Some of the most humorous tales in Jewish literature are the stories attributed to “The wise men of Chelm.” Jewish folklore considers the Jewish residents of Chelm fools. There are a lot of popular stories about their “smart”conduct.
For example: One Jewish Chelm resident bought a fish on Friday in order to cook it for Shabbat. He put the live fish underneath his coat and the fish slapped his face with his tail. He went to the Chelm court to submit a charge and the court sentenced the fish to death by drowning. When community leaders behave in a foolish way they are often equated with “The wise men of Chelm.”
Another anecdote is told about the occasion when the Chelemites decided to build a new synagogue. So, some strong, able-bodied men were sent to a mountaintop to gather heavy stones for the foundation. The men put the stones on their shoulders and trudged down the mountain to the town below. When they arrived, the town constable yelled, “Foolish men! You should have rolled the stones down the mountain!” The men agreed this was an excellent idea. So they turned around, and with the stones still on their shoulders, trudged back up the mountain, and rolled the stones back down again.
Growing up I wasn’t sure if Chelm even existed or why it came to be considered a bastion of “Jewish wisdom.” Chełm actually exists — it’s a city in Eastern Poland, near the Ukrainian border. Historically Chelm has been a stronghold of Chasidism and Orthodox Jewish culture. The myth of the Golem apparently started in Chelm, where a famous kabbalist, Rabbi Elija Ben Yehuda, is said to have created a creature of clay into which he breathed life by reciting magical spells that made him obey his orders. Much later this story was transplanted to Prague and the creation of the Golem was attributed to Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague. Chelm was a great city of Jewish learning, with many synagogues, Jewish courts and rabbinical academies. So, why was it considered a place of fools? Why did it have such a weird reputation? Because of Zamosc!
Chelm is located north of Zamosc. There was much rivalry between the two cities. Zamosc was also a great center of Jewish scholarship and in the 19th century was a focus of the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightment. The Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz, one of the fathers of Jewish literature, was born and brought up there. And so was the socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg. Followers of the Haskalah considerd the Orthodox Jews and especially the Chasidim to be hicks, retrogrades and much less intelligent than themselves. Since Maskilim (followers of the Haskalah) wrote books and novels for popular culture, rather than purely religious books, they managed to create the anecdotes and spread them around, thus crystallizing the image of the “wise men of Chelm.” Many stories and books have been written mocking the inhabitants of Chelm, the most famous one probably being by Yiddish writer and Nobel prize winner for literature Isaac Bashevis Singer. It is called “The Fools of Chelm and Their History.”
So, it becomes clear that the “Wise men of Chelm” are nothing but the result of literary license and the rivalry between different groups of Jewish intellectuals in Poland long ago. Yet this rivalry has yielded fun and entertaining literature for us, even today.
Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn is the spiritual leader of Temple Israel, Kansas City’s newest congregation.
