A man in the Gaster manuscripts left his wife after many years of marriage. His reason was the oldest reason in the world: she had borne him only daughters. No son. No heir. He announced he was going to find a new wife who could give him what he wanted.
Before he rode off, he sent her one last gift — a single cartload of coals. Fuel for her fire, he said, since he would no longer be the one providing for her.
She received the cart without complaint. But when she began unloading it, she found that underneath the black coals, buried carefully at the bottom of the cart, there was a treasure — jewels, or precious metal, depending on the version of the story. Whether her husband had hidden it there on purpose in a moment of conscience or whether it had found its way in by some other means, the story does not say. She took the treasure and she used it.
She bought a piece of land. On the land she built a large akhsaniah — a rest house for travelers — equipped with good food, clean beds, and no charge for anyone who needed a night's shelter. She ran it for years. She became known across the region as the woman who would turn no traveler away.
Long afterward, her husband returned. The new wife had not worked out. His money was gone. He was sick and poor and too ashamed to ask any of his old acquaintances for help. He stumbled into a town and was told there was a rest house at the edge of it where strangers could stay. He made his way there. He was welcomed warmly. He was fed. He was given a bed. He did not recognize the woman who ran the place.
She recognized him.
She did not confront him. She did not throw him out. She made herself known to him gradually, and when he understood, she treated him with the same kindness she had given every other traveler who had come to her door. The story, preserved as exemplum no. 370 in Moses Gaster's 1924 The Exempla of the Rabbis, is remarkable for what it does not contain. There is no scene of triumph. There is no lecture. There is just a woman who took what had been given to her — a cartload of coals and a world that had treated her badly — and used it to build a place where anyone could come in out of the cold. Even the man who had sent her away.
The midah, the measure, she had lived by is one the Rabbis never stop teaching: when life hands you coals, go look for what is underneath.