From Ancient Times

Introduction

When one comes to collect legends of the Hebrews and Jews from the many diverse strata of our literature, one must be armed with all the secrets of the schools and fruits of visionary minds. Moreover, one must dedicate his or her life to this task. A human’s life on this earth is short, and the task at hand is indeed great: ordering the legends of an entire nation—a nation, moreover, that is called the “people of the book.” I am not worthy of it. [ . . . ]

I bring before the Jewish public but a few branches from a great forest with a thousand paths. I have not walked its length and width; I have barely set foot upon its border.

As I have said, I included in my collections both legends and tales akin to legends. By this I mean that I did not only select the pieces of pure legends as my muse; I looked also to historical tales, to chronicles, to fiction, to visions and imaginings, to wisdom, fables, and ethics. From these also, I took.

Jews have not one literature with one spirit, given to them by one shepherd. Our literature has many, diverse strata that were conceived and developed in different eras and under different spiritual circumstances, as well as under different physical conditions. At times the wandering people seeks God; at times, it hides from God’s wrath. It raises its eyes to the heavens to look upon life on earth. It cries, when its spirit swoons, and pours forth its heart to God its savior. And sometimes, when the sun shines upon it, the people knows how to be happy as well. The Jewish nation is not one nation, unique and special. It is not a people with one spirit and one soul. For within it, different tribal powers with different temperaments clash. The men of the East are unlike the men of the West, and those who dwell in the North are unlike those in the South. One who seeks a single face or a single appearance in their soul is naught but a liar.

On the other hand, all these limbs, all the different parts of the nation—if ever we were, ever, a single nation—share the same forefathers and prophets, the same judges and kings. Behold, the wandering people has its heroes and saints, the guardians of Torah, and pious people—it even has violators of the covenant; there are redeemers alongside instigators. How plentiful are the shifts in life over the generations! How diverse are the spiritual visages in all of its constituent elements! If you try to weave these threads into a single cloth, if you try to carve out a path through all these differences, seeking to create some complete entity, or even part of a complete entity, you shall fail. How far will you go, saying: I tried, but came up with nothing? [ . . . ]

However, if one asks how things unfolded, how this author and anthologizer did what he did, I shall answer that the legends were born to me in the opposite order of their organization.

In years past, I began to adapt Hasidic legends. It was a vocation that occupied me for many years, even if my purpose then was different; at that time, I sought not the fruits of the people but rather my own literary creativity. And eschewing a life revealed to me, I sought refuge in the shadows of delusion. After some time, I was pushed into the period of kabbalah and visions, and from there I moved to the harsh life of the Middle Ages, and again I arrived at the yearning of redeemers. Eventually, I stopped seeking God in the infinite and arrived at the shadow of abandoned humans, clinging desperately to their Creator: He who answers yet does not! From the fields of the West I returned to Babylon and to the land of the forefathers that has fallen into the hands of the enemy. I entered the literature of the Talmud and midrash; the dreams of my youth returned to me, the things I learned in my father’s house and in the study hall. In the meantime, I had begun to immerse myself in the ancient tales of the Torah and the tales of the two Temples, the milestones of the nation’s life during the period of God’s two sanctums.

A few things came to me from hearsay; some chapters I took from the God-fearing scholars and others from Jewish popular literature. This also is a new world full of wonders. It is a world full of innocence and awe of God but at the same time filled with budding fictions that flourish there like trees, calling the wayfarer to enter their shade. . . . And it was not always in the main streets of our nation that I walked—I turned my eyes to other sects, those sects which separated themselves from the community, those who have ceased to take their portion among us and to be counted in our ranks—[And I realized] how much they still belong to us! At times, I even snuck into the very midst of the non-Jewish, and I did not even avoid the Qur’an.