Today’s daf offers us a classic folktale. This being the Talmud, the hero is a rabbi. His folkloric-sounding name is Nahum Ish Gam Zu, a moniker that describes his remarkable temperament. An eternal optimist, the Talmud explains, Nahum was a man (ish) whose response to everything — from fantastic fortune to grave misfortune — was gam zu l’tovah, this too is for the good. He was the original Pollyanna (of Eleanor H. Porter’s 1913 novel, and the 1960 movie starring Hayley Mills), a fictional girl whose powerful positivity transformed her entire town. Here’s his story:
One day the Jewish people sought to send a gift to the emperor. They said: “With whom shall we send it? We will send it with Nahum of Gam Zu, as he is experienced in miracles.”
When Nahum Ish Gam Zu reached a certain inn, he sought to sleep there. They said to him: “What do you have with you?” He said to them: “I am taking the head tax to the emperor.”
Delivering a large amount of money to the emperor was no easy feat; it involved the usual risks of travel (illness, bandits, natural disasters) and the political risks of interacting with a capricious and often hostile leader. Who better to take on this task than a perpetual optimist with experience in miracles? However, Nahum’s optimism shades over from apparently unwarranted to seemingly downright foolish. After all, it is obviously unwise to announce to a roomful of strangers at an inn that one is carrying a chest-load of cash. What happened next should have been predictable:
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They rose in the night, opened his chest, took everything that was in it and filled it with earth.
When Nahum Ish Gam Zu arrived there (in Rome), earth was discovered in the chest. The emperor said: “The Jews are mocking me.” They took Nahum out to kill him. Nahum said: “This too is for the best.”
The collected money of the Jewish people was swapped out for dirt, presumably so that the chest would weigh as much as before and Nahum would not realize he’d been robbed. The Roman emperor, lacking either compassion or a sense of humor, did not receive a cask full of dirt with appreciation. Predictably, the emperor moved swiftly to execute our rabbinic hero.
Yet even in the face of certain death, Nahum’s optimism remained intact and he continued to declare that everything that had happened up until that point was for the best. And now, incredibly, we find out that it was:
Elijah the prophet came and appeared to them as one of Nahum’s traveling party. Elijah said to them: “Perhaps this earth is from the earth of Abraham our forefather, who would throw dust and it became swords, straw and it became arrows.” They examined the earth and discovered it was thus.
There was a province that the Romans were unable to conquer. They threw some of this earth upon that province and they conquered it.
They brought Nahum Ish Gam Zu into the treasury and said: “Take that which is preferable to you.” He filled his chest with gold.
Nahum’s unwavering belief that everything, however it appears in the moment, is ultimately for the good is confirmed when the prophet Elijah, a biblical miracle-worker who appears in Jewish folklore in nearly every age, intervenes on his behalf. Just as Pollyanna inspires the best in her townsfolk, Nahum brings out the best in Elijah, who is famously grumpy in the Hebrew Bible. The erstwhile worthless cask of dirt becomes an invaluable weapons cache, and the rabbi walks away with nary a scratch and a chest full of gold. (To modern readers, there is irony in that the miraculous intervention on behalf of one oppressed people leads to the oppression of even more people in a previously unconquered province. But to the rabbis, Roman conquest and expansionism was the way of the world.)
Of course, this wouldn’t be a classic folktale without proper comeuppance, which happens when our hero is on his way back home:
When Nahum Ish Gamzu returned to that inn, those residents said to him: “What did you bring to the king’s palace?” Nahum said to them: “What I took from here, I brought to there.” They took more earth and brought it to the emperor who executed those residents.
Without the miraculous intervention of Elijah, the dirt under the inn was just dirt. The greedy thieves at the inn, who sought riches beyond those they had already stolen, got their just deserts.
In a world where everything around Nahum was telling him that people are cruel and selfish, his jaw-dropping belief in the goodness of the world might make us cringe on his behalf. And yet, it is that very faith that inspires Elijah’s enthusiastic aid and, through the prophet, the Roman emperor’s reward.
There is value in recognizing the world as it is, with all the challenges and problems that exist — after all, we can’t work to fix problems we don’t see. But on today’s daf, the Talmud reminds us that, at least sometimes, if we strive to see the world as Nahum did, that outlook can help change our reality too.
