Evreiskaia narodnaia literatura (review)

The book under review is a Russian translation of Ben-Amos's long article "Jewish Folk Literature," which was first published in Oral Tradition 14.1 (1999): 140–274. The author attempts to present a history of Jewish folklore from the Bible until the present in 190 pages including a rich bibliography. Taking into account not only the length of this history but also its geographic and linguistic diversity, the task may seem beyond the possible. Yet Ben-Amos succeeds in surveying Jewish folklore of different historical periods (ancient period, Middle Ages, modernity) told in various communities (East European, Sephardic, Iraqi, Kurdistani, Yemeni, Northern African, and modern Israeli) in many languages (Hebrew, Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Arabic, Persian), providing information about its collectors, publishers, and researchers. Although the work is too short, it is not limited to formulaic definitions typical of encyclopedias but includes many primary folk text examples. The genre structure of Jewish folklore of different communities, as well as the gender division among the performers, is also discussed.

Ben-Amos's book is the first comprehensive overview of Jewish folklore to be published in Russia. It provides Russian readers with a unique introduction to the field, but, no less important, it also gives them the key to the primary sources of oral tradition (the edition includes an annotated appendix), to ancient and contemporary research, and even to the information on contemporary institutions dealing with Jewish folklore. Although this last type of information will soon become dated, it is particularly important now in the absence of systematic contacts between Russian, Western, and Israeli folklorists, which results in rather isolated development of folk studies in Russia and in the English-speaking scientific community in the West. As an immigrant I feel this gap keenly: the publication of Ben-Amos's book in Russian is a very important step in bridging it.

I greatly appreciate Elena Nosenko's translation. She successfully coped with the problem of spelling Hebrew names and terminology which arose in the absence of uniform Russian tradition and provided the readers with an organic easy-going text. There are only two disappointing mistakes which I need to mention. First is the Russian transliteration of the second name of the former coordinator of Israeli Folktale Archives (IFA), Edna Heichal, who is called Khechal instead of Kheikhal. Second is the abbreviation of the archives' name, which in Russian should be not IFA but IAFR (Izrailskii arkhiv folklornogo rasskaza).

This book is an excellent contribution to the Jewish studies in general and to their presentation to Russian readers in particular.