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

51. The Poor Man Who Became Rich (IFA 8021)

372 51 The Poor Man Who Became Rich T O L D B Y W O L F S O S E N S K I T O D I N A H B E H A R Aman who was working in the field found a treasure. He took it home and became rich. He moved to a different place, purchased a fine large house, and educated and raised his three children. Eventually he sent them to the big city to learn a profession. The first became a rabbi. The second studied medicine and became a physician. The third studied music and became a great performing artist. They studied for a number of years, until they grew up, married, and built their own homes. One day, the mother said, “What do we have from our children? We gave them an education and every fine thing, but now we don’t see them. Let’s go see how they are.” They took some money and went to visit their sons. The first son, who was a rabbi, greeted them warmly and respectfully and brought them to the school, where his disciples sat immersed in their studies and everyone else, too, was engaged in prayer and Torah study. It was as if the whole world were pious and observant. As for the second, the physician, they came to him and saw how he cared for his patients in the hospital, a place where everyone lay, dressed in white, moaning and suffering. They watched surgical operations and even saw how people die. Their son the physician showed them everything —it seemed as if the whole world were sick. After they saw how they performed surgery, they [the couple] could not stay any longer and went to visit their third son, the musician. He took them to the theater, which was brightly lit, sat them in the best seats in the house, and asked them to wait until he came to collect them after everyone had left. Cheerful music resounded through the hall, the atmosphere was happy, and there was dancing and singing on stage. That is how the performance began. Then a man with a patriarchal visage and long white beard came on stage. When the play was over they waited for their son to come collect them. After the audience had dispersed their son came. “Nu,” he asked, “did you like it?” “Nothing could be finer,” they replied. “And did you see the old man?” asked the son. “Yes,” his parents replied, “we were quite surprised to see an old man like that.” The son laughed. “That was me!” The parents could not believe it, but the son repeated, “Yes, that was me.” Finally they went back home. “We didn’t know what to teach our sons,” the woman told her husband. “One is wasting his life in a yeshivah,* and one is wasting his life in a hospital. Only the third has it good today. If we were smart we would have sent all of them to be artists.” 51 / The Poor Man  373  * Jewish school of higher learning.  374  Folktales of the Jews: Volume 2 COMMENTARY FOR TALE 51 (IFA8021) Recorded by Dinah Behar from Wolf Sosenski in 1968 in Jerusalem. Cultural, Historical, and Literary Background In “brotherhood tales” (Brüdermärchen), numbers count. There is a qualitative, not just a quantitative, difference between tales about two, three, or four brothers or about serial siblings. For example, tales about sibling pairs are tales of conflicting opposites that clash in their sexual, economic, or moral interests (motif P251.5.4 “Two brothers as contrasts”). Tales of three or four brothers are stories of contests that also bring about, in particular narrative circumstances, cooperation and mutual help (motifs P251.6.1 “Three brothers” and P251.6.2 “Four brothers”). In tales that involve a greater number of brothers, the youngest or weakest one faces his older siblings and wins (motifs P251.6.3 to P251.6.7 “Six or seven [up to twelve] brothers,” H1242 “Youngest brother alone succeeds on quest,” and L10 “Victorious youngest son”). Tales about Two Siblings The most ancient known tale of two brothers is tale type 318 “The Faithless Wife,” in which the conflict is sexual. The earliest available example of this tale is the thirteenth-century B.C.E. Egyptian story “The Two Brothers,” about Anubis and Bata. The wife of the elder...