Gaster's exemplum No. 303 preserves a Jewish folktale about a father's last clever gift to his son.
A wealthy Jewish merchant lay dying in a distant city far from home. He drew up a will that surprised his lawyers. His only son, he ordered, would receive the entire inheritance — but only if the son could first pass a test of cleverness, performing three wise deeds in succession.
The father died. Word traveled back to the son. But when the young man arrived in the strange city, he found that none of the townspeople would tell him where his father had lived or died. Perhaps they hoped to keep the inheritance for themselves. He needed the address to claim anything.
So he bought a cartload of firewood and told the carman, "Deliver this to the house of So-and-So," naming his father. The carman, assuming the order came from a legitimate customer, hauled the wood off through the winding streets. The son followed at a distance and found his father's house.
That was the first clever deed. The second came at dinner. The household sat down to eat, and a whole fowl was placed before the son to carve. He divided it deliberately. The head he gave to the father of the house; the legs to the sons; the wings to the daughters; the innards — liver and giblets — to the mother; the remainder he kept for himself.
When asked to explain, he said: the head to the head of the house; the legs to those who must go out and work; the wings to those who will fly to other houses as brides; the innards to the one who bore children, for childbearing is an inward labor; and the remainder to himself, the heir, who is the rest of the father's estate.
The rabbi hearing the case recognized the son's cleverness and awarded him the full inheritance.
The moral the exemplum carries is this: a true inheritance is not only the property. It is the wisdom to find the property when strangers hide it, and to divide what you receive justly when it sits on your table.