Hersch Ostropoler

Hersch Ostropoler (born after 1750 in Balta ; died after 1800 in Międzyborz , Podolia ; Yiddish Herschele Ostropolier , also Herschel Ostrapolier , Hirsch Ostropoler etc.) was a Jewish jester , comedian and fool . His jokes and jokes became part of Eastern Jewish folklore. Information about his life and work is based only on oral tradition, but his historical existence is not in doubt.

Ostropoler's name is derived from the once Polish city of Ostropol in what is now Ukraine, where he lived for a long time as a shochet (ritual butcher) until the community leaders dismissed him because of his loose mouth. After that he wandered through the shtetlech of Podolia without a permanent residence and sang his cocks in the inns. Ignorant Jews and simple-minded peasants were victims of his sometimes very malicious pranks in the style of Till Eulenspiegel . Occasionally he is said to have played along with the Chelmer fool .

For a while he lived at the court of Baruch Toltschiner (= Baruch from Tulczyn , 1780–1810) in order to cheer up the rabbi, who was described as mentally ill .

His stories were passed on both orally and in writing in numerous traditions in Poland and Russia until the middle of the 20th century. Ostropoler's life and work also found literary expression in poems by Ephraim Auerbach and Itzik Manger , in a novella by Isaak Judah Trunk (1879–1939) and in the comedies of Jakob Gershenson and the comedy of Moshe Lifshit played by the Vilna theater troupe around 1930 .

Chajim Bloch reports that he received the pranks and anecdotes about Ostropoler from Eljukim Götz Krummfuß (Krzywynogy) from Radom . He took responsibility for the “correctness”, with the indication that he reproduced what he had heard from his grandfather, who was a contemporary of Hersch Ostropolers.

Ostropoler was a great-grandson of the Kabbalist Rabbi Samson Ostropoler (d. 1648).

literature

• Chajim Bloch: Hersch Ostropoler - A Jewish Till Eulenspiegel of the 18th century . Benjamin Harz Verlag, Berlin 1921.
• Encyclopaedia Judaica . Volume 12. Keter, Jerusalem 1971/72, p. 1516.
• A. Holdes: Mayses. Vitsn un Shpitslekh fun Hershele Ostropolier . Warsaw 1960.
• Jewish Lexicon . An encyclopedic manual of Jewish knowledge in four volumes . Founded by Georg Herlitz and Bruno Kirschner. Volume IV. Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin 1930, p. 639.
• Heinrich Loewe : Rogues and fools with Jewish caps . Welt-Verlag, Berlin 1920.
• David Sfard: Shtudyes un skitsn . Yidish Bukh Farlag, Warsaw 1955, pp. 176f.
• Eleazar Sherman: Hersheleh Ostropoler . With bibliography. Tel Aviv 1930.
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . Volume 4. Chernivtsi 1930, p. 591
• The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia . Volume 8. The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia Con., Inc, New York 1948, p. 334

Web links

• Page Hersh Ostropoler in the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (English)