A doc­tor who revives the dead? Catch­ing sun­light in a bag? Pur­chas­ing truth and wis­dom for all to share? All of these sce­nar­ios can be found in Men­achem Kipnis’s Chelm sto­ries. Now these tales, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in Yid­dish, have been beau­ti­ful­ly revived in the book Men­achem Kip­nis: Yid­dish Folk­lore and Pho­tographs from Inter­war Poland, trans­lat­ed by Raphael Finkel and with a tren­chant intro­duc­tion and after­word by schol­ar Sheila E. Jelen.

Men­achim Kip­nis (1878 – 1942) was a singer, eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and folk­lorist in Poland. He was inter­est­ed in expres­sions of Jew­ish­ness out­side of reli­gious set­tings, par­tic­u­lar­ly how Jew­ish­ness could be expressed ​“through cul­ture instead of rit­u­al.” Dur­ing his life­time, he pub­lished two col­lec­tions of Yid­dish folk songs and adap­ta­tions of the Chelm tales. Kip­nis orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished his Chelm folk sto­ries in the War­saw Yid­dish dai­ly Haynt. He also took pho­tographs of peo­ple in Poland — actors in the Yid­dish the­ater, school­boys play­ing, flap­pers apply­ing make­up, chil­dren at the Medem San­i­to­ri­um, peo­ple pray­ing, and more. Dur­ing the 1920s and 1930s, Kip­nis sent pho­tographs to the Amer­i­can Yid­dish press; many were pub­lished in Forverts and now are part of ​“Peo­ple of a Thou­sand Towns” at YIVO Insti­tute for Jew­ish Research. Kip­nis died from a stroke in the War­saw ghet­to in 1942.

Men­achem Kip­nis gath­ers the Chelm folk­tales and Kipnis’s pho­tographs into a sin­gle, beau­ti­ful vol­ume. Chelm is a myth­i­cal Jew­ish city of fools. Its folk­tales illu­mi­nate the ​“lim­i­ta­tions of human intel­lect, the blind­ness of unques­tion­ing faith, and the love that keeps com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers bound to one anoth­er despite short­com­ings.” Kipnis’s ​“shtetl fic­tion” about Chelm is a delight. From short tales that almost func­tion as proverbs to more elab­o­rate sto­ries, these pieces are fun­ny, pro­found, and revelatory. 

The doc­tor who could revive the dead? He was always read­ing books which caused the peo­ple of Chelm to posit that ​“he didn’t know med­i­cine.” So he proved it to them by reviv­ing the dead. In anoth­er sto­ry, after build­ing a syn­a­gogue, the peo­ple of Chelm ​“noticed that it was dark inside. They had for­got­ten to build win­dows.” So after meet­ing to dis­cuss this prob­lem, the peo­ple of Chelm decid­ed to ​“gath­er sacks, fill them with sun­shine out­side, and bring the light into the syn­a­gogue to bright­en it up.” Imag­ine read­ing these sto­ries to chil­dren and hear­ing them squeal with delight. Or imag­ine sit­ting in com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings or three days or sev­en days to solve prob­lems of grave con­cern. The faith that the peo­ple of Chelm had in the com­mu­ni­ty to solve prob­lems is inspir­ing and a val­ue with which to recon­nect, though the meet­ings’ out­comes in these par­tic­u­lar sto­ries may result in rue­ful head-shak­ing. Men­achem Kip­nis is a book to enjoy and share with others.