Jewish folk belief about small coins ran deep in the towns of Poland. Among both Jewish and Gentile neighbors a superstition held that a penny found at the right moment — stumbled upon in the street at dawn, received as the first sale of the day, placed in your hand by a beggar — carried luck that had nothing to do with its giver. A farmer who caught a lucky coin would spit on it lightly, stow it away in a safe corner, and keep it for months as a pledge of fortune.
The tradition, as rabbinic storytellers retold it, traced the whole idea back to Job. Job, the sages said, was the luckiest man who ever lived before his trials. His very goats were so fortunate that when wolves came down on the flock, the goats killed the wolves. And a beggar who received even a mite from Job's hand never needed to beg again from anyone — the coin carried its own future in it.
So Polish Jewish grandmothers, who had never read the Book of Job in Hebrew, would pocket a stray penny and whisper that Job's luck still walked the world. Small theologies live a long time. The rabbis passed down a wealthy patriarch's open hand, and centuries later it turned up as a coin in a coat pocket in Kraków.
The reference point runs back to "Genesis According to the Talmud" — a reminder that even a folk tip about spitting on a penny has a line of rabbis behind it.