The Bum's Wife's Dream

The Bum’s Wife’s Dream

A fractured fable based on a mystical tale by Rabbi Nachman

One night the bum’s wife dreamed that strangers packed her poverty into crates, loaded it onto a truck, and brought it to her wealthy neighbor, the burgher.

The burgher dreamed that strangers carted crates of wealth from his house to the bum’s house.

A horseman stole the bum’s wife away. The burgher hid her in an ocean, in a river, in a pool, and a stream, and bravely brought the bum’s wife back.

To the burgher’s wife was born a boy, and to the bum’s wife a girl beautiful as golden Jerusalem.?The bum’s wife knew this had been the dream: to take beauty from the dust and join her to the burgher’s son.

But glad happenings sometimes turn bad.?Kings, sultans, and emperors brought gifts by the truckload for the bum’s daughter, the beauty of Jerusalem. The bum rose from rank to rank, from bum to king to emperor, too elevated to take for his child a burgher’s son.

The bum’s wife told her daughter. The girl vowed in a golden letter to never part from the burgher’s son. The son got it, but got lost in the desert, lost heart, and lost the letter.?

Still, wormy happenings can end well.?People saw the emperor for the bum he was.?The daughter found the letter, the son found his heart, the bum found his lowliness, and the beauty and wealth of the world returned to its place.