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V ewtsh Folklore' Packed With Infortion
m a _
By DR. PETER MARTIN
Raphael Patai is a noted
scholar. He has been re-
nowned for his biblical
studies as well as his studies
in anthropology.
An interesting thought
while reading his new "On
Jewish Folklore" (Wayne
State University Press) was
how can an author write a
book on such an interesting
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Paul
RAPHAEL PATAI
subject and have it come out
so dry. Or, it's wonderful
that the interesting aspects
of the subject break through
the scholar's defenses and is
358-3535
exciting to the reader.
GIL RABIN
Folklore is defined as
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the study of the tradi-
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tional beliefs, customs,
Exterior Specials
songs, stories and say-
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in civilized countries.
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Three of its chief prov-
inces are: customs con-
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nected with certain fixed
dates in the calendar
Courtyards, decks, patios
such as feasts or fasts,
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and with decisive turning
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dividual; with beliefs
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such as the origin and
structure of the world,
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inanimate
things, veget-
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able and animal king-
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dom, about human,
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among other beliefs; and
with numerous types of
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folk literature such as
folk stories, legends and
53L-ENTERTAINMENT
myths, songs, ballads and
epics, riddles and pro-
VERSATILE sophisticated party
verbs.
music. Call 893-9667.
Folklore is closely linked
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to ethnology or cultural an-
And other Special Occasions.
thropology. The Jewish
273-6716
people are difficult to study
Clowns, juggling; magic, from an ethnological view-
music dance, Puppets, point. Other people studied
prove to be a unit in some
balloon sculpture.
respects as racial and lin-
guistic and cultural and
CARTOONS
geographical aspects.
CARICATURES
BY
The Jews have no com-
OW US
mon country, no common
culture, no common lan-
293-1723
guage and no common race.
FOR ANY OCCASION
They possess one positive
asset that is common to
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them all. It is their tradi-
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tion, mainly religious,
which was vigorous enough
A piano/vocal stylist with to mark the culture and the
an extensive collection of personality of the Jew with
tunes from 20s, 30s, 40s a peculiar and distinctive
and TODAY. Need a flavor.
piano? I'll bring mine! Sing
Tevye was so right when
along, dance to my music. he clung to tradition in the
face of the impact of a
foreign culture upon his
Ask for JEFF
daughters in "Fiddler on the
Roof."
646-9531
I will skip important but
technical definitional as-
This Space
pects of Jewish folklore and
Reserved for
mythology. It is noteworthy
Your Ad
that early efforts to treat bi-
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blical stories as myths has
been highly controversial.
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;
The following are interest-
ing examples of Jewish
folklore.
The Goddess Cult
In his conclusions, Patai
deals with the role, the wor-
ship and the myth of a
female deity in Judaism. He
states that popular Jewish
religion, despite all or-
thodox strictures, retained
an essentially identical
image of the goddess from
early biblical to late hasidic
times.
From the Israelite set-
tlement in Canaan (13th
Century BCE), there
existed, side-by-side, two
different types of Hebrew
religion. One was the
Yahwistic religion fought
for by early Hebrew leaders
and the God of the Hebrew
Bible.
Strange as it may seem to
the reader of this book, ex-
clusive Yahwism remained
the religion of the minority.
The majority of Hebrew
people worshiped a number
of gods and goddesses; no
different from their
neighboring Canaanites.
Their pantheon had four
central deities: El, the
father god; his wife Athirat
(Asherah); their daughter
Anath, and their son Baal.
With the Hebrews, El
became identified with
Yahweh and the separate
identity of Baal and El in
Canaan went unnoticed
by the Israelites. -
Thus at the time of the
Judges (12th-11th Century
BCE), the people worshiped
a combined one male god
and two female goddesses.
When the Bible attributes
Israel's calamities to persis-
tent national idolatry, it is
to this type of idolatry that
reference is made.
Asherah is the goddess
most frequently mentioned
in the Bible since she be-
came a publicly-venerated
goddess in Israel. In Judah,
the worship of Asherah was
even introduced into the
Jerusalem Temple, about
950 BCE, and remained for
236 years. The Bible does
not refer to the worship of
the goddess Anath-Astorte
but among the Jews in the
talmudic period (330 BCE-
500 CE) some of her fea-
tures became incorporated
into the image of the
Shekhina, the "Presence" of
God.
Talmudic passages de-
scribe the Shekhina as
being carried in a casket by
the Children of Israel in the
desert and dwelling in the
desert tabernacle, the Tem-
ple of Jerusalem and certain
synagogues in Babylonia.
She is said to have an-
nounced her presence by
producing a tinkling
sound like a bell, shown
herself to humans and
animals, and walked with
the broken hearted. At
the same time, her
radiance was said to have
been such that even the
angels had to shield
themselves with their
wings so as not to see her.
In the talmudic period the
Shekhina and the Holy
Spirit was considered an in-
dependent entity that could
confront and even admonish
God. (I have memories of a
grandmother who, during
services in the synagogue,
used to do the same.)
customs, the Jewisn Indians
of Mexico, the Cisiiietas of
Majorca. Muchtan be
learned from Patai's schol-
arly presentation.
Patai also discusses
isolated Jewish com-
With the emergence of
munities living in foreign
Kabala about 1286 CE the
cultures. He revisited the
Shekhina was given a new
Jewish Indians of Venta
name, Matronit, and be-
Prieta in Mexico, 16 years
came both the sister and the
after his first an-
thropological field trip.
The changes in the 16
years gave him an insight
into a sequence of stages
which occurs once the
seed of Judaism is
planted in a group living
in a non-Jewish
environment.
The first stage is that of
naive enchantment with
the Jewish religion, based
on the eternal myth cycle of
Creation, the Fall, the De-
luge, the Patriarchs, the
Egyptian slavery, the
Exodus, -the Sinai Revela-
tion, the Wandering in the
DR. PETER MARTIN
Desert and the Conquest of
wife of God. The Matronit Canaan.
The second stage is that of
supplied the psychologi-
cally important divine' growing awareness of the
mother-and-wife figure in duties imposed on its mem-
Judaism, just as her pre- bers by the Jewish faith.
decessors Asherah and The third stage is where the
community feels that
Anath had in biblical times.
Judaism is burdensome and
The Rainbow
try to lighten the load. The
The myth of the rainbow fourth stage is assimilation
is stated in the story that through intermarriage and
after the flood Noah built an secularism. In the fifth
altar and offered sacrifices stage -a reaction sets in with
to God. Then God set a rain- realization of the danger of
bow in the cloud as a token "group suicide" and the ur-
of a covenant between Him gent necessity of preventing
and man not to bring again it. The sixth and last stage
a flood upon the earth.
is reached when efforts are
The folk belief is that if made to avert the danger by
heavy rain clouds cover the imbuing daily life once
sky and the rainbow ap- more with Jewish values,
pears among them, it is a and by embracing Zionism.
sign that the rains will be
Another example of an
moderate. The rainbow
serves as a symbol of divine isolated Jewish commu-
power. Folk people consider nity is the Chuetas of
it a force which can influ- Majorca thus seem num-
ence the life of the earth and bered. That a few of them
of man. As is typical of may eventually move to
myths, they endow it with Israel and Judaism is a
fantastic imaginary fea- possibility, but not a
likelihood. It is almost
tures.
certain that the rest will
T'khelet Blue
merge with the old Chris-
Oriental Jews paint doors tian majority and disap-
and windows using the color pear as a separate ethnic
blue as a protection from the entity."
evil eye. Victims, or those
I have just picked out
who are considered as hav-
ing the power of the evil eye some of the choice morsels
are especially individuals from a book that is jam-
possessing some good trait. packed with them. An-
Therefore if reference is thropology is an exciting
made to someone's good fea- science. In contrast to Mar-
garet Mead's flamboyant
ture, such as beauty, one
anthropology,
Patai's is
must add the words unbesh-
quiet but solid.
rien or unberufen, or in He-
brew, b'li'ayin hara', "With-
out the evil eye."
The color blue appears to
have been in imitation of
the color of the sky. The sky
(or heaven) is the symbol of
purity, the place of the "up-
per waters" whose purity is
fixed and permanent. The
dwelling place-of-t-he-ae-
mons and evil spirits and all
the sources of the evil eye is
on earth or beneath it.
There are many other in-
teresting essays in this book
such as Hebrew legends of
the sea, the expiation of the
polluted land, Hebrew in-
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”1E PtIBL.SmER