A town of fools is the base of a number of joke cycles found in various cultures. Jokes of these cycles poke fun at the stupidity of the inhabitants of a real or fictional populated place (village, town, region, etc.). In English folklore the best known butt of jokes of this type are the Wise Men of Gotham. A number of works of satire are set in a town of fools.
The Motif-Index of Folk-Literature includes the motif J1703: "Town (country) of fools". [1]
Tevye the Dairyman, also translated as Tevye the Milkman is the fictional narrator and protagonist of a series of short stories by Sholem Aleichem, and their various adaptations, the most famous being the 1964 stage musical Fiddler on the Roof and its 1971 film adaptation. Tevye is a pious Jewish dairyman living in the Russian Empire, the patriarch of a family including several troublesome daughters. The village of Boyberik, where the stories are set, is based on the town of Boyarka, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Boyberik is a suburb of Yehupetz, where most of Tevye's customers live.
Shtetl or shtetel is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The term is used in the contexts of peculiarities of former East European Jewish societies as islands within the surrounding non-Jewish populace, and bears certain socio-economic and cultural connotations. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas that constituted the 19th-century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, as well as in Congress Poland, Austrian Galicia, the Kingdom of Romania and the Kingdom of Hungary.
Ze'ev Jabotinsky was a Revisionist Zionist leader, author, poet, orator, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa.
Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem, was a Yiddish author and playwright who lived in the Russian Empire and in the United States. The 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on Aleichem's stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
Mendele Mocher Sforim, born Sholem Yankev Abramovich or S. J. Abramowitch, was a Jewish author and one of the founders of modern Yiddish and Hebrew literature. His name was variously transliterated as Moykher, Sfarim,Seforim, etc.
Chełm is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some 25 kilometres from the border with Ukraine. Chełm used to be the capital of the Chełm Voivodeship until it became part of the Lublin Voivodeship in 1999.
The tradition of humor in Judaism dates back to the Torah and the Midrash from the ancient Middle East, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal and often anecdotal humor of Ashkenazi Jews which took root in the United States over the last hundred years, including in secular Jewish culture. European Jewish humor in its early form developed in the Jewish community of the Holy Roman Empire, with theological satire becoming a traditional way of clandestinely opposing Christianization.
Wise Men of Gotham is the early name given to the people of the village of Gotham, Nottinghamshire, in allusion to an incident where they supposedly feigned idiocy to avoid a Royal visit.
Avrom Ber Gotlober, also known by the pen names Abag and Mahalalel, was a Russian Maskilic writer, poet, playwright, historian, journalist and educator. His first collection was published in 1835.
Psalm 14 is the 14th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." In the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, it is psalm 13 in a slightly different numbering, "Dixit insipiens in corde suo". Its authorship is traditionally assigned to King David. With minor differences, it is nearly identical in content with Psalm 53. Hermann Gunkel dates the psalm to the exile period.
Aaron Zeitlin was a Jewish American educator and writer. He authored several books on Yiddish literature, poetry and parapsychology.
In folklore, a simpleton is a person whose foolish actions are the subject of often-repeated stories. Simpletons are also known as noodles or fools. Folklore often holds, with no basis in fact, that certain towns or countries are thought to be home to large numbers of simpletons. The ancient Greeks told tales of stupid populations in Abdera and other cities; in Germany, men of Schilda are conspicuous in these stories; in Spain hundreds of jokes exist about the supposed foolishness of the people from Lepe; and in England, the village of Gotham in Nottinghamshire is reputed to be populated by simpletons. In Sri Lanka whole districts in the central, southern, and western provinces are credited with being the abode of foolish people.
Psalm 53 is the 53rd psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.". In the slightly different numbering system used in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate translations of the Bible, this psalm is Psalm 52. In Latin, it is known as "Dixit insipiens in corde suo non est deus", It is described as a maskil or "contemplation of David".
Ghil'ad Zuckermann is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity.
The Schildbürger are a topic in German Volksbuch (chapbook) tradition corresponding to the Wise Men of Gotham in English-language tradition.
The fool is a stock character in creative works and folklore. There are several distinct, although overlapping, categories of fool: simpleton fool, wise fool, and serendipitous fool.
The Wise Men of Chelm are dumb Jewish residents of the Polish city of Chełm, a butt of Jewish jokes, similar to other towns of fools: the English Wise Men of Gotham, German Schildbürger, Greek residents of Abdera, or Finnish residents of the fictional town of Hymylä. Since at least 14th century Chełm had a considerable population of Jews.
Kasrilevka or Kasrilevke is a fictional shtetl introduced by Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem. Located "exactly in the middle of that blessed Pale", it is an idealized town of "little Jews", who met their misfortunes with humor and the ultimate belief in justice. It has become an archetype shtetl. Other famous imaginary places of Sholem Aleichem are Yehupetz and Boiberik.
Menahem-Mendl is a series of stories and in Yiddish by Sholem Aleichem about hilarious exploits of an optimistic shlemiel Menahem-Mendl, who dreams of getting rich. They are presented as an exchange of letters between him and his ever-scolding wife Sheyne-Shendl, and later published as epistolary novels.
The Fools of Chelm and Their History is a humorous book by Isaac Bashevis Singer about a fictional town of Chelm inhabited by naive Wise Men of Chelm.