The Wine Vessel of Nikopol

Printing a work the size of the Beit Yosef in sixteenth-century Venice cost a fortune. Rabbi Yosef Karo was a scholar, not a rich man. How, then, did his books reach the press? The people of Tzfat — and of many Jewish communities — answer with a story.

In Nikopol on the Danube, they say, there lived a great scholar named Rabbi Yosef who loved Torah above everything, and refused to live on public funds. He kept a small partnership in a shop, but his heart was always in the beit midrash, and more than once he arrived at the shop only as the day was ending. At last his partner proposed to dissolve their partnership and paid him out his share.

His wife told him that money sitting in the house earns nothing; he should go to the market and buy something to sell at a profit. Rabbi Yosef set out — but his feet carried him, as always, to the study hall, and he learned until evening. On the way home, in the emptying market, a tall stranger offered him a large, heavy vessel — for mixing wine, in one telling; an old iron mortar, in another — for exactly the sum in his pocket. Rabbi Yosef bought it and carried it home.

His wife looked at the great ugly thing and despaired: “What shall we do with this?” That night Rabbi Yosef dreamed. In the dream he was told that the vessel was not what it seemed: beneath its dark surface it was made of gold. He should sell it, take the money, and go up to the Land of Israel, to the city of Tzfat.

In the morning, while he was at prayers, his wife called a trustworthy goldsmith to look at it. The dream was true. Rabbi Yosef sold the vessel, and he and his wife made their way to Tzfat. Most of all, the story ends, he rejoiced that the fortune let him print the books that became the Beit Yosef and the Shulchan Aruch.

This is a folk tale, told with variations, and not a historical record. Like many such stories, it carries a truth of its own: that the man who would not take his eyes off the Torah was looked after from Above.