Folktales and Fictions
Since 1881, Heller’s Megilat Eivah has typically been published with a second section that is attributed to his son Samuel. Samuel relates the story of Heller’s imprisonment and trial from his own point of view. In his version, the Rabbi was helped by the French general Turenne, ambassador of the court of King Louis XIV of France, after Samuel's dramatic life-saving of Turenne's wife and daughter at a park in Vienna, when they were attacked by a raging bull. The anecdote is based on a story by Ludwig Philippson.
Benish Ashkenazi, one of the major characters in the novel Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer, is a fictionalized version of R' Heller.
Heller is also the subject of a number of folktales and legends. One well-known story about R' Heller concerns Yossele the Holy Miser, who died in Kraków. R' Heller was asked where to bury him. The town leaders were disgusted by this man's lack of charity, and directed that his body be buried in a far corner of the cemetery. A few days after the miser's death, a great cry was heard in the town, for the poor and hungry were bereft of the miser's secret generosity. The "miser" had been giving charity in the most noble fashion – secretly giving money to the local merchants, who in turn had given food, clothing and money to the poor. When this came to R' Heller's attention, he was visibly shaken. He instructed the town to bury him next to the Yossele upon his own death. This explains why R' Heller, one of the greatest of Talmudic scholars, is buried in such an undistinguished section of the cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller
Famous quotes containing the words folktales and/or fictions:
“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)