Folklore by its very nature travels and scholar Louis Ginzberg seems perfect to present Jewish folklore in his seven volume work, The Legends of the Jews. I won't presume to know how Project Gutenberg manages copyright of the translation (by Paul Radin and Henrietta Szold) offering the first four volumes of the German manuscript. This weekend is in the midst of Passover, along with the current Palestinian situation in both Israel and the U.S. It seems appropriate to look at folklore about the prophet Elijah. Almost all religions, including both Judaism and Islam, revere Elijah. Passover tradition includes the door of the house being opened and Elijah invited in along with a cup of wine reserved for him.
Ginzberg says of Elijah:
The Biblical account of the prophet Elijah, of his life and work during the
reigns of Ahab and his son Joram, gives but a faint idea of a personage whose
history begins with Israel's sojourn in Egypt, and will end only when Israel,
under the leadership of the Messiah, shall have taken up his abode again in
Palestine.
Talking about the post-Biblical work of Elijah, Ginzberg states:
Elijah's removal from earth, so far being an interruption to his relations with
men, rather marks the beginning of his real activity as a helper in time of
need, as a teacher and as a guide. At first his intervention in sublunar
affairs was not frequent.
. . .
It was reserved for later days, however, for Talmudic times, the golden age of
the great scholars, the Tannaim and the Amoraim, to enjoy Elijah's special
vigilance as protector of the innocent, as a friend in need, who hovers over
the just and the pious, ever present to guard them against evil or snatch them
out of danger. With four strokes of his wings Elijah can traverse the world. Hence no spot on earth is too far removed for his help. As an angel
he enjoys the power of assuming the most various appearances to accomplish his
purposes. Sometimes he looks like an ordinary man, sometimes he takes the
appearance of an Arab, sometimes of a horseman, now he is a Roman
court-official, now he is a harlot.
One example of why Elijah is invoked is his wisdom seeing beyond the obvious. This story shows how what we see may not reveal God's view of the situation. (Wikipedia's article on Elijah gives a more visually friendly version of the story. I'm giving it as Ginzberg wrote it, only breaking it up rather than one very long block of text.)
***
Once he granted his friend Rabbi Joshua
ben Levi the fulfilment of any wish he might express, and all the Rabbi asked
for was, that he might be permitted to accompany Elijah on his wanderings
through the world. Elijah was prepared to gratify this wish. He only imposed
the condition, that, however odd the Rabbi might think Elijah's actions, he was
not to ask any explanation of them. If ever he demanded why, they would have to
part company.
So Elijah and the Rabbi fared forth together, and they journeyed
on until they reached the house of a poor man, whose only earthly possession
was a cow. The man and his wife were thoroughly good-hearted people, and they
received the two wanderers with a cordial welcome. They invited the strangers
into their house, set before them food and drink of the best they had, and made
up a comfortable couch for them for the night. When Elijah and the Rabbi were
ready to continue their journey on the following day, Elijah prayed that the
cow belonging to his host might die. Before they left the house, the animal had
expired. Rabbi Joshua was so shocked by the misfortune that had befallen the
good people, he almost lost consciousness. He thought: "Is that to be the poor
man's reward for all his kind services to us?" And he could not refrain from
putting the question to Elijah. But Elijah reminded him of the condition
imposed and accepted at the beginning of their journey, and they travelled on,
the Rabbi's curiosity unappeased.
That night they reached the house of a
wealthy man, who did not pay his guest the courtesy of looking them in the
face. Though they passed the night under his roof, he did not offer them food
or drink. This rich man was desirous of having a wall repaired that had tumbled
down. There was no need for him to take any steps to have it rebuilt, for, when
Elijah left the house, he prayed that the wall might erect itself, and, lo! it
stood upright. Rabbi Joshua was greatly amazed, but true to his promise he
suppressed the question that rose to his lips.
So the two travelled on again,
until they reached an ornate synagogue, the seats in which were made of silver
and gold. But the worshippers did not correspond in character to the
magnificence of the building, for when it came to the point of satisfying the
needs of the way-worn pilgrims, one of those present said: "There is not dearth
of water and bread, and the strange travellers can stay in the synagogue,
whither these refreshments can be brought to them." Early the next morning,
when they were departing, Elijah wished those present in the synagogue in which
they had lodged, that God might raise them all to be "heads." Rabbi Joshua
again had to exercise great self-restraint, and not put into words the question
that troubled him profoundly.
In the next town, they were received with great
affability, and served abundantly with all their tired bodies craved. On these
kind hosts Elijah, on leaving, bestowed the wish that God might give them but a
single head. Now the Rabbi could not hold himself in check any longer, and he
demanded an explanation of Elijah's freakish actions. Elijah consented to clear
up his conduct for Joshua before they separated from each other. He spoke as
follows: "The poor man's cow was killed, because I knew that on the same day
the death of his wife had been ordained in heaven, and I prayed to God to
accept the loss of the poor man's property as a substitute for the poor man's
wife. As for the rich man, there was a treasure hidden under the dilapidated
wall, and, if he had rebuilt it, he would have found the gold; hence I set up
the wall miraculously in order to deprive the curmudgeon of the valuable find.
I wished that the inhospitable people assembled in the synagogue might have
many heads, for a place of numerous leaders is bound to be ruined by reason of
multiplicity of counsel and disputes. To the inhabitants of our last sojourning
place, on the other hand, I wished a 'single head,' for the one to guide a
town, success will attend all its undertakings. Know, then, that if thou seest
an evil-doer prosper, it is not always unto his advantage, and if a righteous
man suffers need and distress, think not God is unjust." After these words
Elijah and Rabbi Joshua separated from each other, and each went his own way.
***
As we look at the way things are happening in the world, may this remind us we should do the best we can, but don't know the full picture.
For further background I suggest starting with the Wikipedia articles on Elijah and Ginzberg in the first paragraph here and also on Joshua ben Levi. I omitted here numbers relating to footnotes there, but there is even more you may find if wished.
*************************
This
is part of a series of postings of stories under the category,
"Keeping the Public in Public Domain." The idea
behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the
authors and their immediate heirs were compensated. I feel
strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the
20th century. My
own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public
Domain I decided to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy
discovering new stories.
At
the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates
projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an
audience. Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing
of Public Domain stories will not occur that week. This is a return to
my regular posting of a research project here. (Don't worry, this
isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future
storytelling to an audience.) Response has convinced me that "Keeping
the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other
postings as often as I can manage it.
Other
Public Domain story resources I recommend-
There
are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for
folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's
database, Yashpeh,
the International Folktales Collection. I have long
recommended it and continue to do so. He has loaded
Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so
you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression
you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
You may have noticed I'm no
longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his
offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking
specific types of stories. There's another site, FairyTalez
claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales,
folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for
phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
Between those two sites, there
is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait,
there's more!"
The
email list for storytellers, Storytell,
discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional
suggestions:
-
Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible
through the Wayback Machine, described below, but the late Jackie Baldwin's
wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google
search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ . It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for December 22 2016 and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
- Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com
doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her
way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for
finding new books and stories to love and tell.
You're
going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT
go to the Internet Archive
Wayback Machine to find some of these old links. Tim's
site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a
full-time job. In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that
Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she
could no longer maintain it. Possibly searches maintained it.
Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim
Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old
Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library
(something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine. It
took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally
in December of 2006 it appears!
Somebody
as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website
is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.
I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can
be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that
becomes the only way to find them.
You
can see why I recommend these to you.
Have fun
discovering even more stories
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