הומור ותפקודיו בגירסאות הסיפור "ר' יהושע בן לוי ומלאך-המוות"

The humor in the legend of "Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi and the Angel of Death" embodies the awareness that death is an aspect of life and a mode of existence, freely recognized by the unfettered human spirit. Humor is an expression of the ability to accept death with understanding and without bitterness as a dimension that indirectly confirms and defines human existence. The article presents three — Talmudic, Karaite and contemporary — out of the approximately forty versions of the legend, that treat the comic potential of the theme in three ways: through irony, parody and mythology. The ironic treatment represents a sober view of reality, free of illusions; the parodic treatment expresses an ambivalent attitude toward a different cultural code; the mythological treatment is a heroic breakthrough to the boundaries of human experience. These aspects of human reality are manifested in the text through hidden gaps between what is said and what is implied, a deliberate gap between two texts with opposing codes, and the creation of contradictions that are not resolved in the text and remain enigmatic.