The Real Wise Man of Chelm: Chelm stories rewritten

Maturity: None.
Fantasy: A town of fools.

*Possibly finished; depends on whether or not I come up with more ideas. xD*

Author’s Note: There are two different cities named Chelm. One is a real town in Poland. The other is fictional, located somewhere in Eastern Europe. The legend goes that when the world was first created, God gave an angel two sacks, one of wise souls, and one filled with foolish souls. The angel was to scatter the souls across the world, a wise soul here, a foolish soul there, to balance each other out. But as he passed over a mountain, he flew too low and the bag of foolish souls caught on the peak, tearing and spilling all the foolish souls to the bottom of the mountain, where they founded a town called Chelm, the town of fools.

The “ch” in Chelm isn’t pronounced like it is in English. It’s more of a throaty sound. I don’t really know how to describe it. And Moshe is pronounced either “mo-SHEH” or “mo-SHAY.” It’s the Hebrew/Yiddish pronunciation of Moses.

Also, I take no credit for the situations within the story. All the scenes are different Chelm stories told by storytellers around the world. I've just added a character. If I end up adding more, it'll probably be my own stories, and I'll make that clear.

When the angel’s sack of foolish souls spilled, he was mortified. Not wanting the town to be comprised completely of fools, he took a wise soul from his other sack and dropped it down after the foolish souls.
This soul’s name was Moshe.
In any other village, Moshe would have been viewed as one of the wisest men there. In Chelm, however, where the foolish Chelmites considered themselves to be some of the wisest men anywhere, Moshe was labeled a fool himself. His logic – which, really, anyone from anywhere but Chelm could have come up with – was unfathomable to the “wise” men of Chelm, who said that anyone who didn’t think the same way as they did was a fool.
Before the town was founded, when the Chelmites were cutting down the very first trees and carrying them down the mountain to build their houses, it was Moshe who came along and suggested that they roll the logs down the slope instead. This was the one and only time that anyone from Chelm heeded his suggestions. They promptly picked up the logs that they had already brought down, carried them back up the mountain, and rolled them down again.
During the construction of the town, when the Chelmites were digging the foundation for their synagogue, they came up with the dilemma of what to do with the dirt they had dug. Before Moshe could say a word, someone had suggested that they dig another hole and put the dirt in there. Delighted, the men set to work, despite Moshe’s protests. When the hole had been dug and refilled, someone brought up another question: what to do with the dirt from the second hole? The men pondered over this for a while. Moshe tried to bring up the idea of putting it into wheelbarrows and leaving it by the mountains, but the other Chelmites very slowly and carefully, as if to a small child, explained that the wheelbarrows were on the other side of town, and therefore it was much easier to simply dig a hole twice as big as either of the others, and then all they had to do was fill it with the dirt from the second hole and the earth from the bigger hole.
When the synagogue itself was first being built, and the Chelmites had the dilemma of which end of the logs should receive the honor of being carried through the streets first, Moshe pointed out that from one angle the right was the right, and from the other the right was the left. The Chelmites brushed him off in favor of the more comprehensible idea of cutting off the right end of the log. Then the log would only have one end, they explained, and it wouldn’t matter. Moshe attempted to convince them that there would still be two ends, and that it would only make the logs shorter, but again they ignored him, and the baker who had come up with the idea took the saw to make the cut. Of course, there were still two ends on the log. Moshe was sure that now, they’d agree that he was right and just get down to the business of building the synagogue. However, one Chelmite suggested that perhaps they just hadn’t cut enough off, and the rest quickly agreed and continued to cut.
During the famous Chelm debate of which was more important, the sun or the moon, Moshe remained neutral, wisely not wanting to get into an argument with any Chelmites. They simply refused to see reason. But when the solution was announced, Moshe objected. The wisest and most revered elders in the town had explained that, in fact, the moon was more important than the sun, because the sun shines during the day, when there’s already enough light to see, whereas the moon glows during the night, when the light is more needed. “But there’s only enough light during the day because the sun is shining,” Moshe tried to explain, but the Chelmites would have none of it and were satisfied with their solution.