jewry, these folktales have
remained largely unknown. Many of the communities no longer exist
as cohesive societies in their representative lands; the Holocaust,
migration, and changes in living styles have made the continuation
of these tales impossible. This series is a monument to a rich but
vanishing oral tradition.
Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of the
books in this series possible: Lloyd E. Cotsen; The Maurice Amado
Foundation; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the
National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Tales from the Sephardic
Dispersion begins the most important collection of Jewish folktales
ever published. It is the first volume in Folktales of the Jews,
the five-volume series to be released over the next several years,
in the tradition of Louis Ginzberg's classic, Legends of the Jews.
The 71 tales here and the others in this series have been selected
from the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA), named in Honor of Dov Noy,
at The University of Haifa, a treasure house of Jewish lore that
has remained largely unavailable to the entire world until now.
Since the creation of the State of Israel, the IFA has collected
more than 20,000 tales from newly arrived immigrants, long-lost
stories shared by their families from around the world. The tales
come from the major ethno-linguistic communities of the Jewish
world and are representative of a wide variety of subjects and
motifs, especially rich in Jewish content and context. Each of the
tales is accompanied by in-depth commentary that explains the
tale's cultural, historical, and literary background and its
similarity to other tales in the IFA collection, and extensive
scholarly notes. There is also an introduction that describes the
Sephardic culture and its folk narrative tradition, a world map of
the areas covered, illustrations, biographies of the collectors and
narrators, tale type and motif indexes, a subject index, and a
comprehensive bibliography. Until the establishment of the IFA, we
had had only limited access to the wide range of Jewish folk
narratives. Even in Israel, the gathering place of the most
wide-ranging cross-section of world Jewry, these folktales have
remained largely unknown. Many of the communities no longer exist
as cohesive societies in their representative lands; the Holocaust,
migration, and changes in living styles have made the continuation
of these tales impossible. This volume and the others to come will
be monuments to a rich but vanishing oral tradition.
How do we remember persons, objects, events? Memory seems so
personal, but, at the same time, it is shaped by collective
experience and public representations. Newspapers, television, and
even celebrations and festivities mark for us not only who we are,
but also who we were and how we lived. Cultural memory and the
Construction of Identity brings together scholars of folklore,
literature, history, and communication to explore the dynamics of
cultural memory in a variety of contexts. Memory is a powerful tool
that can transform a piece of earth into a homeland and common
objects into symbols. The authors of this volume show how memory is
shaped and how it operates in uniting society and creating images
that attain the value of truth even if they deviate from fact. They
point to the relationship between this memory and our notion of
"culture." They also discuss this cultural memory on the level of
everyday life.
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