Gaster's exemplum No. 438, drawn from the Gaster Hebrew manuscripts, tells the story of a stubborn merchant who decided to prove that a person can lose his property any time he wants.

He was having an argument with a friend. The friend said, "No one can fight against the Providence of the Holy One." The merchant, annoyed, answered, "If I decide to lose my money, I will lose it. Nothing can stop me." The friend bet him otherwise. The merchant set out to prove his point.

Attempt one. The merchant loaded a ship with dates and sailed to the very region where dates grew in abundance — the last place on earth anyone would pay a premium for them. There he sold his entire cargo at random, carelessly, for whatever passerby offered. When he returned home and opened his coin box to tally his loss, he found he had earned double what he had paid.

Attempt two. Now more determined, he loaded another cargo of dates and went to the same date-growing region, this time resolving to exchange them for peppercorn, which was dear there but cheap in his country. Again he sold at random. Again he returned home. When he opened the first sack of peppercorn, a pearl rolled out — dropped in, evidently, by some merchant distracted in filling the sack. The pearl alone was worth twice the value of all his dates.

Attempt three. He would not give up. He loaded a third cargo of dates and sailed once more to the same region. This time he resolved to exchange them for corn, which was dearer there. He intended to pour the corn openly into the hold of his ship, carelessly, to lose half in transit. But just as he was about to set sail, war broke out between his country and the neighboring one, and his ship was held in port for six months.

During that six-month delay, plague and locusts destroyed the grain harvest in his home country. When he finally sailed back with his hold of corn, the markets of his homeland were starving. He sold it at prices he had never dreamed of.

The merchant returned home for the third time richer. And this time he gave up. "Gam zu l'tovah," he said quietly — even this is for the good. He could not lose his money. Providence would not let him.

The exemplum preserves a Jewish truth the rabbis often repeated: the Holy One is not only the source of gain. He is also the wall that prevents your careless loss. Sometimes the Jew's stubbornness meets a sterner stubbornness underneath.