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Nissan, “Middle Eastern Versions of the Trickster Tale ‘Yom Kippur in Tammuz’” | 44 On the Middle Eastern Jewish Versions of the Humorous Trickster Tale “Yom Kippur in Tammuz” (Tale Type AT 1831 *C [IFA], “Ignorance of Holidays”): Perceived Peripherality and Ignorance, Evolved from a Stereotype of an Isolated Rural Congregation, into New World or South Asia Deprecation, or into Social Grievance Ephraim Nissan Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, England, U.K. Abstract. International folklore knows variants and subtypes of Tale Type AT 1831 *C [IFA], “Ignorance of Holidays”. This article focuses on the Middle Eastern Jewish versions of this humorous trickster tale: there are not many of them (arguably because of demographic exiguity), but these versions deserve to be known. We contextualise the localised versions, by placing the material in a social and cultural context. For example, we can see that Iraqi Jews told such stories by reference to experiences in southern Asia, where many of them emigrated. By contrast, Kurdish Jews used the story to depict themselves as patient victims of some unscrupulous fund-raiser: they would rather acquiesce in his demands out of piety. We also argue that the stereotype about outlying communities, as reflected in the tales about emigrants, is akin to Old Country Jewish prejudice about Jewishness in America, well-known from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We also consider Ashkenazi variants of the tale (from the Israel Folklore Archive, or in Agnon), and an Afghan variant. Keywords: Trickster Tales; Predigtschwank; Festivals; Emigrants; Numskull towns; Middle East. 1. Introduction 2. The Gullible Congregation and the Trickster: a Moroccan Version 3. A Baghdadi Version Set in Argentina 4. A Baghdadi Version Set Locally: Crypto-Language Among Gentiles 5. A Baghdadi Version Set in India, and a Lebanese Occurrence 6. Considerations About Both Cultural Persistence and Acculturation of Iraqi Jews in South Asia 7. Clues, and Two Competing Hypotheses for Interpretation, from Social Inter-Communal and Socioeconomic Realities, Collaboration or Rifts Between Jewish Groups in India Since the Arrival of the Baghdadi Community 8. Reconsidering a Previous Hypothesis 9. A Variant in Verse Found in a Manuscript Reported About by Ratzaby 10. Jason’s and Uther’s Treatment of Tale-Type 1831 *C, and my Analysis of the Humour Involved 11. The Ignorant Emigrant Congregation 12. Becoming Deculturated to Survive at America’s and Tsarist Russia’s Frontier 12.1. Robert Aldrich’s Comedy Film The Frisco Kid Stereotype in Reverse 12.2. The Myth of Old Odessa as a Sinful City of Secularists and Rogues 13. A Comparison in Terms of Telos 14. An Afghan Version from the Israel Folklore Archive 15. An Iraqi Version from the Israel Folklore Archive, About Gullible Villagers 16. An IFA Version from Iraq, Whose Butt Is the Jewish Community of Arbil, Kurdistan 17. The Other Edge of the Weapon: Use of the Tale in Zakho, Kurdistan, and the Variant from Tiberias. A Fund-Raiser’s Improper Behaviour vs. the Hospitable Congregation’s Virtuous Acquiescence 18. A Version from the Galilee in the Israel Folklore Archive 19. Ashkenazi Versions from the Israel Folklore Archive 19.1. The Polish Jewish Tale “Hershele the Cantor” (IFA 9606) 19.2. Rumanian Jewish Variants Set in Germany (IFA 6976) 20. An Alternative from Agnon: An Ignorant But Well-Meaning Man Officiating 21. Fooltowns 21.1. Lorbottle and Gotham 21.2. Linskers as Numskulls, in Tales from the Israel Folklore Archive International Studies in Humour, 4(1), 2015 44 Nissan, “Middle Eastern Versions of the Trickster Tale ‘Yom Kippur in Tammuz’” | 45 22. Yuletide in Summer: Rationales per Type of Occurrence 23. Provincial Incompetents: Similar Stories from the Old and New Worlds 24. A Glimpse of the Rest of the Project 25. Contrasting “Yom Kippur in Tammuz” to the Incompetent Emigrants in Tractate America and Nanetto Pipetta 26. Dickens’ Disillusionment with America, Portrayed as Incompetent 27. A Self-Image of Limited Competence from Brazil: Lima Barreto’s A Nova Califórnia 28. A Parallel to A Nova California: Sholem Aleichem Makes the Man from America the Competent One, and the Old Country Townsfolk into Deluded Yokels 29. Concluding Remarks Appendix A: Examples of Baghdadi Jewish Oicotypisation: Tales That Either Fit In or Somewhat Approximate Tale Types 1543 C* and 1828* Appendix B: Crypto-Language, vs. Plain or Allusive Hebrew Not Being Understood Appendix C: Dissatisfaction with New World Standards, Turned into a Cosmic Condition of the Continent 1. Introduction This article analyses all those versions of a particular tale-type that I managed to trace, and contestualises them: this particular type of a Fooltown story turns out to have served different uses when told within different communities. This study could have been developed into a full-fledged book, but I much prefer to make it more widely available in the present medium, and, as to its size, mid-way between usual articles and a monograph. A table of contents is provided in the beginning, so readers can easily pick and choose what to read and what to skip. From a referee, I understand that the referee possesses further versions. This is unsurprising: with folktales, we can always expect more versions to turn up. I hope that scholar would further develop our present subject, and would discuss those further versions. In am indebted to several persons, both inside and outside academia, for making this study possible, and then what it is. The responsibility for any fault that may remain is mine alone. This article is part of a broader project in folklore, literary studies, and the sociology of humour, and in fact, Sections 12 and 20 to 27 belong in that wider context. The broader project is concerned with Jewish and gentile humorous imaginings of incompetent communities (at one end of the spectrum of incompetence, you get Fooltown stories, but that is an extreme situation). One subclass of such narratives concerns deculturated or ignorant emigrants in their new setting. In fact, the ascribed features of immigrant communities are sometimes unflattering not only in the host society, but also in the society in the Old Country they left. In a Jewish context, there used to be a prejudice about how religiously competent Jews in the Americas were. Here we confine ourselves to just one facet: we trace a relevant Jewish tale-type from Islamic countries, to an early stage, when the butt of the numskulls tale1 (a gullible congregation falls victim to a trickster) were unlearned rural communities in the Old Country itself, rather than a congregation in the Americas, or in a Jewish merchant colony in India. We then bridge the discussion to other parts of the project, which contrast Jewish narratives from literature (Gerson Rosenzweig’s Tractate America) and a film (Robert Aldrich’s western comedy The Frisco Kid), to how non-Jewish narratives treat ignorance in the New World. Immigration to the Americas saw the rise, in Old World Jewish communities, of the notion that New World communities tended to be ignorant in the religious culture. We trace the folkloric origin of this prejudice to an older stage, at which it targeted Old World rural Jewish communities in some areas. There is evidence from Islamic countries for a relevant 1 Numskulls tales from Jewish folklore were discussed by Jason (1975). International Studies in Humour, 4(1), 2015 45 Nissan, “Middle Eastern Versions of the Trickster Tale ‘Yom Kippur in Tammuz’” | 46 tale-type, “Yom Kippur2 in Tammuz”. In particular, this article reconstructs the evolution of a Middle Eastern Jewish tale-type about a trickster and a gullible congregation. It is suggested that its butt were originally unlearned rural communities, in an extreme characterisation that participates of the nature of “numskull tales” (cf. Chełm tales from Yiddish folklore). In this article, we consider a Moroccan version reported by Aharon Maman, four versions from Baghdad (of which three I heard from family members, and one I learned from Myer Samra, who heard them from his father), one version from a Lebanese source (kindly reported to me by Myer Samra), and a somewhat more elaborate version which Ratzaby found in a Middle Eastern manuscript, apparently copied in the 18th century. We then report Heda Jason’s brief treatment of Tale Type AT 1831 *C [IFA], “Ignorance of Holidays”, which is the one relevant. In the end, we are going to consider a version related by Kurdish Jews: it is quite revealing, in that it offers an altogether different perspective for the how the narrative is interpreted, socially and morally. Oicotypisation emerges: in the given locale and given generation when a version of the tale was told (and as reported about one or two generation later on), there was a cultural environment (oicotype) whose circumstances suggested a given customisation of some motifeme (an abstraction of a motif) into a given actual motif. Motifeme is a concept introduced by Alan Dundes (1962, repr. 1975). Oicotype or oikotype or oecotype is a concept originally introduced by Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (1948). In Appendix A, Baghdadi Jewish kinds of oicotypisation are discussed, for two international folktales apparently not ascribed to that group in the literature. In Nissan (2011), a lengthy discussion was provided of other tales as related by Baghdadi storytellers, and method, too, was discussed at length. In this article, I deliberately adopt an eclectic approach, combining different methodological frameworks. Sometimes, for subjects widely researched (such as the history of the Jews of Iraq or of South America) I adopt a personal approach. This may convey an impression of sporadic engagement, whereas it is a matter of maintaining a focus while tackling subjects from within a broad compass, and charting a trajectory developing our argument.