Folktales of the Jews, Volume 2: Tales from Eastern Europe

66. The Death of a Wicked Heretic (IFA 21021)

66 The Death of a Wicked Heretic T O L D B Y Z A L M A N B E N - A M O S T O D A N B E N - A M O S My masters and teachers, Because I am a maggid* and go preaching from town to town, I once came to the town of Samakhlalovitch. Oy, my masters and teachers, I came to the town of Samakhlalovitch. I have to tell you what happened there. The heretic—may his name and memory be blotted out—had died. He used to eat treif** food and desecrate the Sabbath. And when he died, the family wanted to bury him. Ay, what did they do with him? They buried him in the ground. Oy, my masters and teachers, in the morning, when the family came to the grave, what did they see? The earth had cast him out. My masters and teachers, the family didn’t know where to put him. They took him, the deceased, the corpse, and tossed him into the river. The next morning, when they came to the riverbank, what did they see, my masters and teachers? There was the deceased again, lying on the riverbank. Oy, my masters and teachers, the family didn’t know where to put him. They decided, they took him and built a fire, and went and laid him in the fire. Ay, but he was so wicked, such a sinner, that the fire didn’t burn him. And what, my masters and teachers, is the moral of this? You should be pious, you should not be sinners, you should observe God’s Torah. Oy, my masters and teachers, follow God’s way and observe the Torah, so the fire will burn you, the water will swallow you, and the ground will take you. Speedily in our days, amen. 466 * An itinerant preacher. ** Nonkosher. COMMENTARY FOR TALE 66 (IFA 21021) Recorded by Dan Ben-Amos as told by his father, Zalman Ben-Amos (Castrol), during a visit to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1968. Cultural, Historical, and Literary Background Parodies of Sermons Parodies of derashot (sermons) might have been composed and recited orally by the late antiquities, since the institution of the derashah (sermon) in Jewish religious life. However, the Rabbis who edited the literature of that period excluded such works from their exegetical collections. The earliest textual evidence of parody in Jewish literature dates from the twelfth century to the beginning of the thirteenth,1 but they were not parodies of sermons. Parodies of sermons are available from Christian sources that date to the same period.2 Examining medieval sermons, Gilman3 distinguished between the Latin cathedral and monastic sermons that were preserved through the copying of the works of great preachers and the popular, often vernacular, preaching done in village churches, marketplaces, town squares, and at the sides of dusty roads. The parodies parallel this typology: One group was created by scholastically trained teachers; the other stems from popular tradition.Yet, in Gilman’s opinion, the extant texts of both categories are not truly popular creations. “No examples of purely oral tradition have been or could have been preserved, since they were extempore in nature.”4 Their form can interpolated only from preserved literary parodies. The earliest evidence for parodic sermons is available from 1260, when they were condemned by the council of the Province of Cognac.5 Within the medieval church, parodies of sermons became part of a ritual and festival when they were performed and developed within the context of the celebration of the festum innocentium (feast of the holy innocents). According to Christian tradition, this is celebrated on the twenty-eighth of December in commemoration of the children whom Herod murdered after the apparition of the star to the Wise Men (Matthew 2:16–18). Despite its commemorative nature, during the festival children were permitted to elect a boy-bishop, and the occasion served as the core ritual from which the celebration that was known as the festum stultorum (feast of fools) was developed. It was celebrated on or about the feast of circumcision, which took place on the first of January, and it was the feast of fools that included the parodic sermon.6 66 / The Death of a Wicked Heretic  467   468  Folktales of the Jews: Volume 2 Jewish Parodies In Jewish society, the festival of Purim served...