How the Wise Men Got to Chelm: The Life and Times of a Yiddish Folk Tradition by Ruth Von Bernuth bilingual in the not-too-distant future of

in the not-too-distant future of our own

Thus begins The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Stanford University

This view of life along the border between the western (Jewish) and eastern (Arab) sides of the city will be a revelation to American readers

and emotional account of people caught in a cataclysmic time in world history

How the Wise Men Got to Chelm: The Life and Times of a Yiddish Folk Tradition by Ruth Von Bernuth bilingual in the not-too-distant future ofHow the Wise Men Got to Chelm is the first in depth study of Chelm literature and its relationship to its literary precursors. When God created the world, so it is said, he sent out an angel with a bag of foolish souls with instructions to distribute them equally all over the worldone fool per town. But the angels bag broke and all the souls spilled out onto the same spot. They built a settlement where they landed: the town is known as Chelm. The