A ma'aseh preserved in the Gaster manuscripts describes a strange people in a distant country who had built their religion around fire. Every morning at dawn they lit one great stake before their temple, and every evening at sunset they lit another. The flame never went out. When they grew old enough that they felt their strength fading, they would walk to a particular pit at the edge of the city — a pit they called the gate of Gehinnom — and throw themselves in. The flames would consume them. They believed this suicide released them from every sin they had committed and carried them straight into Paradise.
A Jewish traveler came through this country on a long journey. Before he pressed on, he needed to leave his purse somewhere safe. He entrusted it to a kind old man he had met in the town. When he returned three days later, the old man was gone. He had thrown himself into the pit.
The Jew was devastated — his money lost along with the man. But the townspeople told him to wait. "These men return on the third day after the burning," they said, "to settle their affairs. Your purse will come back."
On the third day the old man reappeared — or rather, what looked like the old man reappeared. He walked straight to the Jew, greeted him warmly, handed back the purse untouched, and began to walk away. The Jew, awestruck, ran after him and begged to follow him into Paradise. The old man turned around. His face was different now. He told the Jew the truth.
"I am not the old man," he said. "I am a mazzik — a destructive demon. For generations my kind has taken on these appearances to deceive the people of this land into worshipping fire. We orchestrate the return-from-the-pit ritual to confirm their faith and keep them from ever turning to the true God. Their devotion to us is our harvest. But you — you are a Jew. You worship the real Master of the Universe. You cannot follow me. That road leads nowhere you want to go."
And with that, the demon vanished.
The exemplum, preserved as no. 420 in Moses Gaster's 1924 The Exempla of the Rabbis, carries a brutal Jewish teaching about idolatry. The miracles of other religions, the Rabbis insist, are not necessarily fake in the sense of being staged. They may be real — in the sense that real demonic forces really produce them. The whole machine functions. Worshippers really do see their old friend return from the pit. The purse really does come back. The problem is not that the sign is false. The problem is who is behind it. Idolatry, in the Rabbis' vision, is not stupid people falling for nothing. It is real people following real signs to the wrong address. The Jew in the story is spared not because he was cleverer than his pagan hosts — he would have jumped in the pit with them — but because, in the end, even the demon refused to lead him where the demon itself was going.