Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1953)

The children of Frampol tell Gimpel the orphan baker that his dead parents have risen from the grave, that the Messiah has come, that a cow flew over the roof and laid brass eggs, and every time he goes to look. The whole village has made his believing into a game. Singer wrote the story in Yiddish while the Yiddish-speaking world was being annihilated, and he chose this willing fool to carry the one thing the clever could not save. Its quiet argument is that Gimpel's endless gullibility and his faith are the same substance, that the neighbors sharp enough to see through every lie have also armored themselves against every grace. Late in his life the wife who betrayed him for years comes to him in a dream, her face blackened, and what she confesses turns his lifetime of being deceived into something close to holiness. He ends his days as a wandering teller of tales, poor and unafraid, certain that somewhere past all this lying waits a world where even Gimpel cannot be fooled.