...who discovered this long missing Yiddish tale of the wisest men in the world.
In the back country and steppes south of Warsaw, there stood a small shtetl, a little Jewish village, named Chelm. Renowned across the Pale, the villagers of Chelm were famous for their sharp wits, their inventive brains, and their capacities for resolving difficult problems. Of the many wise men of Chelm, the wisest of all was the young Rebbe Ehud, who had moved to the town after he had retired from his earlier career as constable for the regional council of Rabbanim. The villagers were all very happy, if impoverished, and spent their lives in quiet contemplation and meditation.
The town was structured around a central square, next to which stood the shul, a small library, a mikveh, the blacksmith, and the home of Reb Ehud himself, with his many wise and learned sons. Behind these stood alleys in which the simple men of Chelm lived: the tailors, tinkers, peddlers, and cobblers, together with their chickens, horses, and milk cows. And at the very edge of the village stood the barn in which visitors could have their carriage horses housed and tended to.
One day, a small cloud of smoke could be seen from the village square, rising above this very same barn. The Rebbetzin ran in to the cheder and grabbed the bell sometimes used by the Rebbe to call the tardy young men to study. She rang it as loud as she could and screamed "Fire in the barn, Fire in the barn!"
All of the wise villagers of Chelm immediately congregated in the town square.
"Quickly, to the barn," called the Rebbe, "Let us put out this fire before it threatens the whole town."
They raced to the edge of town, and there they saw that the entire barn was ablaze. The walls were already collapsing inwards on the handful of poor animals lodged therein. The entire barn floor was covered with dry straw, which caught fire rapidly.
A long sigh arose from the assembled. "No doubt the fire was started by a careless stable boy, smoking a pipe," opined Mendel the cobbler. "Yes," agreed Motke the butcher, "and it was careless to have left so much dry straw lying around. The entire tragedy might have been avoided had we earlier used better judgment." "Never mind that now," said Tevye the foolish milkman. "That is all spilt milk, a matter about which I know a great deal. We still need to do something lest the entire town be engulfed in these flames. They are getting hotter by the minute and will spread destruction."
"You are right," said Reb Ehud, who liked to tell all people they were right even when they disagreed with one another. "What we need to do is to cover these flames quickly with new straw. This will dampen the temperatures in the barn, hide the flames behind new cover, and protect the rest of the town from destruction."
"You are making a Purim spiel, right?" objected Tevye. "That is no solution at all. It will just make things hotter and more destructive."
"Oh you think so, mister wise guy?" said Reb Ehud. "So you do not like my solution? All right then, you tell us all how to make the flames disappear and make the barn rematerialize."
"I am afraid there is nothing that can save the barn at this point," answered Tevye reluctantly. "We simply have to write it off as lost. Maybe we were foolish to allow conditions that led to its catching fire in the first place."
"You are dodging the issue," objected Rebbe Ehud. "I am waiting to hear how you plan to save the barn from destruction."
"I am afraid there is no such solution," sighed Tevye. "The village is so poor that we have no fire fighting equipment. There are no hoses in the town that could reach the barn from the well. We could set up a bucket brigade, but will not be able to do so in time to prevent the destruction of the barn. The best we can do is to make sure the situation does not get worse. There are other structures in the town in danger of catching fire from these sparks. We need to exert all our efforts in making sure the damage is contained."
"You see," said Reb Ehud. "The big yente Tevye does not have a solution to the problem. So we must pursue my solution at once. The current situation is intolerable!!"
The villagers followed the lead of the Rebbe. They gathered up bundles of dry straw from neighboring shacks and shanties. They tossed them onto the flames of the fire in the barn. It seemed to work, for the flames could no longer be seen below the bundles of dry straw, merely smoldering smoke.
"Hurray," proclaimed the students from the Rebbe's cheder, "We have succeeded! We must run to the shul and say the blessing for salvation from danger."
"But before they could take their leave, new flames suddenly sprang up from the piles of straw they had brought and tossed in to the barn.
"Gevalt," moaned the Rebbe, "you see we did not act quickly and decisively enough. More straw!!"
"Are you entirely meshugeh? Are you drunk senseless?" objected Tevye.
"Did you not just see that your idea failed? It just made the inferno worse! The fire now is even more dan-
[(Continued on p.10)]
June-July 2000 - 9 - Outpost