Dov Noy

Dov Noy was born as Dov Neuman on 20 October 1920, in Kolomyia, Galicia (then Poland, now Ukraine). He got a traditional Jewish education and had a private tutor, Jewish poet Shimshon Meltzer [he].^[1] He emigrated to Palestine in 1938 and studied Talmud, Jewish history and the Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.^[2][3] He served as a volunteer for the British Army Royal Engineers^[1] from 1941 to 1945.^[2] Most of Noy's family were killed in the Holocaust,^[2] with the exception of himself and his brother Meir, who emigrated to Israel in 1948.^[1]

After the war, in 1946, Noy got his MA from the Hebrew University.^[1] He then worked as a teacher in British internment camps for Holocaust survivors in Cyprus in 1947–1949, where he met his brother Meir.^[1] From 1949 to 1952, he was part of the editorial team of a children's weekly magazine Davar Le'yeladim.^[2]

He studied in the United States from 1952 to 1954, first studying comparative literature under René Wellek at Yale University before moving to Indiana University Bloomington.^[1] There, he completed his doctoral dissertation under the supervision of folklorist Stith Thompson. Titled "Motif-Index of Talmudic-Midrashic Literature", Noy's dissertation analyzed motifs in rabbinic literature.^[3] This work was later included into Thompson's six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature,^[4] "greatly raising the status of Jewish folklore in the field".^[3] Noy was the first folklorist who applied the Aarne-Thompson classification to Jewish folklore.^[5]

Upon returning to Israel in 1955, Noy began teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, focusing on aggadah.^[4] The same year, he founded the Israel Folktale Archives in Haifa,^[3][2] which would go on to collect more than 25,000 Jewish folktales from around the world.^[5][2][6][7] The archive was later renamed in Noy's honor. Noy collected and analysed folk tales of multiple Jewish communities, including Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jews.^[3][2] The collection of the Israel Folktale Archives have been published in English translation in the series Folktales of the Jews, edited by Noy's student Dan Ben-Amos.^[3]

He also founded the Folklore Research Center at the Hebrew University and taught Jewish Folklore course there.^[2][6] Noy travelled a lot, giving lectures and attending conferences.^[5] In 1985–92, he was also the Professor of Yiddish Folklore at Bar-Ilan University.^[1]

In 2004, Noy was awarded the Israel Prize, the country's highest honor, for his folklore research.^[2] In 2002, he got the Bialik Prize.^[6] He was called "The Doyen of Jewish Folkloristics",^[2][7] and that he "single-handedly established the study of Jewish Folklore in Israel".^[6][2]

Noy died on 29 September 2013, in Jerusalem.^[3]

 

Composer and ethnomusicologist Meir Noy [he] (1922–1998),^[1] Dov Noy's brother, founded a music archive, the "Hebrew Song Collection", in Tel Aviv.^[1][6]

Noy was married to historian Tamar Noy [he]; their son Chaim Noy is a media and communication professor. He was married before, and had two sons, poet Amos Noy^[8] and Izhar.^[9]

Among his students are Heda Jason [de], Dan Ben-Amos, Aliza Shenhar, Eli Yassif [he], Tamar Alexander [es], Haya Bar-Itzhak, and Galit Hasan-Rokem.^[6][5] Noy was known for his "astounding memory" and good sense of humor.^[6] Noy was fluent in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and German.^[10]

• Neuman (Noy), Dov (1954). Motif-Index of Talmudic-Midrashic Literature (PDF) (PhD). Indiana University. Retrieved 3 July 2024.
• Noy, Dov (1 January 1961). "The First Thousand Folktales in the Israel Folktale Archives". Fabula. 4 (1): 99–110. doi:10.1515/fabl.1961.4.1.99.
• Noy, Dov (1963). Folktales of Israel. University of Chicago Press. Retrieved 3 July 2024.
• Noy, Dov; Ben-Amos, Dan; Frankel, Ellen (2006). Folktales of the Jews, Volume 1: Tales from the Sephardic Dispersion. Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 978-0-8276-0829-0.
• Ben-Amos, Dan; Noy, Dov (2006). Folktales of the Jews, Volume 2: Tales from Eastern Europe. Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 978-0-8276-0830-6. Retrieved 3 July 2024.
• Ben-Amos, Dan; Noy, Dov (2011). Folktales of the Jews, Volume 3: Tales from Arab Lands. Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 978-0-8276-0871-9. Retrieved 3 July 2024.

• Ben-Amos, Dan (8 December 2014). "Jewish Folklore as Counterculture". AJS Perspectives. Retrieved 3 July 2024.

• Dov Noy Archive
• Stroum Lectures 1986 by Dov Noy
• Israel Folktale Archives