Cilibi Moise

Cilibi Moise or Cilibi Moisi (born Froim Moise; 1812 – January 31, 1870) was a Moldavian-born Wallachian and Romanian peddler, humorist, aphorist, and raconteur. He is best known for the aphorisms and anecdotes attributed to him, which, although recorded in Romanian, represent an important segment of the local secular Jewish culture and Jewish humor in the 19th century. Moise relied on others to record his own creations, and these often refer to him using the third person, which made him a stock character.

Biography Born into the Jewish community in Focşani, Moise lived much of his life in Bucharest, where his family moved when he was a child. In time, he became one of the boccegii (peddlers who carried their merchandise in bundles). His moniker Cilibi originated with the Ottoman Turkish word çelebi, meaning "courteous".

Moise traveled throughout the Danubian Principalities, and his experience in assessing people's characters, as well as his interest in memorizing catchphrases, contributed to his literary career.

Cilibi Moise suffered a great shame – his house was visited by robbers who found nothing to steal. Caragiale confessed that he grew up reading Moise, and, during the 1890s, promoted his works in the journal Epoca (of which he was coeditor). both cited Moise as a parallel to the Ottoman-born Wallachian writer Anton Pann. Călinescu referred to his style as "good old healthy humor", Samples of Moise's work formed the first part of a 1996 anthology, which listed Romanian-language Jewish literature from him to Paul Celan; the work, published by Editura Hasefer, was edited by Ţicu Goldstein (De la Cilibi Moise la Paul Celan. Antologie din operele scriitorilor evrei de limba română).