Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on Orthography and Transliteration

Introduction

1. How the Wise Men Got to Gotham: The Fools of Chelm Take Manhattan

2. How Foolish Is Jewish Culture? Fools, Jews, and the Carnivalesque Culture of Early Modernity

3. Through the Land of Foolish Culture: From Laleburg to Schildburg

4. Gentile Fools Speaking Yiddish: The Schildbürgerbuch for Jewish Readers

5. The Enlightenment Goes East: How Democritus of Abdera Got to Galicia

6. The Geography of Folly: The Folklorists and the Invention of Chelm

7. Chelm Tales after World War One in German and Yiddish: “Our Schilda” and “Our Chelm Correspondent”

Epilogue: The Once and Future Chelm

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author