Gimpel the Fool

The short story “Gimpel the Fool” (1953), like many of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s works, is half autobiography and half fiction. The story examines themes that reflect Singer’s views on aspects of life he believed his readers took for granted. He was especially concerned with the nature of love—self-love and loving others—and the wisdom of religion. Here, as in most of his work, Singer also examines the meaning of kindness, the destructiveness of harassment, and the mind’s power to accept lies and turn them into truths. The story’s main themes also include Faith, Honor, and Integrity; Reason Versus Emotion; and The Power of Forgiveness.

Born Isaac Hersch Singer in Poland in 1903 and raised in a village much like Frampol, the town depicted in this story, Singer came to the US in 1935 and worked as a fiction writer and reporter for the Daily Forward, a Yiddish publication in New York City. Singer was an outspoken advocate for human rights and a lifelong vegetarian, for whom cruelty to animals was no less despicable than cruelty to human beings. Among the many accolades he earned over his long career were a Jewish Book Council Award for his novella The Slave in 1963, an Itzik Manger Prize for Fiction (1973), two US National Book Awards (1970 and 1974), and the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature. Several of his works have been adapted for film and television, and Singer continued to write until his death in 1991.

“Gimpel the Fool” was the first of Singer’s works to be translated into English and widely distributed among non-Yiddish-speaking readers in America and worldwide. It is the story most often found in anthologies of the author’s work and has been hailed as the inspiration for Canadian and American Jewish writers, many of whom provided popular translations.

This study guide references the 1957 Noonday Press edition of Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories, translated by Saul Bellow.

Gimpel is both the protagonist and the story’s first-person narrator. His first words are, “I am Gimpel the Fool. I don’t think of myself as a fool” (994). He discloses that he has earned his moniker because, from his earliest childhood, he has believed—or seemed to believe—all the lies that his cruel fellow villagers in Frampol have told him in their efforts to torment him. What they don’t understand is that for most of his life, Gimpel is not tormented. On the contrary, he chooses to believe the lies, and in his innocent acceptance of their outrageous falsehoods, he makes peace with himself and the world.

Gimpel says that when he was a small boy, after both his parents died, his schoolmates gave him names that denigrated his intelligence: “I had seven names in all: imbecile, donkey, flax-head, dope, glump, ninny, and fool. The last name stuck” (994). Undaunted by their derision, Gimpel accepts the children’s lies: that the school is closed because the rabbi’s wife, who was not pregnant, has given birth; that a wolf roams the streets, or that the Czar is coming to town, or the moon has fallen from the sky. Gimple says he knows the stories are preposterous, but he asks what he has to gain by rejecting them. A big, strapping boy, Gimple could easily have slapped any one of those boys “all the way to Cracow” (994), but he chooses instead to forgive them, accept the lies, and remain at peace.

The rabbi reinforces Gimpel’s point of view and gives him a precept to live by: “[Better] to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself” (995). Gimpel has strong religious faith, and these lines reinforce his belief that he is on the right path.

Eventually, the townspeople convince Gimpel that Elka, a woman who’s had many lovers and has an illegitimate son she passes off as her brother, is a virgin whom he should marry. Once wed, Gimpel comes to understand that Elka continues to take lovers, that her son is not her brother, and that she keeps him out of her marriage bed because she doesn’t love him, yet he stays with her. She becomes pregnant with another child, whom Gimpel accepts as his own son. He loves the child unconditionally, and he imagines he is a much-blessed man.

One day, a fire in the bakery sends Gimpel home early to find his wife in bed with a lover, and he suddenly feels like the fool the town has labeled him. He seeks rabbinical advice, and the rabbi instructs him that the Law of Moses requires Gimpel to abandon Elka and the children and divorce her immediately. Gimpel obeys but finds himself miserable. He loves Elka despite her behavior, and he adores the son Elka brought into his life. Nine months after he leaves, he can take it no longer; he resolves to take control of his life and trust Elka once again, saying, “Today it’s your wife you don’t believe; tomorrow it’s God Himself you won’t take stock in” (999).

Years pass, and Gimpel inherits the bakery he apprenticed in as a child; Elka bears five more children and continues to deceive him, even carrying on a relationship with his apprentice. He accepts her deception because he is deeply in love with her and cares for the children.

When Elka becomes ill and lies dying, she confesses all to him. She dies in his arms, and he is plagued by self-doubt. The Spirit of Evil visits him in the night and suggests that he take revenge on the abusive townspeople by urinating in the bread he bakes for them. He does this, and even bakes the bread, but Elka’s ghost appears in his dreams and convinces him not to sink to their level of wrongdoings. He takes the bread out of the oven and buries it. Then, Gimpel goes home, disperses his savings among the children, puts on his coat and boots, and leaves Frampol forever.

Gimpel travels to different towns, where he tells fantastic, magical stories to the children. People treat him well and no longer abuse him. As time goes on, he comes to believe that there are no lies; even the strangest things can happen, and nothing is impossible.

As he completes his tale, Gimpel confides that he is looking forward to death. He is now a beggar and lives in a hut near the Jewish graveyard. Each night he dreams of Elka and longs to join her. In death, beyond the imaginary world of his long life, he believes he is bound to find what is “real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception” (1003).