Gimpel the Fool

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Gimpel the Fool | Characters

Gimpel the Fool is perhaps Singer's most famous character. He is a schlemiel (a fool), but one may also consider the possibility that he is a wise and devout Jew. Gimpel, from Frampol, becomes renowned in his shtetl for being so gullible, for believing everything that he hears. People enjoy testing him, telling him falsely that the rabbi's wife has gone into labor, that the dead (even his own parents) have risen from their graves, and that the woman (Elka) he is to marry is a virgin (she is actually a loose woman who has been divorced and widowed and who has already given birth to a...

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