This book focuses on a cycle of some thirty “praise” stories ( Shvachim ) whose heroes are Rabbi Shmuel the Pious and his son, the famous Rabbi Judah the Pious (died 1217; author of Sefer Hasidim ) – the two main figures of the medieval mystical circle known as Hasidut Ashkenaz. The narrative cycle in praise of these luminaries portrays them as extremely virtuous, as mystics with supernatural knowledge, and as masters of magical practices ( ba’alay shem ). Originating orally in Yiddish, these stories were first written down in Hebrew, the sacred language, and then translated “back” into Yiddish – the more widely understood language of the Ashkenazic community. The book presents all versions of these “praise” narratives, extant in manuscripts and print, both in Hebrew and Yiddish, side by side. A thorough introduction traces the growth of this narrative treasure from its embryonic oral beginnings to its fully developed bilingual written manifestations. A detailed analysis of individual stories sheds light on the cultural mentality of medieval Jewry in general and of Ashkenazic Jewry in particular.

An exorcism which took place in 1696 in Nikolsburg, Moravia (today Mikulov, Czech Republic) is the focus of this book. The description of this grandiose magic event reached us in two different versions: one well-known, in Hebrew became a model for this folk-genre in the 18th century; the other in Yiddish, remained unknown until now and is published here in full for the first time .The analysis includes a thorough comparison between these two competing descriptions, the identification of the participants – with special emphasis on their Sabbatean background and connections, as well as an identification of the specific ‘manual for exorcism’ used in this event (also published here in full, along other esoteric manuals of its kind). Through a thorough examination of the paradigmatic exorcism which took place in Moravia in 1696 and of its deep influence on the exorcism tales of the following generations, this book sheds new light on the central role magic in general and exorcism in particular played in the rich and multi-faceted cultural life of Ashkenazic Jews in the early modern period.

The book examines tales from the Jewish tradition describing the emergence of leadership in several important communities in Israel's history. It focuses on the two famous Sage legends - the legend of the founding of Yavne and its protagonist Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakai and the legend of the establishment of the land of Israel's Rabbinic Presidency and its protagonist Hillel the Elder. The research follows these legends closely and discusses the historical reality which rises from them, and points to the two kinds of leaderships they represent. These forms of leadership are also represented in the Jewish Medieval Literature of Spain, Ashkenaz, Egypt and Kairouan in northern Africa.

The book revolves around two axes: the first axis is the tracking of folk fiction (founding legends) of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities in the Middle Ages as an instructive mirror to the cultural differences between the two communities; The other axis is tracing the development of the Ashkenazi story in Yiddish in the sixteenth century, from the nuclear phase to its expanded and developed design.

This Book attempt to trace the transformations of the motif of marriage between a mortal man and a she-demon in Jewish folklore, especially in the folk-tradition of Ashkenazi Jewry. Five texts were selected for this research: three in Yiddish, one bilingual (Yiddish and Hebrew) and one in Hebrew. They cover a time-span of almost four hundred years, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth. The five texts, all published here in full, are: "Mayse fun Vorms", MS F.12.45 Trinity College, Cambridge, fols . 24r-31r. "Mayse fun der Malke-Shvo", in: Yiftah Yospe ben Naftali ha-Levi, Sefer Ma'ase Nissim, Amsterdam 1696, No. 21. "Mayse Pozna", in: Zvi Hirsh Kaidanover, Sefer Qav ha-Yashar, II Frankfurt am Main 1706, Chap. LXIX. "Ma'ase ha-Ari", in: Yosef Sambari, Sefer Divrei Yosef, Paris, Alliance Israelite Universelle, H 130 A, Sec. 182, fols . 108v-109v. B.W. Segel, " Materaly do etnografii Zydow wschodnio - galieyjskieh ", Zbior wiadomosci do antropologii krajowef , XVII(1893), No 22, pp. 289-290 – an East-Galician version of "Mayse fun Vorms" in Polish, translated here into Yiddish. The starting –point of the discussion is "Mayse fun Vorms", a story written down in North Italy after 1514, though most probably originating in the folklore of the Worms community. It draws on three different sources: the mediaeval Christian narrative tradition, apocryphal and midrashic literature and German folk narrative. All these are combined in a sophisticated and unique way by means of various modifications, dictated by the new structure and cultural context. The result is a highly complex and interesting text, presenting its material with purely artistic narrative intentions. On the basis of a comparison between "Msydr gun Vorms" and the famous Hebrew story "Ma'ase Yerushalmi " we came to the conclusion that the former cannot justifiably be seen as a version of the latter. It should rather be regarded as representing an alternative narrative model, even though both works centre around the same motif of marriage between a man and a she-demon. The second part of the book deals with the transformations and vicissitudes undergone by "Mayse fun Vorms" in the various genres of Jewish literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: in collections of stories in old Yiddish (Sefer Ma'ase Nissim), in ethical Literature ( qav ha-Yashar) and in Lurianic hagiography (Toledot ha-Ari). This section concludes with a comparison between all these sources and an East-Galician version of the story, which was written down from the oral tradition at the end of the nineteenth century. This textual genealogy enables us to illustrate the great variability of the folk narrative tradition concerning the motif of the marriage of a man and a she-demon, as well as the extent of its adaptation to changing contexts and functions. From a text of purely novelistic purpose, the story turns – via the appropriate modifications – into: a text of clearly moralizing intention, containing a pattern of crime and punishment; a text presented as documentary, though used by ethical literature for its own ends; a typically hagiographic text; until in East Europe, at a late stage, it reverts to the status of an artistically oriented text, exactly as it had been when it set out on its journey almost four hundred years earlier. Thus the Jewish folk narrative of the marriage of a man and a she-demon shows a developmental affinity to the narrative tradition on exorcism, which also varies from test to text , in accordance with the various functions that it implements: documentary, hagiographic, ethical and narrative per se.