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76 11 The Happy Man T O L D B Y E S T H E R B E R G N E R - K I S H T O M A L K A C O H E N At the start of World War I, some Galician Hasidim who had been conscripted were traveling to the front. They rode in third class. Even though they were on their way to the front, they sang and had a jolly time, because it was Hanukkah. Everyone who saw them thought they must be people without a care in the world. A high-ranking officer was traveling in first class. He, too, was en route to the front. He heard the singing and noise that the Hasidim were making and, knowing that they were headed for the front, went to their carriage. “Why are you so merry?” he asked. “Don’t you know that you are going to the front to fight?” The Hasidim told him the following story about the happy man. Once there was a merchant who traveled with his clerk. They carried a chest full of money to buy merchandise in the city. While they were traveling through a thick forest, the chest disappeared. The clerk was very much distressed by the loss, but the merchant himself only laughed. They stopped for the night at an inn. The clerk, who was too upset to close his eyes, went back to the forest to search for the chest of money. At last he found it, and not a single penny was missing. The next morning the clerk brought the chest to the merchant, who began to cry. “Shouldn’t you be happy, now?!” asked the clerk. “Why are you crying?” “Finding the chest after it was lost—and with all the money in it, too— that is too much good fortune,” he explained. “That’s why I am crying.” After that, the merchant’s luck did indeed turn, until he was compelled to sell his business. It was his former clerk who purchased it. The merchant left town. The clerk had nothing but good fortune and became very rich. Years passed. Once, on a Friday afternoon, the former clerk heard a loud noise. Peering out the window he saw a group of beggars chatting outside his window, and among them he noticed his former employer. He called his servant. “Go give that beggar, the one I’m pointing at, a gold zloty,* and silver coins to the other beggars.” About two hours later, the clerk again heard noise outside his window. He looked and saw the merchant, his former employer, stripped naked from head to toe, dancing and singing merrily, while the townsfolk— thinking him mad—were afraid to approach him. The former clerk said to his servant, “Take some clothes, dress this old man, and invite him to dinner.” When the old man entered, the clerk asked him, “Do you recognize me? I was once your clerk, and you can see how rich I have become. But I have no family. I will give you half of my fortune if you’ll explain why you laughed, years ago, when the chest full of money disappeared and why you cried bitterly when it turned up and nothing was missing.” “When the chest disappeared,” the old man replied, “it was a great disaster . I laughed because I thought no greater disaster could happen to me. When the chest was found, though, and not a single penny was missing, that was such incredible luck that I immediately felt a presentiment that I would go bankrupt—as indeed happened. That’s why I left town. Today, when you sent me a gold coin, but only silver pennies to the other beggars, they asked me to share with them equally. I refused and went to the bathhouse to get ready for the Sabbath. While I was there, the beggars stole all of my tattered clothes, along with the gold coin. So I lingered in the bathhouse . The attendant, seeing that the Sabbath was about to begin and I was not leaving, threw me out. There I was in the street, stark naked. At once I knew that nothing worse could happen to me. I was happy, and danced and pranced, as you saw.” “You see,” the Hasidim told the officer, “now we should be sitting with our rebbe,** lighting the Hanukkah candles, eating potato latkes, playing at kvitlakh,§ and so on. Instead we...

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