Nietzsche’s Zarathustra has a big problem with little people. You could say that he literally has a microaggression. After he has a profound revelation of who he is “Before Sunrise” while he gazes into the deep sky and “trembles with divine desires,” Zarathustra comes down from the heights to the valley below to learn if […]
Since he was so cheeky and loved to upset his German readers, Nietzsche always loved to reflect on how wonderful he was. He did this because he wanted to create a space in which his voice, despite its being despised, could weigh in on any subject he wished to discuss. It was, in his view, […]
Nietzsche was obsessed with the relationship of the body to thought. And whenever he articulated his reading of the body, he always made sure to put it forth in what Peter Sloterdijk (winking at Diogenes) called a “cheeky” manner. He looked to offend and this gesture, for Nietzsche, was healthy. In the beginning of his […]
Debt. We all have it. It’s overwhelming. And when we think of debt we, without a doubt, feel powerless. Countless films and TV shows have been and are casting characters who, in debt, become slackers or else criminals. There are two options: rebel against the system that creates debt – screw it over or destroy […]
In the beginning of The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, Ruth Wisse points out that for Rabbi Nachman the Simpleton (that is, the schlemiel) acts “as if” good will triumph over evil. In his story, “The Clever Man and the Simple Man,” the thinker looks down on the simpleton as an idiot for being so naïve. The […]
I was born and raised in a small town in the Adirondacks called Mayfield. In elementary school, I was the only Jew in my class. When we sang in the school assembly in December, we sang several Christmas carols; but to make sure I didn’t feel like the odd one out, the teachers included two […]
In classic Yiddish literature, we don’t often learn much about the parents of the schlemiel character (whether in the Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third, “Bontshe Shvayg,” or I.B. Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool”. Shalom Aliechem comes close when he tells us that his Motl character (Motl, the Cantor’s Son) was an orphan and that […]
Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche are often seen by academics as figures of modernity. Their thoughts and writings have touched countless scholars who have seen the Modern world through their lenses. One can also read the schlemiel and this characters Jewishness through them, even if it is – as is the case with all of them […]
Kevin Hart is well known for his self-depreciating kind of embodied comedy. His intense facial gestures which come one after another in rapid fire show a person who is struggling not just to articulate himself but to be accepted. He never misses an opportunity to show that although he is the smallest guy in the […]
The schlemiel character is constantly expanding and contracting. But in the end she always becomes small. She always seems to be caught up in a comedy of scale. In their dreams schlemiels are, as Hannah Arendt said of Heinrich Heine’s schlemiel, “lords.” But they are, in reality, quite small. They are – as Arendt would say […]
Schlemiel Theory 