The Magic Seed | Sowing the Seeds of Love
The Magic Seed (Moroccan Jewish Folktale)
Long ago there lived an orphan boy who was very poor. He was so poor he had nowhere to sleep. He slept wherever he could rest his head. He was so poor that he had nothing to eat. He ate whatever he could find.
Now he lived in a land with a Sultan who valued law and order. He would not tolerate criminal behavior and his punishments were very harsh.
The boy knew that but he had gone hungry for so long; he had eaten his last apple to the very core days ago, that he risked stealing a loaf of bread.
Well, the Sultan’s guards were nearby and as the baker yelled “thief, thief,” the boy was caught and dragged to an open courtyard where the Sultan would come to proclaim his punishment. A crowd gathered as the boy stood awaiting his fate. He knew the Sultan was not forgiving. What could he do? He had nothing.
He reached into his pocket and felt the apple core, and had an idea.
When the Sultan arrived, he took one look at the boy and was quick to deliver his verdict. “You have stolen a loaf of bread. That is criminal. There is no question about it. There were witnesses to prove it. You know that the punishment for stealing in this land is death. You will be hanged immediately.”
The boy said, “I am very sorry for stealing the bread; I was starving. Kill me if you want. But, do not throw away my magic seed. And he pulled the seed from his apple core out of his pocket.
The Sultan was intrigued. “Stop the execution for one moment! Tell me, young boy, what kind of magic does your seed possess?”
The boy said, “Well the seed will grow almost instantly when you plant it, into a tree full of ripe pomegranates, each filled with their own magical seeds,” the boy replied.
The Sultan immediately demanded the magical seed, which the boy handed over, saying, “Here, you can plant it right now in the courtyard before everyone. But be warned. The seed will only grow if you have never taken anything that belongs to anyone else, ever.”
Well, the Sultan took the seed from the boy and put it in the hand of his head vizier. “Plant this magic seed,” the Sultan demanded. But the chief vizier blushed. “ahem (cough) ahem, once, (ahem) when I was a boy, (ahem),” he confessed, “I borrowed a friend’s favorite book without asking. And now I had every intention of giving it back but then I lost it. So I am not qualified to plant the magic seed.”
“Humph,” the Sultan replied. He took the seed and placed it into the hand of a commander of his army. “Plant the seed!” he commanded.
The commander looked down. “I am afraid I cannot plant the seed either,” he said. Once the Sultan sent me a message that I must come to him at once, so I stole another man’s horse, and I never bothered to give it back to him. I’m sorry, Your Majesty.
The Sultan passed the seed from one advisor to the next, each one expressing with regret why they could not plant the seed.
The Sultan roared, “Is there no one in this land who can plant this seed?!”
Suddenly, all eyes were on him. He was holding the seed. He was the only one left and realized everyone expected him to plant it. He was silent for a long time.
The Sultan blushed. “The seed will not grow from me either,” he finally said. “Once I argued with another Sultan and we fought each other in a war. I won – and I took an entire country from him.”
The young boy tentatively spoke up. He said, “I never took a country. Or a horse or even a book from someone else. I took a loaf of bread because I was starving.” The Sultan then started to laugh; a very big, strong laugh.
He said, “Young boy! I don’t know if your seed is truly magic, but I do know that in an instant it has grown tzedec, justice, in my land.” The Sultan looked at this boy, realizing he had more wisdom than all of his advisors combined. “To think,” he said, “I might have killed you,” said the Sultan. “Will you please become my new vizier?”
And the boy did. And he helped change the laws of the laws. And he never went hungry again.
Angela: I think about this story in context of how we see what is criminal in our country today. How harsh our punishments can seem. I think about how easy it is to judge others. And not always hold up a mirror to ourselves. I think about how depending on where you came from, and who you know, and the color of your skin, that the stealing of that proverbial loaf of bread can have very different consequences for different people. All of that, the Jews of Morocco knew over 500 years ago. And we are still learning from their lessons today.
