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

68. The Shammes Who Became a Millionaire (IFA 14351)

68 The Shammes Who Became a Millionaire T O L D B Y B E L L A H. AV I V T O Y I F R A H. H. AV I V Once a Jew from Poland came to America with his family. He didn’t know English and began looking for work. They offered him a job as the shammes* in a synagogue. To be a shammes there you have to be able to read the notes from people who are asking for charity. But the fellow couldn’t read or write English. So they told him, “You’re fired.” He went out into the world, did what he did and became a millionaire. One day he went to the bank. “Sign here,” the clerk told him. The Jew replied, “That’s no great skill! If I knew how to write, I’d still be the shammes in the synagogue.” 477 * A synagogue caretaker.  478  Folktales of the Jews: Volume 2 COMMENTARY FOR TALE 68 (IFA 14351) Recorded by Yifrah. H. aviv in Kibbutz Bet Keshet in 1983 from his mother, Bella H. aviv, from Hruszow, Podolia, in Ukraine. Cultural, Historical, and Literary Background This anecdote is part of the “American cycle” of eastern European Jewish tales about immigration to and emigration from America (see also tale IFA 19949 [this vol., no. 42]). The tale recurs as an immigration story in the Jewish jokes of the Soviet Union.1 Similarly, this tale has been a favorite among American collectors of Jewish humor.2 Moreover, the tale was part of the eastern European humorous tradition pertaining not only to immigration but to any transition, as from rural to urban life.3 William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) used this tale as the basis for his 1929 story “The Man Who Made His Mark” and for his short story “The Verger.”4 The story was also included in the film Trio (1951), which adapted three of Maugham’s short stories for the screen.5 The Romanian author Konrad Bercovici (1882–1961) filed a plagiarism suit against Maugham, contending that “The Verger” was based on his own story “It Pays to Be Ignorant.” Maugham responded that the tale was “a well-known piece of Jewish folklore” that he heard from his friend Ivor Back, who was a surgeon.6 By comparison to the anthologized and the literary versions of the tale, the present rendition appears truncated and literarily underdeveloped. Because the narrator was an accomplished storyteller, as is evident from her other tales in the IFA, narrative incompetence can be ruled out, and other explanations for the present form are necessary. These could be circumstantial, indicating that the narrating and recording situation was inadequate; cultural-social, reflecting the relevance, or rather irrelevance, of the tale to the narrator’s social life; or transmittal , representing a decline in the verbal adequacy along the oral transmission sequence. General discussions of these issues in folklore are available.7 Similarities to Other IFA Tales There are four other versions of this tale in the IFA: • IFA 14355: How Did an Illiterate Person Become a Millionaire? (Poland).8 • IFA 16660: The Shammes Who Was Illiterate (Russia).9 • IFA 17210: The Scrap Iron Millionaire (Israel). • IFA 20281: A Time for Everything (Eretz Yisra’el, Sephardic). Folktale Type • *1799 A (IFA) “A Shammes Becomes a Millionaire.” Folklore Motifs • N203 “Lucky person.” • N410 “Lucky business venture.” • *N427 “Man cannot hold a lowly job because of illiteracy, pursues his own business and becomes rich.” • V400 “Charity.” __________ Notes __________ 1. Harris and Rabinovich, The Jokes of Oppression, 40–41. 2. Ausubel, A Treasury of Jewish Folklore, 16–17; Koppman and Koppman, A Treasury of American Jewish Folklore, 150–151; F. Mendelsohn, The Jew Laughs, 196–197; and Spalding, Encyclopedia of Jewish Humor, 430–431. 3. Druyanow, Sefer ha-Bedih .ah ve-ha-H.idud (The book of jokes and witticisms), 1:3 no. 6; and Scheiber, Essays on Jewish Folklore and Comparative Literature, 313–314. 4. In Cosmopolitans, 221–233; also available in The Complete Short Stories, 572–578. 5. The other two stories are “Mr. Know-All” and “Sanatorium.” 6. Rogal, A William Somerset Maugham Encyclopedia, 295–296; and T. Morgan, Maugham, 545. 7. Dégh and Vazsonyi, “Legend and Belief”; Dundes, “The Devolutionary Premise in Folklore Theory”; E. Fine, The Folklore Text; Ortutay, “Principles of Oral Transmission in Folk Culture”; and S. Thompson, The Folktale, 428...