Once upon a time there lived a rich man. He had plenty of everything: shops, houses, money. There was only one thing missing: children. And so one day he went to the tzaddik and began to ask the tzaddik to beg God for at least one child for him. The tzaddik told him:
“Go home, in a year your wife will give birth to your son, but make sure that a poor man sits at the head of the table at the feast in honor of circumcision.”
And so it happened. A year later, the rich man’s wife gave birth, but the rich man forgot about his promise. And so only the rich were seated at the bris at the head of the table. Suddenly some poor man comes into the house (and this poor man was Elijah the Prophet himself), and they seat him near the door. The poor man says:
“I don’t want to sit at the door, I want to sit at the head of the table.” But the rich man only laughed at his words. Then the poor man asked the Mother in Birth to seat him at the head of the table, but she also laughed at him. Then the stranger left the feast, but, leaving, wrote on the door with chalk: “Grow up, Berele.” No matter how much they rubbed, scrubbed, or washed off this inscription, nothing helped.
The child began to grow, and the parents saw that his entire body was gradually becoming overgrown with hair, and that the further he went, the more their son turned into a bear cub. It was only then that they remembered the inscription that a poor man had once left on the door - “Grow up, Berele.”
As soon as the child was ten years old, he ran away into the forest. Three years have passed. The time for bar mitzvah has arrived. Suddenly a bear appeared in the rich man’s house and left a note asking them to buy him tefillin. Again the rich man went to the tzaddik and asked:
- Rebbe, please advise what I should do?
The tzaddik ordered him to fulfill all the requests of his son-bear.
Five years have passed. Suddenly, the bear son appeared again in the rich man’s house and again left a note, and the note said that according to the law, a young man must get married at eighteen years old and therefore the bear son demands that he be married.
Again the rich man went to the tzaddik: they say, there is trouble, rabbi, advise what to do!
The tzaddik said to the rich man:
- Go to the city, go to the very last hut on the river bank, ask for an overnight stay, don’t be surprised by anything you see there, you’ll find a bride for your son there.
The rich man went to the city, found a hut by the river and asked to stay for the night. The poor owner says, “I’m very poor, I don’t even have bread for dinner.”
“Nothing,” the rich man replies, “let me treat you,” and puts meat, fish, bread, and wine on the table.
We sat down at the table. The rich man noticed that the owner was taking away half of the food from the table, but did not show it. After the meal, the rich man asks the owner:
- Tell me, dear, why and for whom did you take five plates of meat and fish? The owner sighed:
“I have five daughters, but due to poverty I can neither dress nor put shoes on them, so they sit in the back room, with nothing to show off to people. It was to them that I took the meat and fish from the table.
Then the rich man sent to buy dresses and, when the girls were dressed, he went to them and began to ask which of them would marry his bear son. Four daughters refused, but the fifth, the youngest, agreed and left with the rich man. He brought the girl to his house and sat her down in a separate room. She is sitting alone, suddenly the door opens and a bear comes in. Before the girl had time to scream in fright, the bear threw off its skin and turned into a beautiful young man.
He told her the story of his birth and rebirth into a bear.
“This,” he says, “is punishment for the insult inflicted by my father and mother on the poor.” But now the punishment is over, after marriage I must leave the bear form and again take the form of a man. And you brought me this happiness, my dear bride.
The bear groom said this and kissed his betrothed.
A few days later they got married, and the young people lived happily ever after.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru