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Yiddish-Folktales
@Yiddish-Folktales

The Tale of a Leaf from the Tree of Knowledge

Once upon a time a peasant lost his way and found himself in a desert. Suddenly there was a windstorm that caught up dust and sand and a mixture of all sorts of things and whirled them round and round. When the storm was over, the peasant came upon a path that led him to a village.

As he walked along, he was amazed to feel himself becoming wiser and cleverer, so that he could now understand things around him better than he ever had before.

After a while when he grew tired, he sat down to rest and took his sandals off. But as he did so, he felt himself becoming as dull and ignorant and boorish as before. Yet the minute he put the sandals back on, he turned sensible and wise again. So it was clear to him that the sandals had brought all this about.

Now, the explanation was that the windstorm had blown a leaf from the Tree of Knowledge out of the Garden of Eden, and the leaf had stuck to the bottom of one of his sandals.

The peasant came to a town in which the king’s daughter was very sick. All the doctors had despaired of her life, and the king was bracing himself for her death. Then he was told that there was a certain crude peasant who promised to cure his daughter if they would let him in.

The peasant, using a variety of remedies that he understood because of his new wisdom, began to cure the princess. Slowly she became conscious again, and after a few days she was entirely well.

The king, as was to be expected, rewarded the peasant magnificently. He also kept him in the palace for several days so that the royal physicians could determine whether he had cured the princess with authentic remedies or through something unnatural—magic, for instance. The doctors testified that the peasant’s remedies were well and wisely chosen.

Then the king asked the peasant how it was that he, an ignorant man, had been able to surpass the wisdom of the greatest court physician.

“It’s my sandals,” said the peasant simply.

The king demanded, “What kind of joke is that?”

“I’m not joking,” said the peasant. “All my wisdom comes from my sandals. If anyone were to put them on, he would be as smart as I am.”

The king promised half his kingdom and much more if the peasant would let him have the sandals.

Now, it stands to reason that a king cannot wear dirty sandals, so he gave them to his servants to be cleaned. And in order to get them clean, they threw away the leaf from the Tree of Knowledge.

So when the king put on the sandals, he was neither wiser nor more sensible than he had ever been.

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Glossary

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AnnotationsTELLER: A pupil in a *talmed-toyre* (a tuition-free traditional Jewish elementary school maintained by the community for poor children) in Korets (Korzec), Poland, (no date recorded)
COLLECTOR: Meyer Tshidner.
SOURCE: V.A. 26:4.

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