Three men were traveling together through a lonely country. As Friday afternoon wore on, one of them stopped. "The sun is setting," he said. "I will not travel on Shabbat. I will stay here until the sky is three stars deep on Saturday night and walk then."
His two companions argued. The road was unsafe. Robbers were known to work this route. There was no village nearby, no shelter, no community. To stop out in the open was madness.
The pious traveler did not move. He sat down beside the road. His companions, anxious to reach the next town, went on without him.
Night fell. As he sat, alone, a bear came out of the woods. The traveler expected to die. Instead, the bear circled him slowly and lay down beside him — not as a threat, but as a guard. All that Shabbat, the bear remained with him. When robbers came up the road looking for targets, they saw the bear, and they turned aside.
Saturday night passed. The bear rose and vanished into the trees. The traveler resumed his journey.
Further up the road, he came upon the bodies of his two companions. They had been killed by the very robbers who had been turned back from his own camp by the bear.
Gaster's Exempla (no. 309, 1924; from Codex Gaster 185) preserves this story because it answers, with a narrative fist, the objection every Shabbat-keeper has heard: "You cannot afford to stop. The world will not wait for you." The tradition answers: God sometimes assigns a bear.