As a new peasant of Zahndorf, Elias IX had a lot of free time. So, he took out his sole possession, his full genealogical records of the past half-millennium, and started to read it, when he noticed something he hadn’t seen before: His maternal grandmother’s maternal grandmother’s maternal grandmother was Orthodox Jewish.

And suddenly, it all made sense. It explained why Elias IX had a previously unexplainable aversion to bacon and ham, why he couldn’t drink a cup of milk after eating meat stew, and why he could never stomach lobster or oysters. It explained why one day a week, he could never bring himself to talk of money or business matters.

Elias IX’s occupation is now Jew.