Dina Stein is associate professor in the Department of Hebrew Literature at the University of Haifa. Her most recent publication is Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). She is currently engaged in a project on Modern Folktales in the Israeli Folklore Archives (IFA) and Rabbinic Narratives.

Traveling Tales: Jewish Legends in the Mediterranean

Traveling human-beings and traveling cultural goods stand at the center of the discourse of the Ten Lost Tribes that began circulating in the 9th century. In fact, it may be argued that it was the geographical expansion of the Jewish world and consequently the issue of communication between dispersed communities it entailed, that gave rise to a first person narrative of a traveler from a far away community (Eldad the Danite).

My paper addresses narratives that tell of a member of the Ten Lost Tribes who comes to the rescue of a local community. The tales were documented at the Israel Folktale Archives, in the second half of the 20th century, and were told by informants from Morocco and Greece. While it is probably impossible to trace the exact routs of these "cultural possessions," around and across the Mediterranean, the texts nevertheless provide a glimpse into the ways in which Jewish communities shared a meta-narrative while adapting it to their own regional contexts.