One thing the pirates couldn’t steal (a Simchat Torah parable)
Originally a Hebrew rabbinic tale, its Yiddish translation appeared in various textbooks of the Yiddish afternoon schools
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By Miriam Udel October 16, 2024
[This story, translated from the Yiddish by Miriam Udel, is the fourth in a series of Yiddish holiday tales for children that will run throughout the Jewish year 5785. Udel prefaces each story with an introduction to provide useful context for the reader.]
Sometimes a profound insight grows up from the seeming happenstance of a rhyme. That’s the case with the proverb “Toyre iz di beste skhoyre,” in which the incalculable value of Jewish learning is compared to the most treasured commodities of the mundane world — all because the word toyre (“Torah”) rhymes with skhoyre (“merchandise”).
From the turn of the 20th century till the 1970s, teachers in the Yiddish afternoon schools read the following story with their young students in anticipation of Simkhes Toyre (Simchat Torah), the joyful day when Jews complete one year’s cycle of reading the scrolls and begin the next one. Arguably, this isn’t a Yiddish story at all, originating as it does with an agode, or interpretive rabbinic tale, originally composed in Hebrew. After it was translated and published in various textbooks for Yiddish schools, though, this ancient yarn became part of modern Yiddish culture.
Very few Yiddish children’s stories speak directly about Simkhes Toyre. The authors who wrote for Yiddish school primers tended to emphasize holidays that could be transposed into a secular key and celebrated in the home and school. The raucous dancing circuits, or hakofes, of the Torah processional, on the other hand, take place in the synagogue amid a robust Jewish community.
This year, many of us will seek out community on this holiday, whether in synagogue or elsewhere, craving solace as much as joy. For the rest of our lives, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah — a single day in Israel and two sequential days in the diaspora — will be the anniversary of what Hebrew media very quickly labeled the Black Sabbath. No single story, and certainly no children’s story, can bear the weight of what that date now means.
But even a very simple tale can point our attention in a certain direction. This story pushes us to look within, to examine the unique cultural heritage summed up in the word “Torah.” When we direct our gaze inward, we see the rich, expansive fullness of a tradition that pursues justice and loves mercy. We see a creation in which every human being is made in the divine image and a covenant in which the Children of Israel try to walk in God’s ways and often face bracing ethical challenges.
As the story affirms, these elements of Jewish consciousness travel with us and can never be taken away by force.
Torah is the best merchandise
(A rabbinic tale)
Many merchants with their various wares were sailing on a ship bound for far-off lands. They were talking shop, showing one another their merchandise, buying and exchanging goods with each other.
A Torah scholar sat among them.
“Where’s your merchandise?” they asked him.
“I’ll show you my wares when we reach land,” the scholar replied.
The merchants had a good laugh over “merchandise” that you couldn’t see, that took up no room at all on the ship.
As they sailed, pirates fell upon the ship and carried off all its cargo. When the ship made landfall, the merchants were left “naked and bare” of their property. They didn’t even have enough food for their first meal on land.
But many students and friends were awaiting the scholar’s arrival. They greeted him with great honor.
Only then did the merchants understand what his “wares” consisted of. They came up to him and said, “Now we know why your merchandise is the best. It can never be stolen or lost!”
Previous stories in this holiday series translated by Miriam Udel:
Translated by Miriam Udel from the children’s Yiddish reader “Dos lebedike vort” by S. Yefroikin and Hyman Bass (1954)
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