The Tunnel of Chelm

As the fame of Chelm and the wisdom of its seven Elders spread far and wide, the village grew, and soon every day the walls of the shul groaned as the men of Chelm came to say prayers. One morning there were so many people in the shul that the door wouldn’t latch, and the autumn wind blew in and ruffled the pages of the prayerbooks so that everybody lost their places, again and again, and by the time they’d finished the morning prayers it was already time to pray the evening prayers, and everyone had missed their lunches.

“We must figure out how to latch the door!” cried Aviram the farmer, whose wife, Mrs. Aviram, always prepared excellent lunches, which her husband hated to miss. The men of Chelm cheered Aviram for his clever solution to the problem.

“Alas, it is impossible,” sighed Shmettel the carpenter, who knew about such things. “If we latch the door, with so many people inside, the shul will burst!”

At this, the Shamash raised his hands to his face and wailed. “It’s Rosh Hashanah in a week,” wept the Shamash. “If the shul bursts, then where will we celebrate the new year?”

The men of Chelm didn’t know what to do, so they went to the Elders, who were the wisest men in Chelm, and therefore the wisest men in the world. Their beards were long and white, and they were so wise that all their foreheads were enormous. The Elders congratulated the men of Chelm for their own wisdom in bringing this problem to their attention.

“This is a very serious issue,” said the chief Elder, sagely. “The village is growing very quickly, and the shul cannot contain everyone. If the shul bursts, then we cannot celebrate the new year. If we cannot celebrate the new year, then this year will go on forever.”

“Would that be so bad?” said Aviram the farmer, who was thinking about how good his harvest had been this year, with more cabbages and more potatoes than he had room to store in his store-room, and what wonderful lunches his wife made from them. How nice it would be if such a year were never-ending!

At the foolishness of his friend Aviram, Shmettel the carpenter grew very serious. “Your wife is due to bear you a child this winter, is she not? If this year never ends, it will never become winter, and the child will never come!”

The chief Elder had been pondering this whole time, with his eyes closed and little snoring sounds coming from his nose, and at last he looked up. “The population of Chelm is growing quickly,” he repeated. “To keep the shul from bursting, you must strengthen the walls of the shul, and you must do it immediately, before more people have the chance to move to our village,” he said. He told them to take all their heaviest furniture from their homes and place it all around the walls of the shul, so the walls would be too strong to ever burst.

The men raced home and soon they were piling their dining tables and bedframes up against the walls of the shul, so the building looked more like a heap of furniture than the shul of Chelm. “Don’t forget to strengthen the walls inside!” cried Shmettel the carpenter, who was directing the undertaking, and the men picked up half of the tables and half of the bedframes and brought them inside, to make sure the shul walls were strengthened from both sides, piling the furniture high as the ceiling, and almost filling it in wall to wall, all around the room.

The next day, when the men of Chelm arrived for morning prayers, they found that not only were there so many people in the shul that the doors would not latch, just as before, but the room was even more crowded than it had been, with some men resorting to sitting on one another’s shoulders! Not only that, but a full minyan’s worth of men could not even fit inside the shul, and had to pray in the street, following along through the open door. Clearly the village population was growing faster than anyone had realized. And still, the wind blew in through the door and ruffled the pages of their prayerbooks, and by the time they finished reading the Torah, it was time to pray the evening prayers, and once again they had all missed their lunches.

The men of Chelm returned to the Elders to present their problem. The Elders pondered, and at last the chief Elder spoke. “The walls of the shul are no longer a concern, so the problem must be with the door,” he said. “And,” he added, “we must solve this problem right away, before the population grows again.”

The men of Chelm raced back to the shul. Shmettel the carpenter, who knew all about latches, volunteered to test the door, as the other men stood on the street watching him. Shmettel tried the door and found that it moved quite easily, and that he could close it and latch it with hardly any effort.

“Aha!” said the chief Elder. He had taken a personal interest in the issue—he was scheduled to buy a cow from his cousin in East Chelm in the springtime, and therefore was very concerned about the possibility of this year never coming to an end. He explained to the assembled men that, while the door was difficult to close when the shul was full, Shmettel had demonstrated that it was quite easy to close when the shul was empty. “Therefore, you must close and latch the door before entering the shul, when it is empty, instead of waiting for it to be full!”

The men of Chelm murmured in awe at the wisdom of their Elder. The next morning, they gathered outside the shul before prayers, and rejoiced as the Shamash very easily closed and latched the door. But their happiness turned to dismay as they realized that, the day before, only ten men could not fit inside the shul, and had to pray their morning prayers on the street — and today, fifty men could not fit inside! Even the richest man in Chelm, Yossl the Merchant, had been relegated to the street. Even the Shamash was there on the street! Even the Rabbi! Clearly the population of Chelm was growing faster than anyone could have imagined. And, to make matters worse, with the door so tightly closed and latched, none of them could hear the service, and praying the morning prayers took so long that by the time they had finished, it was again time to pray the evening prayers, and yet again they had all missed their lunches, and Rosh Hashanah was just a few days away.

This time, the chief Elder spoke before the men even had the chance to turn to him. “We have strengthened the flimsy walls of the shul, so it will not burst, and we have fixed the door so that it latches easily,” he said, counting off the village’s efforts on his fingers. “Now, all that remains is for us to figure out how to fit everyone in the room, so that no one—especially not the Rabbi himself—has to pray on the street! If the Rabbi is on the street on Rosh Hashanah, and he cannot hear the services, how can he properly celebrate the new year? We must ensure that everyone, and especially the Rabbi, can pray inside the shul.”

“I have it!” said Yossl the Merchant, who had disliked being among the riffraff praying on the street, and wished to return to his rightful position at the eastern wall of the shul. “Obviously, now that we have latched the door, we cannot risk unlatching it. And we cannot build a new door, because the furniture reinforcing the walls is in the way. So let us dig a tunnel, and enter the shul that way!”

The men of Chelm cheered, and the seven Elders all frowned at one another, jealous that a man not of their number had displayed such wisdom. Aviram the farmer fetched his tools, as did Feitel the stonemason and even old Gemelich the gravedigger. Just as soon as they started to turn up the earth outside the shul, an enormous thunderclap sounded and they all became drenched in rain.

“Stop, stop!” cried the Shamash. “If we dig a tunnel in the rain, the shul will fill up with water like a bathtub! And then no one will be able to pray at all.” This had occurred in Mlensk, the town where his grandmother lived, though it had happened to the butcher, and everyone had been forced to drink watery broth for months until the butcher shop was drained.

Yossl the merchant, who still recalled with sorrow the hit he’d taken on soup bowls in Mlensk, and who lived just across from the shul, offered to let them begin the tunnel in his home, so there would be a roof over everyone’s heads as they worked. In short order the tunnel was begun, and a digging crew of men worked all night so that they could finish in time for the next day’s morning prayers. As they at last broke through the floor of the shul, a great cheer began to rise up, until Shmettel the carpenter, who was at the fore of the crew, shouted with dismay. They had dug the hole directly under a bedframe and two dining tables that were strengthening the shul’s southern wall.

“This bedframe is in the way!” cried Shmettel. The message was relayed down through the tunnel and into Yossl the merchant’s parlor, where the Elders of Chelm had magnanimously volunteered to assess Yossl’s stock of honeys and jams for quality and spoilage. The chief Elder raised a finger stickily and said, “Then the bedframe must be removed.”

This message was relayed back up through the tunnel until it reached Shmettel, and he and the rest of the digging crew proceeded to haul the bedframe into the tunnel, and then the dining tables that had rested upon it, and then for good measure the chairs and tables and bedframes to either side of it. “The population of Chelm is growing so rapidly,” Shmettel explained, “that we need to make sure the tunnel’s mouth is wide enough to accommodate everyone who needs to enter the shul. Who knows how large it might need to be! We’d better take it all away, just in case.”

Soon, the digging crew had removed every single piece of the furniture that was strengthening the inside of the walls, sending it back through the tunnel and piling it up in Yossl the merchant’s parlor. The furniture piled up and piled up, to the ceiling and almost filling wall to wall, until Yossl’s wife, Yosselinka, threatened to pour candle wax in all their shoes and stitch all their shirtsleeves closed unless they moved it all away, so they moved it into the street, and piled it again on the outside of the synagogue, thinking that if the inner walls were no longer strengthened, at least the outside of the walls could make up for it.

Not long after this, a message arrived in Yossl’s parlor that the Elders were needed at the point where the tunnel broke through into the shul, because Shmettel had a question that required their presence. They rose and made their way through the tunnel, with all the other men crowding along behind them, curious as to what Shmettel intended to ask.

“Well?” said the chief Elder, arriving at the end of the tunnel. He saw Shmettel and the other diggers standing on the other end of the tunnel, just inside the shul, and stepped through the hole to join them. The other elders followed, and so too did the rest of the men, pushing and crowding until they had all emerged from the tunnel’s mouth and into the shul. There were so many of them that they filled the entire room, and their shoulders pressed against the walls. Aviram the farmer was irritated to find himself pinned very tightly against the inside of the door, but then he cried out in joy! “The door, the door!” he cried. “We are all inside the shul, and the door is closed!”

“I was going to ask the Elders how many men there are in Chelm,” Shmettel said. “So that I would know how large to make the exit from the tunnel into the shul. But we all fit in the room now — no one is on the street, and no one is on anyone else’s shoulders! How can this be possible?”

“The tunnel has made the shul bigger,” said the chief Elder, sagely. At this, the men of Chelm marveled at their wondrous shul, whose walls were fortified so that it would never burst, and whose door was closed and latched, and which had a tunnel leading to it, so that it was big enough to hold all who wished to pray. They gave thanks that there would be no issues celebrating Rosh Hashanah, and they would all enter the new year as planned, and not be trapped forever in this one.

“What a clever plan!” said Shmettel, admiringly, to the chief Elder, and the Shamash tried to do a dance, though he stood wedged so tightly between the chief Elder and the Rabbi that he could only waggle his chin and eyebrows. The sun had come up by then, and they then prayed the morning prayers, and everybody returned to their homes with plenty of time for lunch.