When Khushim came home weeping, his mother said, “My son, here is my calf. Take it to the young woman and she will be reconciled with you.” Khushim took the calf up in his arms and started off. As he went along, the calf began to bellow and kick so violently that it broke out of his arms and escaped, leaving him with his face all bruised.
Khushim returned home weeping. His mother said, “My son, you don’t carry a calf in your arms. You tie a rope to it and make it follow you.” Then she gave him a piece of meat and told him to give it to the prospective bride as a gift.
Khushim took the meat, tied a rope to it, and dragged it along through the streets. Dogs quickly gathered around it, and before long they had eaten it all up. Khushim returned home weeping bitterly.
His mother said, “My son, you’re supposed to put meat into a basket. You put the basket on your shoulder and carry it that way.” Then she told him to invite the young woman to a meal.
Khushim went to the home of the prospective bride. There he grabbed a basket, shoved the young woman into it, put the basket on his shoulder, and carried it home, for which they beat him soundly.
Then his mother said, “You may as well loll about on top of the oven. There’s no point in your going to a prospective bride’s house any more.”
78
The Tale of a Leaf from the Tree of Knowledge
Once upon a time a peasant lost his way and found himself in a desert. Suddenly there was a windstorm that caught up dust and sand and a mixture of all sorts of things and whirled them round and round. When the storm was over, the peasant came upon a path that led him to a village.
As he walked along, he was amazed to feel himself becoming wiser and cleverer, so that he could now understand things around him better than he ever had before.
After a while when he grew tired, he sat down to rest and took his sandals off. But as he did so, he felt himself becoming as dull and ignorant and boorish as before. Yet the minute he put the sandals back on, he turned sensible and wise again. So it was clear to him that the sandals had brought all this about.
Now, the explanation was that the windstorm had blown a leaf from the Tree of Knowledge out of the Garden of Eden, and the leaf had stuck to the bottom of one of his sandals.
The peasant came to a town in which the king’s daughter was very sick. All the doctors had despaired of her life, and the king was bracing himself for her death. Then he was told that there was a certain crude peasant who promised to cure his daughter if they would let him in.
The peasant, using a variety of remedies that he understood because of his new wisdom, began to cure the princess. Slowly she became conscious again, and after a few days she was entirely well.
The king, as was to be expected, rewarded the peasant magnificently. He also kept him in the palace for several days so that the royal physicians could determine whether he had cured the princess with authentic remedies or through something unnatural—magic, for instance. The doctors testified that the peasant’s remedies were well and wisely chosen.
Then the king asked the peasant how it was that he, an ignorant man, had been able to surpass the wisdom of the greatest court physician.
“It’s my sandals,” said the peasant simply.
The king demanded, “What kind of joke is that?”
“I’m not joking,” said the peasant. “All my wisdom comes from my sandals. If anyone were to put them on, he would be as smart as I am.”
The king promised half his kingdom and much more if the peasant would let him have the sandals.
Now, it stands to reason that a king cannot wear dirty sandals, so he gave them to his servants to be cleaned. And in order to get them clean, they threw away the leaf from the Tree of Knowledge.
So when the king put on the sandals, he was neither wiser nor more sensible than he had ever been.
79
Reb Hershele and the Goose Leg
One Friday when Reb Hershele Ostropolyer was eight years old, he crept into the family food locker, stole a leg from a roast goose, and ate it. Soon afterward his mother went to the locker and saw that one of the goose’s legs was missing. She knew at once that this was her son’s work, so she gave him a scolding for taking the leg without permission.
“Maybe the goose only had one leg,” said Reb Hershele.
His mother replied, “Where have you ever seen a one-legged bird?”
That evening Reb Hershele went to the synagogue with his father. As they were walking, Reb Hershele saw a stork standing on one leg. “See, Father,” he cried, pointing to the stork. “Mother says there are no one-legged birds.”
“That bird,” replied his father, “habitually stands on one leg; his other leg is hidden beneath him. Watch me drive him off—you’ll see.” The father picked up a stone and threw it at the stork. The bird quickly lowered its other leg and flew away. “So you see that your mother is right.”
“Ah,” said Reb Hershele, “Maybe if you drove the roast goose off, you’d see its other leg.”
80
Hershele Ostropolyer and the Sabbath Caftan
It happened that a hungry Hershele Ostropolyer came to a town one day. There he learned that the town’s richest man was marrying off his only daughter. “Hmm,” thought Hershele, “it wouldn’t hurt to look in on the wedding.” But the rich man’s servants refused to let such a ragged man into the house. So Hershele Ostropolyer hurried to a friend’s house and begged him, with tears in his eyes, to lend him his Sabbath caftan. The friend took his new caftan out of the chest and let Hershele put it on. And when Hershele went back to the wedding, he was welcomed and seated in a place of honor. But no matter what good things he was given to eat or drink, he emptied them out on the caftan. Finally someone said, “What are you doing, Hershele?”
“I’m only doing what’s proper,” Hershele Ostropolyer replied. “After all, it’s the caftan, not I, that’s being honored here.”
81
Why Khelmites The Fools
Once upon a time a new Torah reader, a balkoyre, came to Khelm just as the annual cycle of readings from the Torah was to begin. The balkoyre was not much of a scholar, and instead of reading “Breyshes, boro elohim es hashomayim”—“In the beginning, God created the heavens”—he read “Breyshes, boro elohim es … hashoytim”—“In the beginning, God created fools.” And since that time, for better or worse, Khelmites have been fools.
82
The Angel Spills the Jar of Fools
Since no angel ever has to perform two assignments at once, one angel carried a jar filled with intelligent souls, while another angel carried a jar filled with foolish souls so that every town could have its town fool.
One day the angel with the jar of foolish souls happened to be passing Khelm. Since the region thereabouts has many hills and valleys, the angel lost his footing, slipped, and spilled the whole jar near Khelm. And since that time, all Khelmites have been fools.
83
A Shoyfer in Khelm
One day a stranger arrived in Khelm, a very muddy town, and lost one of his boots in the mud. He looked everywhere but couldn’t find it. Later a Khelmite found it, but since no one in Khelm wore boots, people didn’t know what it was. So they took the boot to the rabbi, and a meeting was called. Everyone looked at the boot, and the rabbi declared that it was a shoyfer, a ram’s horn, because a shoyfer is long at the bottom and round at the top. So the Khelmites placed the boot inside the ornkoydesh, the Holy Ark, in the synagogue.
It happened that the same stranger came back to Khelm and went to the synagogue to pray. When he saw his boot in the Holy Ark, he cried, “That’s my boot! Let me have it.”
But the Khelmites wouldn’t believe him. They shouted that it wasn’t a boot, it was a shoyfer. Well, they took the quarrel to the rabbi, who ruled that the boot was a shoyfer, but that the stranger should be paid eighteen zlotys just the same for his distress. And that’s what was done. The stranger was paid eighteen zlotys and Khelm “blows the shoyfer” with
a boot.
84
The Hill Pushed Away
There was trouble in Khelm. There was no water. People who wanted it had to go to a well several versts away. In summer you could die of thirst.
The people of Khelm decided that no one could go on living like that. A solution had to be found. There had to be a closer well. So they decided to push away the hill that stood between them and the well. The entire village took sticks and spades and pushed. They pushed and pushed, but they couldn’t tell whether they had budged the hill. So they decided to take their jackets off and pile them up in a wagon. Then the pile could serve as their marker. So that’s what they did; they took their jackets off. And they pushed and pushed, but while they pushed, they couldn’t see what was happening behind them.
What was happening was this: a rider came by and, finding a wagon piled with clothes, he harnessed his horse to the wagon and drove away with it, clothes and all. The Khelmites meanwhile kept on pushing. At last one of them turned around and saw that the wagonload of clothes was a long way off. They all stopped work and gazed at their marker, which was moving farther and farther into the distance. They concluded that the hill had decided to move of its own accord. Thus there was no point in pushing anymore, because the hill was moving toward the well by itself.
They went to get their clothes, but no matter how much they walked, they couldn’t overtake the wagon. To this day the Khelmites have no jackets, and they still hope to overtake their marker.
85
How Khelmites Lighted Up the Night
The Khelmites were troubled by the night. When it was dark they often fell and broke their arms and legs. One day they heard a man from Vilna saying that even the nights in Vilna were bright. So they held a meeting at which they formed a fine plan. First they had to wait for a moonlit night. Finally it came—and what a night! A night of nights! The moon shone so brightly that it simply begged to be blessed, so they blessed it in proper form. Then, seeing the moon’s reflection in a barrel of water, they took a board and quickly nailed it over the barrel.
Later, when it was the new moon again and the night was pitch-black, they opened the barrel, meaning to take their moon out of storage. But lo and behold, when they looked into the water, there was no moon to be seen. “Alas, alas,” they cried, “someone has stolen our moon!”
86
The Melamed’s Trunk
In the synagogue in Khelm this is inscribed on the balemer, the platform from which the Torah is read:
A melamed is forbidden three things:
1. He may not live on a hill.
2. He may not have a suitcase on wheels.
3. He may not eat strudle.
You see, it had been the custom in Khelm for boys to be examined orally Friday evening on their lessons. One Friday morning a melamed came to tutor the son in a Khelmite’s house. He noticed a strudle in the kitchen and asked the servant, “What’s that?”
“A strudle,” she replied.
The melamed went home and, giving his wife a two-zloty coin, told her to bake a strudle. Instead she used the money to buy her son a pair of shoes. When the melamed asked, “Where is the strudle?” she told him what she had done, and he flew into a rage.
Now, as it happened, there was an open trunk on wheels standing nearby. The two of them quarreled so fiercely that they fell into the trunk. The lid closed, the trunk began to roll and, since their house was on a hill, it rolled with all possible speed until it reached the market square. When people saw the rolling trunk, they set up a hullabaloo. They shuttered their shops and ran to the synagogue, where they caused the shoyfer to be blown. Finally, in God’s good time, the trunk stopped rolling. The rabbi and all the town’s Jews moved hesitantly toward it. When the trunk was opened, the melamed and his wife leaped out.
And that’s why the rabbi and the community leaders established the three rules and caused them to be inscribed on the balemer of the synagogue.
87
The Rolling Stone
There is a huge stone on a high hill in Khelm. It happened once that the Khelmites wanted to move the stone down from the hill. What did they do? They gathered up the entire population and started to drag the stone. When they had dragged it halfway down, a stranger went by. Seeing what they were doing, he laughed at them. “Why are you dragging the stone?” he asked. “Just give it a shove; it’ll roll downhill by itself.” The Khelmites, heeding good advice, dragged the stone back to the top of the hill. Then they pushed it, and it did indeed roll to the bottom by itself.
88
A Cat in Khelm
People in Khelm didn’t know about cats, and they lived with mice crawling in and out of every nook and cranny. At mealtimes each householder had a rod at his table to drive the mice away. Then one day a stranger came to Khelm and described a creature he had seen, an animal called a “cat” which, if it was introduced into a house, drove the mice into their holes. The town of Khelm asked him to find such a creature, and then bought the cat from him for the enormous sum of eighteen zlotys. But the Khelmites didn’t know that a cat could run away. Well, the cat was put on watch in a house, and the townspeople were delighted to see that it scared off the mice. But one day someone left a window open, and the cat took it into its head to leap out onto a roof.
So the Khelmites called a meeting to figure out how to catch the cat. They decided to set the house on fire to make the cat jump to the ground. So they burned the house down, but the cat sprang to the roof of the next house. So they burned the second house down. But the cat sprang to the roof of a third house. So they burned the third house down. And so on, until they destroyed half their town.
89
Khelmites Who Refused to Tread on Snow
Once upon a time a stranger came to Khelm and was taken ill. He needed to be led to the hospital, but it happened to be winter and the Khelmites, who dearly loved the whiteness of snow, didn’t want him to spoil it with his footprints. So they called a meeting to discuss the problem. At last they arrived at a solution: they put the sick man on a board, and four of them simply carried him to the hospital.
90
The Sundial
It happened once that the people of Khelm made a sundial. But a rainstorm came along and drenched it. So the Khelmites built a roof over their sundial to keep it from getting wet.
91
A Khelm Compromise
It happened once that the Khelmites had to build a new ritual bath, a mikve. When the frame was finished, they turned their attention to making the floor. It was at this point that a quarrel erupted and they broke up into two groups. One group said that it was necessary to plane the floor boards so that people shouldn’t get splinters in their feet. The other group held that the floor boards must not be planed, otherwise they would be too slippery and people would fall. Finally they decided to consult the rabbi and do whatever he told them to. Well, the rabbi of Khelm listened attentively to what each side said. Then he ruled as follows:
“Of course, the floorboards ought to be properly planed, but to keep people from slipping, they must be laid planed-side down.”
92
A Bridge in Khelm
A river flowed right through the middle of Khelm. It occurred to several merchants that a bridge over it would be good for business on both sides of the river. But some of the younger people objected. They said: “Of course it would be nice to build a bridge, but let’s not do it because it would be good for business; we should build it solely for aesthetic reasons. We’ll be glad to contribute to the building expenses for beauty’s sake, but we won’t give a penny for the sake of trade.” Still others, even younger people, said, “A bridge! That’s a good idea, but not for the sake of trade or beauty but to have someplace to stroll back and forth. We’ll be glad to contribute money to build a bridge for strolling.” And so the three groups began to quarrel, and they are quarreling still. And to the present day Khelm does not have a bridge.
93
Sowing Salt
Once there was a shortage of salt in Khelm. What to do? The townspeople thought and thought without resting night or day. Then the rebbe, a mighty thinker, had a thought. “Let us go out to the fields, and let us sow salt.” The whole town went out to the fields carrying the last specks of salt they had left. They went to work sowing salt, and after they were done, the rebbe said that he would stay in the fields to guard the crop.
At night the rebbe lay down to sleep. As he slept, a wolf came by and bit his head off. In the morning the whole town turned out to see how the salt was doing. They found the headless rebbe in the field and wondered where his head could be. They sent messengers to the rebbe’s wife with the question: “Do you recall—did the rebbe have a head, or not?” She said she couldn’t remember.
So they went to the cantor of Khelm, who said he couldn’t remember either. People gathered in clusters discussing whether the rebbe had had a head or not. Some cried, “He did,” others, “No, he didn’t.”
They were about to come to blows when a man arrived from another town. “What are you arguing about?” he asked, and they told him about the salt and the rebbe and the rebbe’s head. When he had heard the whole story, he said, “If your rebbe was prepared to sow salt, it’s proof that he didn’t have a head. You can bury him without further ado.”
94
Two Cows for a Melody
Yiddish Folktales Page 21