Yiddish Tales. Anonymous
many years passed, and Reb Nochumtzi gradually came to see that poverty also is a misfortune, and out of his own experience.
His Sabbath cloak began to look threadbare (the weekday one was already patched on every side), he had six little children living, one or two of the girls were grown up, and it was time to think of settling them, and they hadn't a frock fit to put on. The five Polish gulden a week salary was not enough to keep them in bread, and the wife, poor thing, wept the whole day through: "Well, there, ich wie ich, it isn't for myself—but the poor children are naked and barefoot."
At last they were even short of bread.
"Nochumtzi! Why don't you speak?" exclaimed his wife with tears in her eyes. "Nochumtzi, can't you hear me? I tell you, we're starving! The children are skin and bone, they haven't a shirt to their back, they can hardly keep body and soul together. Think of a way out of it, invent something to help us!"
And Reb Nochumtzi sat and considered.
He was considering the other misfortune—poverty.
"It is equally a misfortune to be really very poor."
And this also he found stated in the Holy Scriptures.
It was King Solomon, the famous sage, who prayed as well: Resh wo-Osher al-titten li, that is, "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Aha! poverty is no advantage, either, and what does the holy Gemoreh say but "Poverty diverts a man from the way of God"? In fact, there is a second misfortune in the world, and one he knows very well, one with which he has a practical, working acquaintance, he and his wife and his children.
And Reb Nochum pursued his train of thought:
"So there are two contrary misfortunes in the world: this way it's bad, and that way it's bitter! Is there really no remedy? Can no one suggest any help?"
And Reb Nochumtzi began to pace the room up and down, lost in thought, bending his whole mind to the subject. A whole flight of Bible texts went through his head, a quantity of quotations from the Gemoreh, hundreds of stories and anecdotes from the "Fountain of Jacob," the Midrash, and other books, telling of rich and poor, fortunate and unfortunate people, till his head went round with them all as he thought. Suddenly he stood still in the middle of the room, and began talking to himself:
"Aha! Perhaps I've discovered a plan after all! And a good plan, too, upon my word it is! Once more: it is quite certain that there will always be more poor than rich—lots more! Well, and it's quite certain that every rich man would like to be rid of his misfortune, only that there is no one willing to take it from him—no one, not any one, of course not. Nobody would be so mad. But we have to find out a way by which lots and lots of people should rid him of his misfortune little by little. What do you say to that? Once more: that means that we must take his unfortunate riches and divide them among a quantity of poor! That will be a good thing for both parties: he will be easily rid of his great misfortune, and they would be helped, too, and the petition of King Solomon would be established, when he said, 'Give me neither poverty nor riches.' It would come true of them all, there would be no riches and no poverty. Ha? What do you think of it? Isn't it really and truly an excellent idea?"
Reb Nochumtzi was quite astonished himself at the plan he had invented, cold perspiration ran down his face, his eyes shone brighter, a happy smile played on his lips. "That's the thing to do!" he explained aloud, sat down by the table, blew his nose, wiped his face, and felt very glad.
"There is only one difficulty about it," occurred to him, when he had quieted down a little from his excitement, "one thing that doesn't fit in. It says particularly in the Torah that there will always be poor people among the Jews, 'the poor shall not cease out of the land.' There must always be poor, and this would make an end of them altogether! Besides, the precept concerning charity would, Heaven forbid, be annulled, the precept which God, blessed is He, wrote in the Torah, and which the holy Gemoreh and all the other holy books make so much of. What is to become of the whole treatise on charity in the Shulchan Aruch? How can we continue to fulfil it?"
But a good head is never at a loss! Reb Nochumtzi soon found a way out of the difficulty.
"Never mind!" and he wrinkled his forehead, and pondered on. "There is no fear! Who said that even the whole of the money in the possession of a few unfortunate rich men will be enough to go round? That there will be just enough to help all the Jewish poor? No fear, there will be enough poor left for the exercise of charity. Ai wos? There is another thing: to whom shall be given and to whom not? Ha, that's a detail, too. Of course, one would begin with the learned and the poor scholars and sages, who have to live on the Torah and on Divine Service. The people can just be left to go on as it is. No fear, but it will be all right!"
At last the plan was ready. Reb Nochumtzi thought it over once more, very carefully, found it complete from every point of view, and gave himself up to a feeling of satisfaction and delight.
"Dvoireh!" he called to his wife, "Dvoireh, don't cry! Please God, it will be all right, quite all right. I've thought out a plan. … A little patience, and it will all come right!"
"Whatever? What sort of plan?"
"There, there, wait and see and hold your tongue! No woman's brain could take it in. You leave it to me, it will be all right!"
And Reb Nochumtzi reflected further:
"Yes, the plan is a good one. Only, how is it to be carried out? With whom am I to begin?"
And he thought of all the householders in Pumpian, but—there was not one single unfortunate man among them! That is, not one of them had money, a real lot of money; there was nobody with whom to discuss his invention to any purpose.
"If so, I shall have to drive to one of the large towns!"
And one Sabbath the beadle gave out in the house-of-study that the Rav begged them all to be present that evening at a convocation.
At the said convocation the Rav unfolded his whole plan to the people, and placed before them the happiness that would result for the whole world, if it were to be realized. But first of all he must journey to a large town, in which there were a great many unfortunate rich people, preferably Wilna, and he demanded of his flock that they should furnish him with the necessary means for getting there.
The audience did not take long to reflect, they agreed to the Rav's proposal, collected a few rubles (for who would not give their last farthing for such an important object?), and on Sunday morning early they hired him a peasant's cart and horse—and the Rav drove away to Wilna.
The Rav passed the drive marshalling his arguments, settling on what he should say, and how he should explain himself, and he was delighted to see how, the more deeply he pondered his plan, the more he thought it out, the more efficient and appropriate it appeared, and the clearer he saw what happiness it would bestow on men all the world over.
The small cart arrived at Wilna.
"Whither are we to drive?" asked the peasant.
"Whither? To a Jew," answered the Rav. "For where is the Jew who will not give me a night's lodging?"
"And I, with my cart and horse?"
The Rav sat perplexed, but a Jew passing by heard the conversation, and explained to him that Wilna is not Pumpian, and that they would have to drive to a post-house, or an inn.
"Be it so!" said the Rav, and the Jew gave him the address of a place to which they should drive.
Wilna! It is certainly not the same thing as Pumpian. Now, for the first time in his life, the Rav saw whole streets of tall houses, of two and three stories, all as it were under one roof, and how fine they are, thought he, with their decorated exteriors!
"Oi, there live the unfortunate people!" said Reb Nochumtzi to himself. "I never saw anything like them before! How can they bear such a misfortune? I shall come to them as an angel of deliverance!"
He had made up his mind to go to the principal Jewish citizen in Wilna, only he must be a good scholar, so as