%0 Journal Article
%T Laughter Through Tears: The Wise Men of Chelm and
	the Holocaust in Nathan Englander's Story “The Tumblers”
%A Gasztold, Brygida
%J Studia Judaica
%V 2013
%N Nr 2 (32)
%P 171-186

%@ 1506-9729
%D 2013
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/studia-judaica/article/laughter-through-tears-the-wise-men-of-chelm-and-the-holocaust-in-nathan-englanders-story-the-tumblers
%X 
	“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.