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From: dsg@mhuxi.UUCP (GREEN)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: re: Hassidic Tales
Message-ID: <175@mhuxi.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-Jun-84 09:32:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxi.175
Posted: Tue Jun 19 09:32:02 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Jun-84 00:59:19 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
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I received this by UUCP:

I, for one, think the Hassidic tales, far from being irreverent,
demonstrate an ironic sense about Yiddishkeit.  Irony does not
imply (or does not HAVE) to imply) disrespect; it can--and, to
be effective, MUST--imply a love for the Tradition and an 
ability to treat it in the spirit of mind-play.  The redacted
Talmud probably does not record some of the jokes that must have been
told during study sessions in the yeshivot of Sura and
Pumbedita, but I would not be surprised if some of them treated
with comic intellectual respect the very deliberations in which
the Rabbis were engaged.  In order for one to retain perspective
on an intensive activity, it is sometimes necessary to step back
from it and treat it ironically.  It restores perspective and
a sense of mortality.  Thus, I think Woody Allen is engaged in
something a good deal older than himself, and which probably
puts him in the line of great Jewish ironists which includes
Herschel Ostropolier and Sholom Aleichem.  They were of their
centuries, he is of his . . . and ours.

By the way, since I don't have direct access to the Net, you 
might want to post this as a general reply.  Thanx.

Ken Wolman, 898-1177
posted by David Seth Green       201-564-4468    mhuxi!dsg