The Schlemiel as Modern Hero
Ruth R. Wisse
1971
Holocaust Survivor
[ . . . ] Modern Jewish humor grows from the tension of having to reconcile a belief as absolute as Elijah’s with an experience of failure as absolute as that of the priests of Baal.
The schlemiel embodies this tension, being the equivalent of the defeated people, incapable of despair. [ . . . ]
But in the contemporary phase of…
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