Last week’s snowstorm not only postponed our Chanukah in Chelm service but gave me an opportunity to do a little research about the mythical city. Here are a few of the key points I discovered:
- The literary tradition of a town of fools goes all the way to Ancient Greece.Abdrera, a city on the Aegean Sea, was renowned for citizens who tended to making bad decisions like putting the statue of a goddess so high no one in the city can actually see it. Noodlehead stories, as Gayle Kerman pointed out, are shared in almost every culture around the world and date back thousands of year.
- Chelm was not the first town of fools in the Jewish world.Towns like Metz, Prague and Schilda were popular in the 19th Century.
- Menachem Kipnis, a famous Cantor, popularized Chelm in Yiddish newspapers in the 1920s. Anecdotally, a woman from Chelm begged him to stop writing them for fear it would ruin her marriage chances.
- The Nazis deported and murdered the Jewish citizens of Chelm. Before the war there were more than 15,000 Jews. After the war just 15.
- The tradition of towns of fools continues today in popular tv shows like Gilligan’s Island, The Simpsons, and Schitt’s Creek.
I look forward to seeing many of you on Friday night in person as we celebrate this amazing piece of Jewish lore.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year,
Rabbi Alex