By
– August 26, 2011
It states in Pirke Avot (1:16), “Provide for yourself a teacher.” There are no better teachers for learning Jewish folklore than the revered and honored professor of folklore Dov Noy and his brilliant students, such as Dan Ben-Amos, Matilda Koen-Sarano, Galit Hasan-Rokem, Eli Yasif, and Tamar Alexander– Frizer, to name but a few. Each of them has contributed his/her scholarship to the field of Jewish folktales by teaching and publishing major books. Tamar Alexander-Frizer’s volume, The Heart Is a Mirror: The Sephardic Folktale, translated from Hebrew, is an expansive exploration of folktales found in the Sephardic oral tradition.
Alexander-Frizer takes as her starting point the view that the folktale is “an integral part of its social and cultural context.” Along the way, the author addresses questions, such as what identifies a Sephardic folktale, the relationship between the oral and written versions, and her major concern for “distinguishing and characterizing Sephardic folktales in comparison to the universal narrative traditions and the traditions of Jewish culture.”
Throughout the years, there has been more attention on the Ashkenazi folktale. During the early part of the 20th century, there had been several ethnographic expeditions to Eastern Europe to record (mostly in writing) Jewish folktales by people such as S. Ansky and Yehuda Leib Cahan. However, there were no such equivalent expeditions sent to retrieve the Sephardic tales. While the Sephardim took movable type with them when they were expelled from Spain in 1492, they set up printing presses in Italy and Turkey to print sacred books, not the folklore of the people. Thus, the Sephardic folklore remained mainly in the oral tradition until 1955, when the Israel Folktale Archives, founded by Dov Noy, began collecting those folktales. It is from this treasure-trove that Tamar Alexander-Frizer drew so many tales for her research, along with other sources. This volume is a major contribution to the important and valuable growing library of resource books on this subject of study.
This book is not only for folklorists and academics but for anyone interested in the Jewish oral tradition in all its complexity and variety. The author’s research into 4,000 Sephardic folktales is thorough and a number of stories and excerpts pepper the book as illustrations throughout. Bibliography, name index, notes and subject index.
Alexander-Frizer takes as her starting point the view that the folktale is “an integral part of its social and cultural context.” Along the way, the author addresses questions, such as what identifies a Sephardic folktale, the relationship between the oral and written versions, and her major concern for “distinguishing and characterizing Sephardic folktales in comparison to the universal narrative traditions and the traditions of Jewish culture.”
Throughout the years, there has been more attention on the Ashkenazi folktale. During the early part of the 20th century, there had been several ethnographic expeditions to Eastern Europe to record (mostly in writing) Jewish folktales by people such as S. Ansky and Yehuda Leib Cahan. However, there were no such equivalent expeditions sent to retrieve the Sephardic tales. While the Sephardim took movable type with them when they were expelled from Spain in 1492, they set up printing presses in Italy and Turkey to print sacred books, not the folklore of the people. Thus, the Sephardic folklore remained mainly in the oral tradition until 1955, when the Israel Folktale Archives, founded by Dov Noy, began collecting those folktales. It is from this treasure-trove that Tamar Alexander-Frizer drew so many tales for her research, along with other sources. This volume is a major contribution to the important and valuable growing library of resource books on this subject of study.
This book is not only for folklorists and academics but for anyone interested in the Jewish oral tradition in all its complexity and variety. The author’s research into 4,000 Sephardic folktales is thorough and a number of stories and excerpts pepper the book as illustrations throughout. Bibliography, name index, notes and subject index.
Peninnah Schram, well-known storyteller & author, is Professor of Speech and Drama at Yeshiva University’s Stern College. Her latest book is an illustrated anthology, The Hungry Clothes and Other Jewish Folktales (Sterling Publishing) and a CD, The Minstrel & the Storyteller, with singer/guitarist Gerard Edery (Sefarad Records). She is a recipient of a Covenant Award for Outstanding Jewish Educator and the 2003 National Storytelling Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
