Folktales of the Jews, Volume 2: Tales from Eastern Europe

55. I Came From M

55 I Came from Mád and Returned to Mád T O L D B Y G E R S H O N B R I B R A M There probably wasn’t a more common or widespread saying in Hungary than, “I reached the same place as the Jew from Mád.” I heard about the source of this adage from my late grandfather, who was a shoh.et* in Abauszantó. Here I report exactly what he told me: The community of Mád was small, but it was well known throughout Hungary. It was in the Tokay district, which is famous for its wines. In that place, there lived a Jew who made his living buying and selling secondhand (alte zakhen) goods. He traveled from city to city and village to village , trying his luck and hoping to make enough to live on. One day, he started for Szantó to try his luck there. To make his load less burdensome, he filled his pipe with tobacco and tried to light it. But it was his bad luck that a strong wind was blowing and he couldn’t get the match to light. Refusing to give up, our Jew turned around and faced in the other direction. Standing with his back to the wind he had no trouble lighting his pipe. When he was satisfied with the smoke rising from his pipe he continued his journey. This was all very well—except that, having forgotten to turn around again, he continued his journey back toward the place he had started from. When he reached his intended destination, you can imagine his astonishment that the place was so similar to Mád. The same houses, the same streets and shops and everything. Here is the synagogue! This synagogue and that of Mád are as alike as two drops of water. And not only on the outside. Inside, too. There is the same “jesters’ pew”** as in Mád—and a synagogue without a jesters’ pew is like the Holy Temple without the frankincense (a component of the incense that by itself had a terrible smell). 404 * One who slaughters animals according to the kosher laws. ** In Hebrew: moshav letzim; after Psalm 1:1, “Happy is the man who does not sit in the seat of the irreverent .” A Jewish merchant. 55 / I Came from Mád  405  In the jesters’ pew the poor people were making fun of the rich people and exchanging all the local gossip. And if he had any slight hope that everything was all right, when he reached his own house, he quickly perceived that the problems were the same as at home. And when he met his own wife, too, he awakened at once to the bitter truth, because she greeted him with the same “refrain” that he could never forget. And this is the source of the saying, “I reached the same place as the Jew from Mád.”  406  Folktales of the Jews: Volume 2 COMMENTARY FOR TALE 55 (IFA 6814) Written down from memory by Gershon Bribram from Hungary. He heard the story from his grandfather, Rabbi Israel Jacob Schwarz, who was a cantor and a shoh.et in Abauszantó, Hungary, around the time he celebrated his bar mitzvah . Cultural, Historical, and Literary Background The Proverb The narrator presents this story as an etiological tale, explaining the origin of a proverb. Consequently, the proverb serves as both the opening and the closing formula for the narrative. Subject to theoretical positions and analytical methods, the relations between proverbs and tales have been described in causal, analytical , structural, and rhetorical terms. In the literary Aesopic fables, proverbs occurred as a coda, concisely summing up the moral message of the fable; however, in other narratives traditions, the relationship between the proverb and the tale is more complex. Proverbs may occur in narrative texts in different positions, serving different functions. A study of such relations as they occur in the tales of the IFA has been published.1 Taylor2 articulated the basic framework for discussing these relations in general; additional studies3 and essays4 on this subject are available . The proverbial phrase “Ott vagyunk ahol a mádi zsidó” (There we are, where the Jew of Mád [is]) is used to mean “we are where we were”—that is, we came back to the same place (in our discussion or actions...