Somerset Maugham wrote a short story called "The Verger" which was included in a movie called trio. It tells about a man who had been a verger in an English church who was fired by a new vicar because he was illiterate. He then goes on to be a successful businessman. In a collection called Jewish folklore there is a short (one page) story about an immigrant push cart peddler in New York who tries to get a job as shammes at his synagogue, but is turned down because he is illiterate. He then continues his business and becomes quite successful. For both stories the punch line comes when the successful businessman goes to a local bank to set up an an account. The banker, realizing that the man is illiterate, comments about what he what more he would have done had he been literate. The reply in both stories is essentially the same - I would have been a verger/shammes!. Both stories seem to date from around 1900. I wonder which came first and whether one of them copied the other.
Personal guess. Someone read Maugham story and converted into New York Jewish story. I doubt if Maugham was aware of much of Jewish folklore.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/reading-railroaded/ "According to folklorist Jan Brunvand, after writer Somerset Maugham was accused of stealing the plot of his 1929 short story “The Verger,” he explained that he’d heard the tale from a friend and that it was a well known bit of Jewish folklore."
