Gaster's exemplum No. 399, drawn from the Ben Attar collection of medieval Jewish exempla, preserves a courtroom puzzle about a cunning father's last will.
A wealthy Jewish merchant died far from home, in a distant city. His will was strange. He left the entire estate — every coin, every property, every possession — to his slave. His only son was to receive just one object from the inheritance, whichever object the son chose to name.
The family was horrified. The slave, now suddenly a wealthy man, refused to hand over anything at all. The case was brought before a rabbinic court.
The rabbi who heard the case thought for a long moment. Then he gave the son one instruction.
"Choose the slave."
The son stared. The rabbi explained. Under ancient law, a slave's possessions belong to the slave's master. If the son chose the slave himself as his one inheritance object, then everything the slave had inherited — the entire estate — belonged automatically to the son as the slave's new owner.
The slave had won a battle of appearances and lost the war of Torah.
The rabbi then explained what the father had done. The father had known, on his deathbed, that in a distant city the slave could easily rob the estate and run. Leaving everything to the slave ensured that the property would be guarded — the slave would defend his own fortune fiercely. Giving the son the right to claim any single item preserved the son's actual inheritance through a legal trick only a Torah scholar could unlock.
The father had not disinherited his son. He had hidden the inheritance inside the one piece of property the slave could never refuse to deliver — himself.
The tradition preserves this case because it illustrates a core rabbinic principle: Torah is not only law. It is a mind for outwitting those who exploit law. A father who loves his son teaches him to find the sentence beneath the sentence.