It happened once upon a time that the good people of Chelm, who by their own admission have been granted an unusual quantity of wisdom, wished to build for themselves a new place to offer prayers and meditate upon the infinite grace of the Divine. Therefore, they began to dig in the earth to make the foundations of the new structure. Soon, the holes for the foundations grew, and so of course did the piles of mud taken from these holes.

Then one of the Chelmites said, “Friends, these piles of earth are not beautiful. Surely having heaps of mud standing around our place of prayer would be disrespectful. What shall we do?”

The others agreed that it was not right to leave the earth there beside the new building, and so they began to think deeply, until one of them said, “Friends, I have the solution. We must dig another hole in which to put all this earth.”

The Chelmites agreed this was an excellent idea, and they immediately dug a large pit and filled it with the earth taken from the foundation holes. But then one of them pointed out that the mud from that new pit was standing beside the place of prayer in a very un-beautiful way.

Again all began to think most deeply about this perplexing puzzle, but thanks be to the Hand of Providence that had bestowed good sense on the people of Chelm, an answer soon appeared. “Friends,” said one of them, “here is the solution that will put an end to the problem forever. We must dig another hole to receive this earth, but to avoid the problem simply repeating itself – for thanks be to the Creator we Chelmites are wise enough to learn from experience – this time we must dig a hole THAT IS TWICE AS BIG!”