Fables are as old as writing itself, or perhaps even older. It is certain that the first fables were not formally distinguished from other literary expressions, and most probably did not exist as an independent genre. When we begin to encounter fables dispersed in rabbinic literature and employed by the sages of Israel for explanatory purposes, we can suppose the raw material that gave birth to the fables we know today was formed, as narratives, long before. Like the fairy tales brought to the West by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, which originated in Egypt and the Far East, the classic and modern fables and those found in Jewish sources are intertwined with threads handed down from the most ancient civilizations. As Ana María de Francia Caballero comments,
We say “in the style of Aesop,” since nothing of his has come down to us in writing. He is believed to have lived around 550 B.C.E.:
We can see that the profession of fabulist was not without risk. Phaedrus was persecuted, as was his predecessor, when some of his listeners recognized themselves in his fables. The majority of the fabulists lived in poverty and became famous after their deaths.
During the Middle Ages in Spain, the influence of the eastern fables, brought by the Arab civilization that occupied the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula for eight centuries, was combined with Aesop and Phaedrus. King Alphonse X, “The Sage,“ Monarch of Castille and León, personally sponsored translations and adaptations of Arab and Hebrew works as well as Latin, thus acting as an intermediary between the East and the West.
Rabbinic literature written in Hebrew and Aramaic between the third and ninth centuries served as the raw material for both liturgical and secular poetry and for the philosophical Jewish texts written in the Middle Ages in Spain, France, and Germany. Rabbinic literature brought with it knowledge of the East but also influences from Greek culture. In this sense, we can say that the Jewish fables were influenced by the surrounding cultures and later influenced others.
A common fallacy is that the only actors in fables are characters from the animal world. Thus García and Róspide López state in their study of Aesop’s Fables:
When we hear the word fable, which is surely not Greek, we automatically tend to associate it with animal stories and the legendary name of Aesop. The belief that the fable relates exclusively to animals originated with fabulists like La Fontaine and his successors beginning in the seventeenth century, and from the fact that the majority of their narratives were about animals; while in the Greek stories, in addition to animals, the characters are plants, inanimate beings, personifications of supernatural powers, mythological beings, men, heroes and gods, to a greater degree than in more recent fables.5
René Le Bossu (1631-1680), a French scholar known for a chapter on the fable in his Treatise on the Epic Poem (1675), says that the fable is “a discourse invented to shape behavior by means of lessons disguised in the allegories of an action,” and adds that “there are two essential parts of a fable: the truth, that serves as the basis, and the fiction, that is like the disguise of the truth.” According to Le Bossu, there are three types of fables, depending on who the main characters are: “the rational,” that portray actions of men or gods; “the moral,” in which beasts behave as if they were human; and the “mixed,” involving the two types, the rational and the animal. A fourth type of fable uses characters that are the elements of nature or inanimate objects.6
On the other hand, the characters who take part in the fables, whether men or animals, have to be given personality traits “that distinguish one from the other, and that conform to the preconceived ideas that one has about them; thus, the wolf has to be a thief, the lion brave, the fox cunning, etc.” 7
Similarly, Ricardo Navas Ruiz, in his introduction to the work of Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, explains that four notes, two strictly formal and two informal, are indispensable to the existence of a fable: the narrative character, the importance of the dialogue, the didactics, and the unreality. Three of these differentiate the fable from related genres: the narrative character separates it from the epigram and the proverb; its didactic purpose separates it from the story and places it on the plane of the pragmatic; and its unreality separates it from the historical narrative.8
García and López add:
However, it is important to remember that all these conceptualizations concerning the character of the fable are subsequent to the existence
of the fable itself. As we suggested previously, what we know today as a separate and defined genre formed part of a vast political, religious and social literature, in which the aphorism, the parable, the description of events, the anecdote, the etiological story [explaining the origins of something], poetry, and also the fable converged.9
Whether or not an author’s name is attached to them, all fables give the impression of a popular story or folktale.
As elements of the unconscious mind are expressed in dreams and slips of the tongue, so good fabulists, storytellers, poets and artists have the potential to express in their work an internal world with which we are all familiar but have difficulty expressing. Thus, on reading a fable or a fairy tale,10 or on seeing a work of art, we feel that something is awakened in us, which may be an association with some faraway scene, the evocation of a memory, or an old idea that, given
the circumstances, acquires a new meaning. It can also be, in the Jewish context, a new interpretation of a biblical verse. Regarding this, it is important to understand that the Jewish sages did not see their new interpretations as a breaking away from the biblical text; rather, they felt they were pointing to a meaning that in some way was already latent in the text itself. I will return to this point later on.
Most of us read fables when we were very young. However, the classical fables were not meant to educate or entertain children, but rather the adult public. Adults would meet in the public plazas of ancient Greece or Rome to listen to Aesop or Phaedrus or many others, who used fables to satirize the government in power or to point out their defects, trying to attract the attention of their listeners while attempting to avoid censorship.
Charles Perrault, a French contemporary of La Fontaine, wrote many of the “Mother Goose" tales known, in translation, to English readers, including “Cinderella” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” Perrault sees in fairy tales and in fables in general, an educational objective:
Our ancestors…always took great care that their stories carried within them a laudable moral or lesson. In all of them virtue is rewarded, and in all of them vice is punished. All tend to demonstrate the advantages of being honest, patient, prudent, hardworking and obedient and the misfortunes that befall those who are not.… Although the adventures in all these fables may seem frivolous or strange, they are sure to excite in children the desire to be like those who have achieved happiness, while instilling in them a fear of the misfortunes in which the evil ones fall as a result of their actions. Shouldn’t we then praise those mothers and fathers for the fact that, when their children are still not capable of understanding hard truths devoid of adornment, they give them the truth to swallow wrapped in pleasant narratives appropriate to their tender ages? …It is almost unbelievable how eagerly these innocent souls, whose natural rectitude has not yet been corrupted, receive these hidden instructions; the children become sad and disheartened while the hero and the heroine of the story struggle with misfortune, and shout with joy at the hour of their happiness; likewise, after suffering impatiently the prosperity of evildoers, they feel satisfied to see them finally punished as they deserve to be. All narratives are like scattered seeds that at first do not produce more than feelings of pleasure or sadness, but that do not fail to bear the fruit of good intentions.11
In Spain too we see Samaniego give his fables an ending that is clearly instructive.The Spanish author wrote his fables at the request of his uncle, the Count of Peñaflorida, to serve as an example to the students of the Royal Vascongado Seminary. The term “instructive” is sometimes used as a synonym for “formative”; in Samaniego’s time, the profession of teaching at its highest level included in its curriculum character formation (or the teaching of virtues), a concept that would seem strange to some people today 12
One year after the publication of Samaniego’s fables in 1781, Tomás de Iriarte published his own fables, which criticized and satirized bad writers, plagiarists, and unscrupulous critics. When Iriarte was accused of attacking, in the guise of his fables, writers and well-known personages of the time (including Samaniego himself), he defended himself by assigning to his work an impersonal and universal character, thereby expressing—as he understood it—the point of the genre: “My warnings touch everyone and no one”…“Whoever reads my fables, knows also that all of them speak to a thousand nations, not only to the Spanish. And they do not speak of these times; defects are noted that have always existed, as they exist today.”13
In the Dominican Republic, José Nuñez de Caceres (1772-1846) gave his fables a political aspect, and defending himself beforehand from possible accusations, wrote: In fables, do not look for any thing other than correcting men’s vices through subtle and ingenious works of literature,”14 thus summarizing what he understood to be the purpose of a fable.
As far as Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch (1806-1880), a fabulist from Madrid, is concerned, the author of fables should not seek, “as the traditional usually does, to teach [listeners] astuteness [to help them] to survive in a radically perverse world in which the good, the clever and of course, the stupid perish.” Hartzenbusch’s purpose may be less classical, but was undoubtedly more idealistic. He wants to provide a series of norms of conduct that form the character of man and help him to function in a dignified manner within a social structure that respects the freedom and rights of the individual.15
Where did Aesop find the themes that served as the basis of his fables? What is his and what did he borrow? It is hard to know where to draw the subtle line between adaptation and originality. La Fontaine has been called the Aesop and the Phaedrus of his time, and like those classical authors, he both borrowed and adapted. And what about the themes we find in the 87 fables of the Panchatantra, the oldest collection of fables from India? Are they all original? Perhaps Samaniego, by translating the work of La Fontaine and putting it into rhyme in the beautiful Spanish of the eighteenth century, also made an original contribution. And when Lessing changed the end of Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Crow,” perhaps he created a new fable.16
What is certain is that it is impossible to trace the original sources of most of the fables that we know today. Therefore, when we speak of fables, everything has already been said and at the same time, each work is like new.
In the prologue to the 1848 edition of his Fables, Hartzenbusch affirms that all art, and especially the fable, is a work of alteration: it is made by using old materials in a new way. He states this in a humorous way, comparing it to a verse by the important Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681): “A youth mended his knickers in secret. I, who was watching him, asked him: What’s new? And he answered: Only the thread.”17
However, although they draw from the same sources, especially Aesop, Iriarte is not Samaniego, and La Fontaine is not Hartzenbusch. In each author it is possible to discover—sometimes after a thorough study—what is original in their work and what is borrowed. At times a translation generates a new version of a known work because translations are never exact. At other times, the newness is in the particular style. In some cases, the same theme is used to teach various lessons, and in other cases, as we see upon analyzing the Jewish stories, the fable appears inserted in an interpretative context, and its purpose has little to do with that of the classical collections.
Finally, each author reflects in his collection the customs of his times, the idiomatic uses of language, the political and social conflicts, the idiosyncrasies of the government in power, the current literary disputes, the religious and cultural traditions of a particular people, and his own fears, prejudices and preferences. Thus, each author has his merit, and in each of them it is possible to find original elements that are lacking in the others.
For our ancient sages, the word “Torah” signified more than the Five Books of Moses that are usually referred to by this name. In this tradition, “Torah” is synonymous with Divine Wisdom, which existed before the creation of the world. All aspects of the life of a human being, from the most trivial to the most sublime, are found in it.
Our ancient sages taught that the “Torah” revealed to Moses was given in two forms: one small part was given in writing, while the larger part was maintained orally. This Oral Torah was transmitted by the leaders of each generation to their successors: from Moses to Joshua, from Joshua to the Elders of Israel, from the Elders of Israel to the Prophets, from the Prophets to the members of the Great Assembly, and from the members of the Great Assembly to the first Rabbis, Our Sages of Blessed Memory.
The first Rabbis, Our Sages of Blessed Memory, considered themselves followers of the Pharisees. What the Pharisees proposed was the extension of the holiness that suffuses Jerusalem to all aspects of daily life. This meant in practice that such routine matters as meals, marital relations, and business dealings would fall under regulations that sometimes applied to specific events and places in the Biblical texts. This proliferation of rules—an aspect criticized by Christianity—gave the Jewish people innumerable opportunities to get closer to God by infusing their daily lives with holiness.
The Scribes were a group closely associated with the Pharisees. The Scribes, as part of a long tradition of interpretation of Jewish texts, saw in the Scriptures an inexhaustible source of wisdom, and they made study of every detail the center of their daily activities, down to the individual letters and strokes of the text.
The rabbinic movement that gave rise to the great Jewish interpretive collections called the Talmud and the Midrash can be understood as a combination of these two groups, the Pharisees and the Scribes. The rabbinic movement elevated the value of the study of the regulations that originated from the Scriptures, but with the understanding that these laws must encompass all aspects of daily life, without limiting themselves to their original contexts.18
The title of this book is Fables from the Jewish Tradition. In particular, these fables can be found in the Talmud and the Midrash. I have already referred to the origin, the characteristics, and the purpose of the fables. It is now time to explore the terms “Talmud” and “Midrash.” Much has been written about these two concepts, and it is difficult to summarize their essence. However, we find a good, brief approximation in the work of Yacob Newman and Gabriel Siván (see Bibliography).The following definitions based on the work of these authors will give the reader a general idea of what these terms mean.
Talmud: literally “learning, study.” The official body of Jewish law and tradition. As a treasure that houses Jewish law, tradition, and wisdom, nothing is superior to the Talmud. Although technically it is a registry of erudite discussions regarding the Mishna, in reality it includes all aspects of life—from jurisprudence, religious observance and formalities, to folklore, popular science, astrology and numerology.
The Talmud combines two parts, woven together: the Mishna (that is, the Oral Law written down and codified around the year 200 C. E.), and the Gemara, the commentaries on the “canon” of the Mishna, transcribed between the third and sixth century C.E. The teachings of the Mishna, written in Hebrew, are derived from the ancient sages (Tana, plural Tanaim); the explanatory material of the Gemara, written largely in Aramaic, is derived from the later sages (Amora, plural Amoraim). In the vernacular, “Talmud” and “Gemara” are often synonyms. There are two monumental versions of the Talmud: the Palestinian, or the Jerusalemite (Talmud Eretz Israel, or Talmud Yerushalmi), and the Babylonian (Talmud Bavli).
The first version, the Yerushalmi, finalized around the fifth century C.E., includes a large Greek influence, and reflects the discussions in the Academies of the Land of Israel. Only 39 of the 63 tractates (volumes) of the Mishna were covered. The haste in which the compilers worked is evident and could have been caused by the political pressures of that time, thus explaining the loss of many sections. The majority consists of Halacha (see definition below).
The later version, the Bavli, finalized around the sixth century C.E., reflects the discussions in the Academies of Babylonia. It covers 37 tractates of the Mishna, but is at least three times more voluminous than the Yerushalmi. Perhaps as much as two thirds of the Talmud of Babylonia is made up of Aggadah (non-legal material); however, it is the version that always exerted the widest influence and had a superior authority—to the point that in fact, allusions to “the Talmud” always refer to the Babylonian Talmud.
Midrash: “study, interpretation,” a term that denotes both a method of interpreting the Torah and a body of literature. The Hebrew root “DaRaSH” means to inquire, investigate, expound, interpret, and preach, and the name Midrash includes all these meanings. The objective of various midrashim (the body of texts) is to extract and explain the underlying meaning of specific biblical passages. Somtimes the resulting midrashim serve to resolve textual problems or to bring the biblical text into agreement with Halacha, and sometimes they take the form of extensions of the biblical narrative, called aggadah. The midrashic literature extends, historically, from the period of the Tanaim (first century of the Common Era) to the beginnings of the Middle Ages.
Given that the terms Halacha and Aggadah are repeated frequently in both definitions, it is important to clarify them:
Halacha: Usually translated as “Jewish law,” it is a body of Jewish thought regulating numerous aspects of daily life. The Hebrew literally means “a path or a way of walking." As a category of Jewish writings, the term denotes biblical law, the legal part of the Talmud, and later codifications, in contrast with the aggadah, which is narrative.
Aggadah: from the Hebrew, Aggadah or Haggadah. General designation for the non-halachic (non-legal) material that is found in the classical Jewish texts. The aggadic
writers cover a wide range: biblical tales, fables, and folklore, anecdotes and biographical details that refer to the sages, moral teachings, medicine, philosophy and theology.
Halachic midrash, a legal method and genre, deals principally with the precepts and details of observance that can be deduced from biblical texts. Aggadic midrash, a narrative method and genre, provides new levels of moral and religious perception based on biblical sources.
It is important to note that there is no book that is called “the Midrash.” In spite of the popular usage that is given to the term, we cannot say something like “the Midrash says,” in the same way that we refer to the Talmud, the Zohar, or the Shulchan Aruch. Midrash is a type of literature as well as a type of process or activity, but there is not “a” Midrash. What we can speak of is collections of midrashim (the plural of midrash) written, as we said before, over a period of almost 1000 years. For this reason it can help us to think of midrash in two ways: as a process of interpretation, where the main object of study is the Hebrew Bible, and as a work that presents a specific collection of such interpretations.19
Examples of collections of halachic midrash are Mechilta on Exodus, Sifra on Leviticus, and Sifre on Numbers and Deuteronomy. Examples of collections of aggadic midrash are the Tanchuma (also called Yelamdenu) and the Midrash Rabbah on the Five Books of Moses (such as Genesis Rabbah, Exodus Rabbah, etc.) and the Five
Scrolls (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther).Additional collections are Midrash Tehillim on the Psalms, and a later anthology, Yalkut Shimoni, probably compiled in the thirteenth century.
We can now say that this book you are holding presents a brief but varied collection of fables that are found scattered through the Talmud (the fables presented here belong to the Babylonian Talmud) and in distinct collections of midrashim. It deals with purely aggadic material put into writing between the fifth and the fourteenth centuries C.E.
As we noted above, the word “midrash” can refer either to a process of interpretation or to a specific collection of such interpretations. In this book, the word “Midrash” with a capital “M” usually refers to a collection from which one of our fables was taken, such as Midrash Rabbah, Midrash Tehillim, etc. More generally, however, the word refers to a process of interpretation.
Midrash as a process of interpretation must be understood based on the premise of the divine origin of the Torah and of the right and the obligation of our sages to interpret it.
If the Torah comes from God, everything that is written in it should reflect harmony, integrity, and virtue. But some parts of the Scriptures are difficult for humans to understand in that way. Some contradict themselves and do not respond to common sense or to the customs of the times.The Scriptures are often silent in the face of specific central events, and the writing style leaves gaps in the narrative or fails to show us how the characters are thinking and feeling. Some Scriptures confront the reader with ethical problems, with issues in which the very authority of God seems to be questioned. There are biblical characters whose personal conduct leaves much to be desired, notwithstanding their high rank and position within the Scriptures themselves and within the Jewish tradition in general. How do our sages deal with these problems?
In addition, how do they explain the national disaster that involved the destruction of the Second Temple and the categorical failure of the “Great Revolt”20 and of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion?21 Where can they find words of consolation for so much death and destruction? How can they justify daily religious practices that are not mentioned in the Scriptures or others that apparently contradict what is written in them?
To try to respond to these questions, our sages turned to midrash as a process of interpretation. Midrash tries to resolve the contradictions and the affronts to common sense, and to preserve the honor of illustrious personages and the logic of the sacred text. Midrash gives expression to little known characters and fills the gaps in biblical events. It brings comfort to the suffering by creating a new scale of values that permitted the Jews to survive physically and spiritually in a hostile world. Midrash is also responsible for safeguarding the sacred text, for solidifying the practices transmitted orally down through the generations, and for transmuting surrounding influences into usable elements in Jewish culture.
Midrash is a way of extracting new meaning from a verse of Scripture. The new meaning should not necessarily contradict the literal sense of the verse (in fact, it is rare that it does), but should expand it, seek a concrete application or, in certain cases, limit it. We cannot say definitively whether our sages believed that their interpretation flowed naturally from the text (that is, that the interpretation is the logical consequence of the exploration of the verse). It can be assumed they already knew the literal or traditional meaning of the verse; in midrash they added another layer.
There are cases in which a midrashric interpretation supports a traditional practice or a custom accepted by the majority. In others the midrash is a way to find logic in an obscure or conflicting verse. However, sometimes we get the feeling that our sages wanted to transmit to us a new teaching. To accomplish their goal, they gave the verse a meaning that illuminated it with a new light, without necessarily contradicting the more familiar meaning of the verse.
Let’s take as an example the following verse that is illustrated by one of our fables: This is the genealogy of Isaac son of Abraham, Abraham begot Isaac (Genesis 25:19). Midrash Tanchuma22 seeks to find an explanation for the reiteration: Isaac son of Abraham, Abraham begot Isaac. Although a possible answer may be Rabbi Ishmael’s famous maxim: “The Torah spoke in the language of human beings,”23 which suggests that there should be no further reason to question these uses of language, the midrash is not satisfied with this response. This is not necessarily because the language seems illogical, but because the repetition offers the opportunity to teach us something new: that children are the reflection of their parents: Knowing a person tells us who his father or his teacher was. For midrash, each challenge presented by the Scriptures is an opportunity to express an idea, reinforce a concept, or teach a lesson.
On the other hand, midrash attempts to fill in the gaps inherent in the laconic style of the Scriptures. We read in the first verse of chapter 22 of the Book of Genesis: It came to pass after these things, that God tested Abraham… The Torah, however, does not tell us what these things are. This provided our sages with an excellent opportunity to probe more deeply.
Let’s look at another example: And Cain spoke unto Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him (Genesis 4:8).The Torah does not tell us what Cain said to his brother. The reader is left with the feeling that, if we knew the content of the dialogue between the brothers, we would have an explanation of the first assassination in the history of humankind. On the other hand, the verse is lacking in all logic and seems to be cut in the middle. Thus, the reader can ask with good reason, “What does Cain’s saying something to his brother (what it was we don’t know) have to do with the fact that he then killed him? And lastly, this verse sets forth a problem at the theological level: Shouldn’t God have prevented the killing? Didn’t He know that Cain was a potential murderer? To these questions, Genesis Rabbah provide many answers; none of them closes the issue, but they open it to new levels of thought and discussion.
Midrash unites a new idea, a new concept, an unknown story, with a known verse, whether complicated or not. Sometimes the novelty consists of the connection between the verse and the idea or concept. This occurs, generally, when the author utilizes the verse as a support (asmachta) for a known law or practice. An example of this is our sages’ interpretation of the verse: Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy (Exodus 20:8). Our sages taught (Bavli Pesachim 106a) that this verse teaches the obligation to sanctify the Sabbath with wine. This practice, Kiddush, probably already existed, and what the sages did through this midrash was to associate it with a verse, thus giving this important practice a new legitimacy.
Finally, we must clarify that when we speak of midrash as a process, we do not limit it to the collections of Midrashim. This process was also used in the development of Talmudic discussion and would also be used, although to a lesser degree, by medieval and modern commentators to the present day.
In the next section we will see what place fables occupied within this process.
The fables in the rabbinic literature (Talmud and Midrash) very seldom appear alone (as they do in Aesop and other fabulists).Instead, they support an interpretation of a verse of Torah or accompany the words of a sage. In general, they are preceded by the question “Lemah hadavar domeh?”—“To what can this be compared?" —or by the expression “Mashal le…”—“It is compared to….”
The moral of the fable is often provided by the verse that is being discussed. For instance, the fable of the fox and the wolf concludes with the verse: The righteousness of the sincere shall make straight his way; But the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness (Proverbs 11:5).At other times the author begins with the moral and then presents a verse and a fable to make his point.
In this process of interpretation, the fables generally illustrate the connection between a new idea and the previously known verse. For example, in the case of the fable, “The Owner of the Hill and the Owner of the Ditch” (Bavli Megilah 14b), the midrash begins by citing the verse that it wishes to interpret: And the king (Ahasuerus) said unto Haman: ‘The silver is given to thee, the people also, to do with them as it seemeth good to thee’ (Esther 3:11). Then the midrash presents or illustrates through the fable a new idea connected to this verse: Ahasuerus wanted to be rid of the Jews as much as Haman did, except that he could not find anyone to do the “dirty work.” The author of the midrash has developed a conclusion from the verse that is not obvious in the original Esther story: Like the owner of the hill and the owner of the ditch, Haman and Ahasuerus each had something to offer that fitted the other’s needs. Although in this case, the conclusion is not made explicit, this process can be found in many of our fables.
Although fables can be used to illustrate a process of interpretation, this is not their only function. Many times fables serve as an example of an idea that one of the sages wished to express, although there is no verse involved. Such is the case of the fable of the stag that joins the king’s flock; the idea transmitted is that God loves converts. Fables are generally short, and the majority of them present us with a direct or indirect dialogue: The narrator relates in the third person the dialogue that took place among the various characters. At times we also witness an internal discourse, as in the case of the king who swears to throw a stone at his son but then reconsiders and changes his mind.
The rabbinic fables can be interpreted from many theoretical points of view, including rhetoric, history, structure, allegory and hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, the approach followed in this book, is the development and study of theories of interpretation and understanding of texts. The hermeneutic focus points out that the talmudic and midrashic fables were created as part of the process of study in the beit midrash (house of study) and that their primary purpose was to interpret the Scriptures. According to Professor Yonah Fraenkel, the fables were written by and for those who studied the Jewish texts and not for the general public. Fraenkel distinguishes the rabbinic fables from the classic fables, which were originally told in the public plazas for the moral education of the people.24
In a similar vein, Luis Vegas Montaner, in his introduction to Genesis Rabbah, also differentiates the rabbinic parables from those cited in the New Testament:
Different from the evangelical parables, whose function is not to interpret the references from the Scriptures, but to give an example of daily life with a moral purpose, the ‘Meshalim’ of Genesis Rabbah, as with so many rabbinical works, have a clear midrashic goal; the examples serve to clarify concrete references from Scripture. Only on rare occasions is the goal of this exemplification simply moral.25
For Fraenkel, the fables included in the Talmud and Midrash are part of a dramatic thread that has as its ultimate goal bringing people closer to a religious vision of life. The fable provides the listener with a new vision of reality, with new knowledge regarding an unknown aspect of his or her own existence. Because the fables form part of a wider process of interpretation, it is important, according to Fraenkel, to understand them within their original context.26
The book you are holding, however, is not so ambitious. I have only tried to suggest some of the elements of the context in which the Jewish fables arose and show that these texts, although they have certain parallels in other cultures, have their own vigor and originality.
As stated in the notes, the majority of the talmudic and midrashic fables have a parallel in universal literature. Aesop, Phaedrus, La Fontaine, Samaniego, and Iriarte present us with motifs that also appear in Jewish texts. The question of reciprocal influences is important and deserves a few lines.
If Aesop was indeed the author of the fables that bear his name, his fables must have come before talmudic and midrashic literature. However, the issue is not so simple, since Aesop’s Fables were put into writing at a much later date, at approximately the same time that the two versions of the Talmud and the earliest collections of midrashim were written.
Most likely, both traditions, the Greek and the Hebrew, were nurtured from more ancient common sources, although we cannot discount the possibility that the Jewish authors adapted some themes known in the Greco-Roman world for their own needs.
La Fontaine, Samaniego, and Iriarte lived between 500 and 1000 years after the Jewish texts were written down. Scholars generally believe that the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century fabulists copied the Greeks and the Romans, but they almost certainly did not know the Jewish texts.
At any rate, what is special about a Jewish fable is not necessarily the specific motif, such as foxes or grapes, which it may share with other traditions, but rather the use made of this motif and the moral or conclusion drawn from it. In addition, there are some fables that have no parallel in the classics and others whose theme is exclusively Jewish, such as the fables about the pig and its impurity.
The reader who is particularly interested in this subject should read the notes for each fable, which provide access to the existing parallels and, more importantly, to the specific rabbinic context of each fable.
This selection of the fables is based on the monumental work of Bialik and Ravnitzki: Sefer Ha-Aggadah (The Book of Legends). Although excellent English translations of the Talmud and Midrash already exist (see Bibliography), my own study began in the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Every translation is in some ways an interpretation because of the differences between languages, and I wished to convey my own sense of the original. The notes to the fables provide access to their context, which will help the reader to understand them with greater depth. The titles of the fables were added for clarity.
The freshness and innocence of Marcelo Ferder’s illustrations provide an additional level of interpretation, helping to make these thousand-year-old texts as relevant and interesting to lovers of fables and of Jewish texts in general as they already are to scholars.
Aggadat Bereshit. Hebrew. Lemberg, 1858.
Aminoah, Noah, and Yosef Nitzan. Torah. The Oral Tradition: An Outline of Rabbinic Literature Throughout the Ages. Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, Department for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora, 1983.
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Knopf, 1976.
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Notes
- Félix María de Samaniego, Fábulas (Fables), ed. Ana María de Francia Caballero (Madrid:Ediciones Alba,1989), 31.
- Francisco Martín García and Alfredo Róspide López, eds. Fabulas Esópicas (Aesop’s Fables) (Madrid: Ediciones Distribuciones Alba,1989), 11-12.
- Samaniego, 36.
- Francisco Martín García and Alfredo Róspide López, eds. Fabulas Esópicas (Aesop’s Fables) (Madrid: Ediciones Distribuciones Alba,1989), 11-12.
- García and Róspide López, 11.
- Tómas de Iriarte, Fábulas Literarias (Literary Fables)., ed. Sebastián de la Nuez (Madrid, Editora Nacional, 1983),
23-24.
- Iriarte, 28.
- Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch: Fábulas (Fables), Edited, Introduction, and Notes by Ricardo Navas Ruiz (Madrid,
Espasa-Calape, 1973), VII.
- García and Róspide López, 14.
- Much has been written on this subject in the field of psychoanalysis. Bruno Bettelhiem’s The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales is a good example.
- Charles Perault, Cuentos (Tales) (Mexico, Editorial Porrua, 1992), 4-5.
- In 18th and 19th century Jewish literature, many new works were published concerning the education of virtues, the most popular probably being The Path of the Righteous by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (1707-1746).
- Iriarte, 32. The quote refers to the fable “The Elephant and the Other Animals.”
- Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, Fábulas Dominicanas, (Barcelona, Fundación Rodriguez Demorizi, 1979), 11-12.
- Hartzenbusch, XVI.
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was one of the most notable German playwrights and critics. In his version, the fox dies because the cheese that he snatched was poisoned, thus changing the end of the well-known story. Instead of praising the fox for his cleverness, Lessing condemns him as a flatterer.
- Hartzenbusch, XIV.
- Barry W. Holtz, ed., Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (New York, Touchstone, 1984).
- Holtz, 177.
- The first Jewish-Roman War (66-73 C.E.). It was the first of three major rebellions by the Jews against the Roman Empire. Sparked by persecution of the Jews, it ended when legions under Titus besieged and destroyed Jerusalem, looted and burned Herod’s Temple.
- Bar Kokhba’s revolt (132-135 C.E.), also known as The Second Jewish Revolt or the Second Jewish-Roman War, was the last major rebellion by the Jews of Judea against the Roman Empire.
- Tanchuma Toldot 3.
- Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 31b, Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 64b, and others.
- Fraenkel, Yona: Darkhei Ha’aggadah Vehamidrash. Vol. 1. Givatayim, Israel: Masada Publications, 1991. 391-3.
- Vegas Montaner, Luis: Génesis Rabah I. Editorial Verbo Divino. España. 1994. 41.
- Fraenkel, 326-330.
