Tale 15: The Gentleman Who Traveled With a Coachman

The tale of a gentleman who traveled with a coachman to Berlin and a few other big cities: The gentleman went about his business and the coachman, whose name was Ivan [which also means "boor" in Yiddish], stayed behind with the buggy in the middle of the market. A man approached him and asked him why he was standing in the middle of the street. This soldier asked him, "who are you?" in German--"wer da?" ["who is here?"]--and he thought that he had asked him his name, so he said "Ivan." The soldier hit him because he did not understand the coachman's language and yelled at him again, "wer da?!" He replied once more, "Ivan," and the soldier hit him again and yelled "WER DA?!" until they took him with his buggy to one of the side-streets. When the gentleman came back after attending to his business, he searched for him until he found him and said to him, "Ivan, where were you?" He answered him in a scared whisper, "do not say 'Ivan' here, rather 'wer da'" because he thought the soldier had been hitting him for saying "Ivan." Afterwards, when they had left the city, the coachman said to him, "now you may again call me 'Ivan.'" Our Rebbe, z"l, ended [the story] thus: when a man is with me, he is examined as "who are you;" however, when he leaves me, he is once again the clumsy/mundane/physical Ivan [i.e. a boor].