A Jewish merchant died abroad, far from his family, in the house of a stranger. Years later, his grown son traveled to find the merchant's hidden property — but the man who had inherited custody of the house was reluctant to give anything back.
One evening, the host set a small dinner for his own family and this visiting young man. On the table: one chicken, five pigeons, and the host, his wife, two sons, and two daughters — eight people in all. The host handed the carving knife to the young stranger and, half-testing, half-mocking, told him to divide the meal fairly.
The young man, preserved in the 1901 anthology Hebraic Literature, answered calmly. "I told you it was not my place to serve the food, but since you insist, I did the best I could. Notice: yourself, your wife, and one pigeon — that is three. Your two sons and one pigeon — three. Your two daughters and one pigeon — three. Myself and two pigeons — three also. Every group numbers three. It is fair."
Then he turned to the chicken. "I gave you and your wife the head, because you are the heads of the family. I gave each of your sons a leg, because sons are pillars — they hold up the family name. I gave each of your daughters a wing, because daughters, in time, marry and take wing and fly from the home-nest. I took the body of the chicken for myself — because the body looks like a ship, and it was in a ship that I came here, and in a ship I hope to return." He looked his host in the eye. "I am the son of the merchant who died in your house. Give me the property of my dead father."
The story, a ma'aseh of the sort collected throughout the Talmud and later Midrashim, is a Jewish version of a motif that appears worldwide. But the Rabbis tell it with a particular edge. Wisdom is not abstract. Wisdom, in this tale, is a chicken on a plate, carved so cleverly that the host cannot refuse him. Justice rides into the room on the back of a joke.