Demons in Judaism - Modern Aggadah Compilations

Modern Aggadah Compilations

The Ein Yaakov is a compilation of the aggadic material in the Babylonian Talmud together with commentary. It was compiled by Jacob ibn Habib and (after his death) by his son Rabbi Levi ibn Habib, and was first published in Saloniki (Greece) in 1515. It was intended as a text of aggadah, that could be studied with "the same degree of seriousness as the Talmud itself". Popularized anthologies did not appear until more recently - these often incorporate "aggadot" from outside of classical Rabbinic literature. The major works include:

• Sefer Ha-Aggadah (The Book of Legends) is a classic compilation of aggadah from the Mishnah, the two Talmuds and the Midrash literature. It was edited by Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky. Bialik and Ravnitky worked for three years to compile a comprehensive and representative overview of aggadah. When they found the same aggadah in multiple versions, from multiple sources, they usually selected the later form, the one found in the Babylonian Talmud. However, they also presented some aggadot sequentially, giving the early form from the Jerusalem Talmud, and later versions from the Babylonian Talmud, and from a classic midrash compilation. In each case each every aggadah is given with its original source. In their original edition, they translated the Aramaic aggadot into modern Hebrew. Sefer Ha-Aggadah was first published in 1908-11 in Odessa, Russia, then reprinted numerous times in Israel. In 1992 it was translated into English as The Book of Legends, by William G. Braude.

• Legends of the Jews, by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, is an original synthesis of a vast amount of aggadah from the Mishnah, the two Talmuds and Midrash. Ginzberg had an encyclopedic knowledge of all rabbinic literature, and his masterwork included a massive array of aggadot. However he did not create an anthology which showed these aggadot distinctly. Rather, he paraphrased them and rewrote them into one continuous narrative that covered five volumes, followed by two volumes of footnotes that give specific sources.

• Mimekor Yisrael, by Micha Josef Berdyczewski. Berdichevsky was interested in compiling the folklore and legends of the Jewish people, from the earliest times up until the dawn of the modern era. His collection included a large array of aggadot, although they were limited to those he considered within the domain of folklore.

• The collected works of Dov Noy. In 1954, Noy established the Israel Folktale Archives and Ethnological Museum at the University of Haifa, an archive containing over 23,000 folktales collected from all the various ethnic communities who live in Israel.