As a kid, I was raised on the wonderful world of Disney’s version of the table-cloth, the donkey and the stick. As a father, I found myself reading Kimmel’s version of this story to my kids. There is one exciting and extraordinary difference between the two. It struck me so profoundly that I had to share it here.
In Disney’s version, the innkeeper (villan) is brought to his knees by Louie’s magic stick. We never see him again and are left to assume that bad people get their just desserts and remain at large to prey on less clever commoners. This is a step up from the original story wherein the landlord is beaten unmercifully (and was verbally threated to be killed) by the stick in front of his wife.
In the story by Kimmel, the innkeeper is a woman named Fruma Sarah. After bringing upon herself the hex, she begs for mercy, is delivered from her punishment and promptly returns the valuables to her victim. But this is not where she parts with the victim or the reader, and this is the lesson that impresses me most:
I see in this ending a belief (1) in the ability of any person to change, (2) of every person to forgive and unconditionally love the criminal, and (3) of all to be of a divine origin. I admire this wise writer and the pattern of his people in the honesty of content and peace it promotes. I mention his people because in another book, they did not whitewash the story of King David - a man who rose to legendary heights, fell to the depths of dreadful wrongdoing, and spent the remainder of his life trying to repair what he’d done.
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