Books by Eli Yassif

In 1908, Solomon Schechter published his groundbreaking essay on the city of Safed (Tzfat) during the sixteenth century. In The Legend of Safed, Eli Yassif utilizes "new historicism" methodology in order to use the non-canonical materials to better understand the culture of Safed.

Through the use of generic distinctions and definitions developed in folkloristics, this title describes the major trends - structural, thematic, functional - of folk narrative in the central periods of Jewish culture. It presents an overview of the Hebrew folktale, and examines the transmission of the folktale from period to period.