A dying father left his entire estate to one of his sons, but several men came forward each claiming to be the rightful heir. The question reached the courts: which one was the real son? According to a tale preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis (compiled by Moses Gaster in 1924 from medieval Jewish sources) and paralleled in the Talmud (Baba Batra 58a) and Sefer Hasidim, the judge devised a test that cut through every lie.
The judge ordered the father's body exhumed and placed before the claimants. Each man was told to draw blood from the corpse. The reasoning was rooted in an ancient belief: the blood of a dead father would respond to the presence of his true son. The real heir's blood would mingle with his father's. The impostors' would not.
One by one, the false claimants approached the body and drew blood without hesitation. They had nothing to lose — the corpse meant nothing to them beyond the inheritance it represented. They stabbed and cut without flinching.
The true son refused. He stood before his father's body and could not bring himself to desecrate it. No inheritance was worth the violation of his father's remains. He would rather lose everything than dishonor the dead.
The judge had his answer. The real son was the one who could not bear to harm his father's body — even a body that could no longer feel pain. The estate was awarded to him.
This tale, which parallels the famous judgment of King Solomon and the two mothers (1 Kings 3:16-28), operates on the same principle: the true parent-child bond reveals itself not through claims of ownership but through the inability to cause harm. Love identifies itself by what it refuses to do.