Everyone's great-n-grandpa was an โarenderโ whom the local โpuritzโ (szlachta landowner) threw into his dungeon for falling behind in rent payments... and the math says that these stories are an *underestimate* of how many arendators there were
I was actually surprised, when I started getting into the documents for my professional reasons, how authentic this part of the storytelling was - I always thought the tavern-keeping village Jew was a Hasidic folktale trope exaggerating a relatively rare profession.
But no. In the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, even a century after it was dissolved, the ratio of taverns to people was about 1:~200 (give or take a factor of 2) and the tavern-keepers were disproportionately Jewish - for centuries
My favourite (rather obscure) Hasidic story in this genre is the Jewish tavern keeper who's tavern is losing money because it's located on a route of decreasing importance as industrialization or something proceeds - and his Rebbe blesses him that things should improve ...
... and they do, when an icon in the village church starts manifesting some miraculous liquid and becomes a local pilgrimage site. The Jewish tavern keeper has several successful years of business, and then informs the Rebbe that he's retiring now and moving into town. The icon stops working, the...
... village and its tavern shrivel into insignificance again.
Fascinating theological implications in this little story
My cynical assumption was just that the rabbi was a real G and set up some kind of water pumping system in the statue
Given how many Catholics make money off of spurious stories of miracles, it's only fair for other religions to get in on the hustle
This probably requires the cooperation of the clergy, which implies that thereโs a committee of clergy in charge of planning miracles
It's more like there are independent contractors who invent miracles and then they send in the miracle checking squads
โThank you for the report on how the ohel is doing reb Issachar, I am told the local potato growers are quite pleased with their sales. Now father basil, if you would share with us this quarterโs applications for a wonder-working iconโฆah yes, we did have a 12% increase in myrrh production.โ
Lol