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

31. The Gentile Who Wanted to Screw the Jew (IFA 18136)

31 The Gentile Who Wanted to Screw the Jew T O L D B Y H I N D A S H E I N F E R B E R T O H A D A R A H S E L A Every village has a tavern run by a Jew. All over Poland there are villages with a tavern run by a Jew. The tavern serves food and drink. Once a gentile came and asked the Jew to let him have a glass of arrack * on credit. He was going to sell his cow in town and would come back with the money and pay for the drink. “You’re going to sell the cow?” asked the tavern keeper. “I’ll buy it.” So he bought it and paid for it. The next day, the gentile went to the priest and told him that his cow had been stolen. It was missing. The whole village went looking for it and found the cow with the Jew. There was a big commotion because the Jew had stolen this gentile’s cow. They arrested him and held a big trial. If there’s a trial you have to hire a lawyer. There was a really big lawyer who defended only royalty and important people. He never came for an ordinary trial. But if there was some kind of blood libel against a Jew, then he would appear without a fee. They brought this lawyer, but he couldn’t save the man. The man was found guilty, and the sentence was that he would be sent to prison in Russia for many years. “His wife will have to move to the city,” the lawyer told the judges. “If he is sent to prison in Russia, she won’t be able to keep the tavern, and she’ll have to move to the city. Can everyone here please give something and help her out?” Everyone took out a bank note and handed it to the lawyer. When the lawyer reached the man who said his cow had been stolen, the man took out a banknote. The lawyer had been looking at every banknote to make 236 * Brandy of the Near East; term used in Israel by people from countries of Islam. It is of interest that the narrator, who is from Poland, used the term arrack rather than one of the Yiddish words for brandy, such as konyak or “vishniak” (cherry brandy). sure it was not counterfeit. But he looked really closely at the banknote from the man with the cow. “Look,” he told the judges, “I think this banknote is counterfeit.” The judges, too, began to examine it, one after another. “You can’t tell. You can’t be sure without testing it.” But it didn’t look right to them somehow . “Where did you get this money?” the judges asked the gentile. “It’s true that the man paid me for the cow,” he answered. He thought that if he said that the Jew had given him counterfeit money, he would be punished even more severely. But the lawyer was very clever. The money was not counterfeit; and the judges, too, had already realized that. So the gentile was punished. 31 / The Gentile  237  COMMENTARY FOR TALE 31 (IFA 18136) Told by Hinda Sheinferber from Mogielnica, Poland, to Hadarah Sela in 1991 in Haifa. Cultural, Historical, and Literary Background The court is a social institution in which and about which stories are told. The tales told in the courts are supposed to tell the truth, but tales told about the courts unfold the twists of truth. There is a substantial amount of scholarship discussing the narrative qualities of testimonies and counter-testimonies.1 King Solomon’s Judgment The fundamental court case narrative in Judeo-Christian tradition is the biblical story of King Solomon (1 Kings 3:4–28), which is tale type 926 “Judgment of Solomon.” In this tale, two prostitutes each gave birth to a son, but one boy dies. The women come before King Solomon asking him to decide to whom the surviving infant belongs. In his wisdom, Solomon issues a sentence to cut the baby in half and divide him between the two of them. One mother accepts the sentence, but the other protests; Solomon decides that the true mother is the one who protests and wishes the baby to live. Biblical scholars consider...