Tricksters: Folktales of Joha, Jewish Trickster

For this week of Nasruddin, I'm including this book of stories about "Nasruddin" but under a different name. This popular folklore figure appears under different names in different traditions, but with the same cluster of stories told about him. So, for example, in Arabic traditions he is often called Juha (or Goha), and thus in the Sicilian tradition he became known as Giufa. In addition to being popular among the Muslim storytellers of the Middle East, these stories were also popular with Jewish storytellers. In Morocco, for example, he is known as Seha, and in the Sephardic Jewish tradition, he is Joha. This book contains 300 Joha stories published in Ladino and Hebrew by Matilda Koen-Sarano, and translated by David Herman: Folktales of Joha, Jewish Trickster.

The full-page illustrations are by Ezra Masch. Here is his drawing for the famous story of Joha counting the donkeys and forgetting to count the donkey he himself is riding:

The stories come from over 80 different narrators in 17 different countries, collected over a period of over 20 years; the stories of Joha spread throughout the world when the Jewish people were expelled from Spain in 1492 and settled in Sephardic communities in North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. The stories are organized thematically in a kind of life cycle: Joha's family, Joha at school, Joha at work, Joha and the animals, Joha's marriage, Joha's wife, Joha's children, Joha and the king, Joha's neighborhood, Joha talks about himself, Joha and God, Joha and the law, Joha the glutton, Joha in the hospital, and the death of Joha. The book also has a useful introduction which discusses the cultural context of the stories and also the identity of Joha as both fool and trickster.

Many of the stories come from Matilda Koen-Sarano herself and members of her extended family. She was born in 1939 in Italy (and is still with us!), and her family originally came from Turkey. During World War II, her family hid in the mountains to escape the Nazi Holocaust. You can read more about her life and work at Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, if you are curious about the Ladino language, also known as Judeo-Spanish, you can find out more at Wikipedia.

Folktales of Joha, Jewish Trickster
by Matilda Koen-Sarano