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Laughter Through Tears: The Wise Men of Chelm and
the Holocaust in Nathan Englander's Story “The Tumblers”

Publication date: 2013

Studia Judaica, 2013, Nr 2 (32), pp. 171 - 186

Authors

Brygida Gasztold
Koszalin University of Technology
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1985-1713 Orcid
All publications →

Titles

Laughter Through Tears: The Wise Men of Chelm and
the Holocaust in Nathan Englander's Story “The Tumblers”

Abstract

“The Tumblers” is one of the stories from Nathan Englander’s debut collection of short fiction entitled For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (1999). In this story a group of orthodox Jews from the Chelm ghetto tries to impersonate a troupe of acrobats in order to escape transportation to the death camps. The humorous stories of the Sages/Fools of Chelm, popularized for a wider international audience by Isaac Bashevis Singer, are a vital part of Yiddish folklore. Englander’s story delivers a fresh perspective on the lost world of the Eastern European shtetl by juxtaposing comedy with the horrors of the Holocaust in an unlikely combination of farce, irony, and profundity.

References

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Englander Nathan, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, London 1999.

Feuer Menachem, Andrew Schmitz, Hup! Hup! We Must Tumble: Toward an Ethical Reading of the Schlemiel, “Modern Fiction Studies,” 1 (2008).

Freud Zygmunt, Dowcip i jego stosunek do nieświadomości, tłum. Robert Reszke, Warszawa 1993.

Gitenstein Barbara R., Fools and Sages: Humor in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s «The Fools of Chelm and Their History», „Studies in American Jewish Literature” 1 (1981).

Levinas Emmanuel, The Levinas Reader, red. Sean Hand, Oxford 1989.

Rogovin Or, Chelm as Shtetl: Y.Y. Trunk’s Khelemer Khakhomin, „Prooftexts” 29 (2009).

Singer Isaac Bashevis, Opowiadania dla dzieci, tłum. Andrzej Polkowski, Poznań 2005.

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Świat utracony. O twórczości Isaaca Bashevisa Singera, red. Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Lublin 2003.

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Information

Information: Studia Judaica, 2013, pp. 171 - 186

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Laughter Through Tears: The Wise Men of Chelm and
the Holocaust in Nathan Englander's Story “The Tumblers”

English:

Laughter Through Tears: The Wise Men of Chelm and
the Holocaust in Nathan Englander's Story “The Tumblers”

Authors

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1985-1713

Brygida Gasztold
Koszalin University of Technology
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1985-1713 Orcid
All publications →

Koszalin University of Technology

Published at: 2013

Article status: Open

Licence: None

Percentage share of authors:

Brygida Gasztold (Author) - 100%

Article corrections:

-

Publication languages:

Polish

View count: 1697

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