His continued silence in the face of adversity earns him instant entrance into heaven, and he is told he may have his greatest wish granted. Bontshe the Silent proves his unusualness again when he says "what I'd like most of all is a warm roll with fresh butter every morning" (Peretz). This illustrates his simplicity, not in the sense that he is stupid, but that he is easily made content. The lesson to be happy with simple things amuses the heavenly court, but it had great resonance with a Jewish community often forced to live in poverty, and Bontshe the Silent is shown to be not really as foolish as the heavenly court believes. He is portrayed this way to reflect the continued forbearance of his people, who have little need9according to the Jewish faith) to want anything other than God's love and the promise of the messiah brining peace to the world. Benjamin the Third, the protagonist based on a traditional Jewish folk hero in Mendele Mocher Seforim's novel The Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third, is a very different figure than these others. Engaged in high pursuits with high ideals, Benjamin is more of a traditional hero. His explorations and discoveries, however, take place completely within the Jewish world. Seforim presents a character who is able to explore Jewish interiority without shame.

Benjamin the Third is far from the only protagonist of a Yiddish or Jewish story with more modern sensibilities and character traits. Vasil in Lamed Shapiro's "White Challah" is drastically different from the other characters listed here. To begin with, he is not Jewish, and in addition he is actually dim witted in ways that the other "fools" we have seen were only suspected of. Most strikingly, however, is Vasil's identity...

He does not understand why he is angry at the Jews; he has been told that the Jews are at fault for the war, and doesn't even understand why he is fighting, so he blames them for his misery: "Why, why did they have to sell Christ? And to top of it all, they were to blame for everything! Even Rachek admitted it. And they just kept quiet, looking right through you. Goddamn it, what are they after? He squeezed his head between his hands" (Shapiro). In this story, the simpleton is revealed as dangerous, rather than someone worthy of respect due to their innocent wisdom. In fact, this story and the character of Vasil questions the very existence of innocence in a time when such atrocities were committed, seeming to suggest that acting without knowledge of the evil one might be doing, or acting in ways that do not combat the evil we perceive, has the same disastrous effects as intentional evil.
There is no one type of Jewish or Yiddish hero, or even one type of story that typifies the Jewish way of life. The richness of the history and experience of the Jewish people has left a remarkable legacy of characters and situations, and more modern Jewish authors have consistently found relevant and resonant ways to reinterpret and adapt traditional characters and images in new ways. The characters discussed here come from a tumultuous span of history, when great changes took place in the world, but their similarities belie the strong tradition to which they all belong.

Works Cited

Aleichem, Sholem. Tevye the Dariyman. New York: Schocken Books,1987.

Peretz, I.L. "Bontshe the Silent." Accessed 5 May 2009. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Literature/Yiddish_and_Ladino/European_Writing/IL_Peretz.shtml

Seforim, Mendele Mocher. The Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third. New York: Schocken Book, 1949.

Shapiro, Lamed. "White Challah." Accessed 5 May 2009. http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/hunger/white-challah/

Singer, Isaac Bashevis. "Gimpel the Fool." Accessed 5 May 2009. http://www.gimpel.tv/gimpel.txt