From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!C70:ARPAVAX:CAD:teklabs!larrym Newsgroups: net.jokes Title: re: Chelm Article-I.D.: teklabs.1217 Posted: Thu Jun 10 23:01:47 1982 Received: Fri Jun 11 06:53:47 1982 Reply-To: AD:teklabs!larrym Leo Rosten (in "The Joys of Yiddish") has the following to say about the legendary town of Chelm: Chelm -- Pronounced KHELM, with the gutteral KH. The name of a "legendary" town inhabited by befuddled, stupid, foolish, but endearing people. Chelm is used as the name of a mythical place, but there is and was a real Chelm, some forty miles east of Lubin, with a poplulation of around four thousand, the majority of whom were Jews. Another Chelm exists just east of Tarnow. How Chelm achieved its reputation for hilarious "non sequiturs" I do not know. Chelm would enjoy no special name or fame, and surely no place in this lexicon, were it not that in Jewish folklore it has become the archetypical home of simpletons, and incubator of amiable fools, the Jewish equivalent of that Gotham from which "the wise men" came, Holland's Kampen, Italy's Cuneo, and Germany's "Schildburg" -- all famous for fools. There must be a thousand tall tales about Chelm and the unbeliev- able Chelmites; I give you but a handful. [Unfortunately, I find this handful to be some of the least funny stories in this hilarious and illuminating book. I'll only type the first two. -- LJM] ------------------------- The rabbi of Chelm visited the prison, and there he heard all but one of the inmates insist on their innocence. So he came back, held a council of wise men, and recommended that Chelm have **two** prisons: one for the guilty and another for the innocent. ------------------------- The sages of Chelm began to argue about which was more important to the world: the moon or the sun. The community divided into two passionate camps. The reigning wise man then ruled: "the moon **must** be more important than the sun, because without the light of the moon our nights would be so dark we could not see anything. The sun, however, shines only by day--which is when we don't need it!"