There was trouble in Khelm. There was no water. People who wanted it had to go to a well several versts away. In summer you could die of thirst.

The people of Khelm decided that no one could go on living like that. A solution had to be found. There had to be a closer well. So they decided to push away the hill that stood between them and the well. The entire village took sticks and spades and pushed. They pushed and pushed, but they couldn’t tell whether they had budged the hill. So they decided to take their jackets off and pile them up in a wagon. Then the pile could serve as their marker. So that’s what they did; they took their jackets off. And they pushed and pushed, but while they pushed, they couldn’t see what was happening behind them.

What was happening was this: a rider came by and, finding a wagon piled with clothes, he harnessed his horse to the wagon and drove away with it, clothes and all. The Khelmites meanwhile kept on pushing. At last one of them turned around and saw that the wagonload of clothes was a long way off. They all stopped work and gazed at their marker, which was moving farther and farther into the distance. They concluded that the hill had decided to move of its own accord. Thus there was no point in pushing anymore, because the hill was moving toward the well by itself.

They went to get their clothes, but no matter how much they walked, they couldn’t overtake the wagon. To this day the Khelmites have no jackets, and they still hope to overtake their marker.

HOW KHELMITES LIGHTED UP THE NIGHT

The Khelmites were troubled by the night. When it was dark they often fell and broke their arms and legs. One day they heard a man from Vilna saying that even the nights in Vilna were bright. So they held a meeting at which they formed a fine plan. First they had to wait for a moonlit night. Finally it came—and what a night! A night of nights! The moon shone so brightly that it simply begged to be blessed, so they blessed it in proper form. Then, seeing the moon’s reflection in a barrel of water, they took a board and quickly nailed it over the barrel.

Later, when it was the new moon again and the night was pitchblack, they opened the barrel, meaning to take their moon out of storage. But lo and behold, when they looked into the water, there was no moon to be seen. “Alas, alas,” they cried, “someone has stolen our moon!”

THE MELAMED’S TRUNK

In the synagogue in Khelm this is inscribed on the balemer, the platform from which the Torah is read:

A melamed is forbidden three things:

1. He may not live on a hill.

2. He may not have a suitcase on wheels.

3. He may not eat strudle.

You see, it had been the custom in Khelm for boys to be examined orally Friday evening on their lessons. One Friday morning a melamed came to tutor the son in a Khelmite’s house. He noticed a strudle in the kitchen and asked the servant,

“What’s that?”

“A strudle,” she replied.

The melamed went home and, giving his wife a two-zloty coin, told her to bake a strudle. Instead she used the money to buy her son a pair of shoes. When the melamed asked, “Where is the strudle?” she told him what she had done, and he flew into a rage.

Now, as it happened, there was an open trunk on wheels standing nearby. The two of them quarreled so fiercely that they fell into the trunk. The lid closed, the trunk began to roll and, since their house was on a hill, it rolled with all possible speed until it reached the market square. When people saw the rolling trunk, they set up a hullabaloo. They shuttered their shops and ran to the synagogue, where they caused the shoyfer to be blown. Finally, in God’s good time, the trunk stopped rolling. The rabbi and all the town’s Jews moved hesitantly toward it. When the trunk was opened, the melamed and his wife leaped out.

And that’s why the rabbi and the community leaders established the three rules and caused them to be inscribed on the balemer of the synagogue.

THE ROLLING STONE

There is a huge stone on a high hill in Khelm. It happened once that the Khelmites wanted to move the stone down from the hill. What did they do? They gathered up the entire population and started to drag the stone. When they had dragged it halfway down, a stranger went by. Seeing what they were doing, he laughed at them. “Why are you dragging the stone?” he asked. “Just give it a shove; it’ll roll downhill by itself.” The Khelmites, heeding good advice, dragged the stone back to the top of the hill. Then they pushed it, and it did indeed roll to the bottom by itself.

A CAT IN KHELM

People in Khelm didn’t know about cats, and they lived with mice crawling in and out of every nook and cranny. At mealtimes each householder had a rod at his table to drive the mice away. Then one day a stranger came to Khelm and described a creature he had seen, an animal called a “cat” which, if it was introduced into a house, drove the mice into their holes. The town of Khelm asked him to find such a creature, and then bought the cat from him for the enormous sum of eighteen zlotys. But the Khelmites didn’t know that a cat could run away. Well, the cat was put on watch in a house, and the townspeople were delighted to see that it scared off the mice. But one day someone left a window open, and the cat took it into its head to leap out onto a roof.

So the Khelmites called a meeting to figure out how to catch the
cat. They decided to set the house on fire to make the cat jump to the ground. So they burned the house down, but the cat sprang to the roof of the next house. So they burned the second house down. But the cat sprang to the roof of a third house. So they burned the third house down. And so on, until they destroyed half their town.

KHELMITES WHO REFUSED TO TREAD ON SNOW

Once upon a time a stranger came to Khelm and was taken ill. He needed to be led to the hospital, but it happened to be winter and the Khelmites, who dearly loved the whiteness of snow, didn’t want him to spoil it with his footprints. So they called a meeting to discuss the problem. At last they arrived at a solution: they put the sick man on a board, and four of them simply carried him to the hospital.

THE SUNDIAL

It happened once that the people of Khelm made a sundial. But a rainstorm came along and drenched it. So the Khelmites built a roof over their sundial to keep it from getting wet.

SOWING SALT

TOnce there was a shortage of salt in Khelm. What to do? The townspeople thought and thought without resting night or day. Then the rebbe, a mighty thinker, had a thought. “Let us go out to the fields, and let us sow salt.” The whole town went out to the fields carrying the last specks of salt they had left. They went to work sowing salt, and after they were done, the rebbe said that he would stay in the fields to guard the crop.

At night the rebbe lay down to sleep. As he slept, a wolf came by and bit his head off. In the morning the whole town turned out to see how the salt was doing. They found the headless rebbe in the field and wondered where his head could be. They sent messengers to the rebbe’s wife with the question: “Do you recall-did the rebbe have a head, or not?” She said she couldn’t remember.

So they went to the cantor of Khelm, who said he couldn’t remember either. People gathered in clusters discussing whether the rebbe had had a head or not. Some cried, “He did,” others, “No, he didn’t.”

They were about to come to blows when a man arrived from another town. “What are you arguing about?” he asked, and they told him about the salt and the rebbe and the rebbe’s head. When he had heard the whole story, he said, “If your rebbe was prepared to sow salt, it’s proof that he didn’t have a head. You can bury him without further ado.”

Translated by Leonard Wolf