Yiddish Folktales

by Beatrice Weinreich

  Then he asked, “Where can I find Borekh bar Zorekh?”

  “In the next room,” came the reply.

  So Berl went into the next room where, seated on rickety benches before wobbly bookstands, he found a number of men studying Torah. In still another room he came upon a group of Hasidim sitting beside a broken brandy bottle, singing wordless tunes or going into ecstasies. “Is Borekh bar Zorekh here?” Berl asked. “Oh, he’s in hell,” came the reply.

  “In hell?” said Berl to himself. “And this is what you call heaven?” Aloud, he said, “And where is this hell of yours?”

  “Go that way,” someone said. “You’ll find another cave. Crawl ten yards down and then ten yards up and you’ll come to it.”

  Well, Berl crawled—what else could he do?—down and then up and finally emerged from the cave and looked around. Amazing! A building forty cubits high, forty cubits wide. A palace, just like the riding hall in Mohilev, with a soldier in front of it wearing a fine uniform and carrying a shiny rifle.

  Berl asked the soldier, “This is hell?”

  “Yes.”

  Berl went in. He came to a huge, magnificently decorated hall. An orchestra was playing, and young men and women were dancing.

  “Has anyone seen Borekh bar Zorekh?” asked Berl.

  “He’s in the next room,” came the reply.

  Berl went into the next room and found a group of people seated around a table playing cards and drinking cognac. But Borekh was not among them. “In the next room,” he was told, so Berl went into a third room and there found him, Borekh bar Zorekh, his partner, sprawled like a king in an armchair, a glass of tea in one hand, a cigar in the other.

  “Hey,” cried Berl, “is this what you call hell? And you call that other place the Garden of Eden? Why the devil didn’t you let me know how well things are going for you? And why did you have to walk me through all those dreary wastes?”

  Borekh said, “How well things are going for me? Is that what you say? Ah, brother, look closely at my lips and gums. Do you see how seared they are?

  “Do you remember how on Sabbath afternoons, we used to light the samovar so we could drink hot tea on the Sabbath? And how we smoked cigars on the Sabbath? Well, at the instant I died, I was set down beside a steaming samovar and a cigar was shoved into my mouth. And my doom is that I must alternately take sips of scalding tea and choking puffs from the cigar. Sip and puff. Sip and puff. Without stopping, without end.”

  “But what about the dancers in the great hall? And those others drinking cognac and playing cards?”

  “Ah, it’s the same for them. ‘Play and drink. Drink and play. Dance, brother, dance.’ Should any of them tire of dancing, there’s a tormenting angel with a whip who lashes away, crying, ‘Dance, brother! One, two. Hup. No rest for you!’ ”

  The moral of the story is clear, isn’t it? You smoke and light the samovar on the Sabbath at your peril.

  51

  The Miracle of the Tree

  There is a tale of a pious man who had a beautiful garden filled with trees behind his house. One day a hole suddenly appeared in the garden. The man prepared to go and fill it, but as he was about to begin he remembered that it was the Sabbath. “What to do?” he pondered. “If I fill the hole now, I’ll violate the Sabbath.”

  He thought it over and finally decided to keep the Sabbath. Then a miracle occurred: a tree grew out of the hole, a tall tree whose branches spread over the garden. And it bore three kinds of fruit, which nourished the pious man’s family.

  Now, it was hakodesh borekh hu, the Holy One, blessed be He, who did this for the pious man because he had not violated the Sabbath.

  52

  The Peer Man’s Rubble

  On a Sabbath many, many years ago, a poor man went to the synagogue to pray. He saw a pile of gold lying in the synagogue courtyard, but not wishing to violate the Sabbath, he left it alone. When he returned for the early-evening service, he saw the gold again, and again left it where it lay. However, on Saturday night, when he left the synagogue and could at last touch money, all he found was a single ruble. He took it home and gave it to his wife.

  In the same town there was a rich man who had to make a long sea voyage to acquire merchandise. The poor man’s wife gave the ruble to the rich man and asked him to buy something for her. On his journey the rich man bought many goods, but he forgot about the woman’s ruble until his ship was about to sail. He hurried ashore thinking, “I’ll buy the first thing that comes my way.”

  He met a beggar carrying a sack. The rich man asked him, “What have you got in the sack?”

  The beggar replied, “Three young cats.”

  “How much do you want for them?”

  “One ruble.”

  So the rich man bought the cats and sailed away. A storm came up at sea and the ship was blown into the harbor of a city full of very wicked people. When a stranger came to their shores, their practice was to lock him in a building swarming with mice, who then tore him to bits. They threw the rich man into that building, but he turned his cats loose and they killed many of the mice and chased the others away.

  In the morning the people found the rich man very much alive and with three cats for company. The people said, “How much do you want for those cats?” He replied, “Three sacks full of gold. Also, I want to be sent home.” They gave him three sacks of gold for the cats and sent him home.

  Safely home, he asked the poor man’s wife where she had gotten her ruble. She said, “My husband gave it to me.” He asked the husband, who replied, “I saw a pile of gold in the courtyard of the synagogue, but because it was the Sabbath I didn’t take any. In the evening, all I found was a single ruble.”

  The rich man brought a sack of gold and poured it out before the poor man. “Was the pile of gold you saw as big as this?” he asked. “Bigger,” said the poor man. The rich man poured out a second sack of gold, and the poor man said, “Still bigger.” Then he poured out a third sack, and the poor man said, “That’s the size of the pile I saw.” So the rich man gave him all three sacks of gold and the poor man became very rich.

  53

  Blood and Water

  Once there was a king who went to the river to bathe. When he came to its bank, he saw that half of the stream was water but the other half was blood. And there was a man in the middle trying to cross over from the blood to the water.

  So the king called together priests, rabbis, and other holy folk and asked them what it meant. Strangely, none of them could see anything in the river but water.

  Then the king sent for the greatest rabbi in the city, and this rabbi saw exactly what the king saw. “Half of the river is the blood that has been spilled,” the rabbi said. “And the other half is the tears that Jews have wept. The man in the middle is your father, who is trying to go from hell into paradise. But to do this he must wade out of the Jewish blood he has shed, and the river will not let him.”

  54

  A Letter to God

  Once upon a time there was a king whose treasurer was one of the most honest men in the world. He managed the national budget, collected taxes, and accounted scrupulously for every penny. The king valued him highly, and this irritated one of the courtiers. “My lord king,” the courtier said, “you have to expect a little larceny when your treasurer is a Jew.”

  “What are you talking about?” said the king. “He’s an honest man.”

  The courtier said, “Put him to the test; dismiss him. I’ll bet you that his standard of living doesn’t change. Then you’ll know that he’s been stealing from you.”

  The king allowed himself to be persuaded. One day he said to his treasurer, “Yankl, I can’t keep you in my service any longer.”

  The treasurer wondered what he had done wrong. “My lord, have I not served you faithfully?” he asked. “Is there even so much as a penny missing?” But the king wouldn’t hear a word; he simply told him to pack up and go.

  “Where will I go?” Yankl said. “I
’ll starve to death. Have pity on me and my family.”

  The king’s heart was touched. But still he thought, “I have to test him.” A peasant’s wagon was sent for, and Yankl’s furniture and everything else he owned was piled into it. Then the king gave his former treasurer five rubles and sent him away.

  Yankl came to a village, where he moved his family into a hut. And now his life turned dismal. It was just before Passover, and Passover, as everyone knows, is a serious matter. There’s no end to the things one needs. Yet Yankl was penniless, with no job to be had anywhere.

  His wife said, “It’s almost Passover, and we have nothing for the holiday meals. Why don’t you write a letter to God in heaven? Tell Him it was like this and this—in short, the whole story; and ask Him to send us some wine and matse and meat and dishes—and everything else a Jewish home needs on Passover.”

  Yankl looked at his wife in surprise. “Listen,” he said, “you can write a letter to anyone at all—even to the king. But you can’t write a letter to the reboyne shel oylem, the Lord of the Universe.”

  But she wouldn’t let the matter rest, and finally he thought, “What can I lose, after all?” And he sat down and wrote that he had been an official in the court of King So-and-So; and that he had served him faithfully and had been dismissed just the same; and that he and his family were hungry; and that here it was, nearly Passover; and would God please send wine and mead and meat and fish … Here Yankl listed everything that was needed.

  Then he tied the letter to the leg of a bird and the bird flew over cities and towns and from country to country. Flying thus one day, the exhausted bird saw a palace and lighted to rest on one of the window ledges.

  Now this was the palace of a very great emperor, the greatest of the kings of the world. And the emperor happened to see the letter tied to the bird’s leg. He commanded that the bird be caught and the letter brought to him, and then he read the tale of the man who had faithfully served his king but had been dismissed; and now he was poor and it was almost Passover time and therefore he begged God to send him wine and mead and meat and fish and utensils and everything else that was needed.

  So the great emperor commanded his servants to gather all the things listed in it and pack them into two big chests.

  The emperor wrote a letter saying, “I am sending the things you asked for,” and placed this and his ring in one of the chests. Then a guard delivered the two huge chests, setting them quietly in front of Yankl’s door in the middle of the night, and went away.

  In the morning when Yankl got up, he tried to open his door but could not and finally climbed out through a window. Seeing two such large chests, he was afraid that something dreadful was in them, that someone might be about to make a blood-libel accusation against him.

  He went to call the village magistrate, who ordered the chests opened, found the letter, and read it. “God sends wine and mead and meat and fish and utensils to such-and-such a person.”

  What joy there was in Yankl’s home! He was determined to make a Passover feast fit for a king.

  The envious courtier came just then to find how Yankl was celebrating Passover. He looked in the window and was dazzled by what he saw: the best of everything. So he ran off to the king to report. “The Jew is presiding over his Passover feast as if he were a king—and it’s all at your expense.” The king got into his carriage and drove off to see for himself. And when he caught sight of Yankl at the head of his bountiful table, the king was outraged. “Now, there’s a Jew for you. A shameless rogue! He complained to me that he was penniless, and look at him, stuffed with money.”

  The king ordered Yankl arrested. His house was searched and everything was taken away from him. The king personally took the ring from Yankl’s hand and put him and his wife and children into prison. They were given only bread and water, and Yankl was beaten to make him confess where he had hidden “all the other things he had stolen.” And when the poor man, weeping and wailing, said that he had never stolen so much as a penny from the king, and that it was God who had sent everything, he was beaten all the harder. “Don’t invent tales,” he was told.

  It happened then that the great emperor was traveling through his domains to see whether he was being well served and justice was being done. His custom was to visit all the prisons and listen as the inmates told him why they were there.

  When the emperor came to Yankl’s country, Yankl’s wife said, “Listen, dear husband: write a letter explaining why you were arrested. Tell the whole story.” So he wrote it all down, and when the emperor entered the prison, he stood to one side and handed him the letter. The great emperor read it and commanded that the king be brought to him. “Why did you arrest this man?” the emperor asked. “He was stealing me blind,” the king said.

  Just then the emperor saw his own ring on the king’s finger. “Whose is that?” he asked.

  “It’s mine,” the king said. “The Jew stole it from me.”

  Now the great emperor told the king the whole story. And the king bowed his head and said, “I am guilty, sire.”

  But the emperor was not satisfied. “Who knows,” he said angrily, “how many innocent people you’ve arrested.” He ordered all the jails emptied, and he imprisoned the king and the envious courtier and had them fed on bread and water. And he made a king of Yankl, who leads a happy life to this day.

  55

  The Seven Good Years

  A story is told about a man who lost his fortune and became so poor that he had to earn his living as a hired laborer plowing other people’s fields. As he worked behind the plow one day, Elyohu hanovi, the Prophet Elijah, appeared to him and said, “You are destined to have seven good years. When would you like them? Now, while you are still young, or later, when you are old?”

  The poor man said, “You must be a sorcerer, but there’s no way I can pay you for this prophecy.”

  Three days later Elijah came again and repeated the question. And the poor man gave the same reply, because he still thought that Elijah was a sorcerer who expected to be rewarded. On the fourth day Elijah came once more and said, “Hakodesh borekh hu, the Holy One, blessed be He, has ordained that you shall have seven good years. Tell me: When do you want them? Now, or when you are old?”

  The poor man said, “I pray you, let me go home first and ask my wife.” So he went home and told his wife everything, and she said, “Let’s take them now.”

  The man went back to the field, where once again Elijah the Prophet came to him and asked, “When do you want your seven good years?”

  The poor man replied that he wanted them now.

  Elijah said, “Go home. When you get there you will be blessed with wealth.”

  Now, the poor man’s children were playing on a dung heap, and there they found a treasure: enough money to feed them all for seven years. They called their mother, who rejoiced and said to her husband, “See, the Holy One, blessed be He, has been gracious and sent us seven good years. Let us now, as pious people do, practice charity throughout our seven years, and it may be that God will show compassion toward us later.”

  And so they did. They gave alms to many people.

  The man’s wife told her youngest son, “Dear boy, keep a record of the sums we have given away.” And the boy wrote everything down.

  When the seven years were almost up, Elijah the Prophet appeared to the man and said, “The time has come for me to take back what I have given you. I want you to return the money.”

  The man said, “I will give it back only with my wife’s permission, because I did not accept it without her permission.” Then he went to his wife and said, “The old man is here again, and he wants me to return what he gave.”

  The wife said, “Ask the old man whether he wants to take the money in order to give it to someone else. And ask him if he has found anyone who is as charitable as we have been. If he has, I’ll restore the money so he can give it to those who will make better use of it.”

  The Holy One,
blessed be He, noted their words and knew of the good works they had performed. And He rewarded them with even more money, so that He might confirm the saying, “Let there be acts of charity.”

  Let those who have wealth refrain from taking things for granted, since the Almighty may retrieve it at any moment and give it to someone else, even as He gave the treasure to this poor family. May God’s Holy Name be blessed forever. Amen.

  56

  Set a Trap for Another

  Once upon a time there was a merchant whose dishonest clerk stole some of his goods. The merchant, seeing the theft, decided to get even.

  When the clerk’s wife gave birth to a son, the merchant sent a peasant to the clerk’s house to steal the child and bring it to him.

  The merchant put the baby in a chest and carried it a great distance away. Then he threw it under a bridge not far from a hut.

  The man who lived in the hut was a fisherman. As he passed by the bridge, his eyes fell on the chest. He took it home, opened it and found the child. The fisherman and his wife decided to raise the child.

  A considerable time went by and the child grew into a handsome youth. It happened once that the merchant spent the night in the fisherman’s hut. Here he saw the youth who greatly pleased him, and he decided to give him his daughter for a wife; and it was arranged that when the merchant returned from abroad, the young man would come to his home.

  Later that night, the fisherman told the merchant how he had found the boy and decided to raise him. The merchant, remembering his clerk’s son, regretted promising his daughter in marriage to this young man. But he said nothing to the fisherman. Instead he wrote a letter to his wife instructing her to hire a peasant to kill the young man. He sealed the letter with wax and gave it to the youth to deliver.