A Turkey with a Crown Parshas Mishpatim

by | Feb 11, 2024 | Sermons

I’d like to share my favorite parable of all time. This parable animates my approach to the rabbinate and really, my approach to life. It’s a story told by Rav Nachman of Breslov, a Chassidic rebbe, known for many things, one of them being a great storyteller.

This particular story is of a prince. He lives the good life with his mother and father, the king and queen; the finest clothing, the best education, an opulent and pampered life. But one day, out of the blue, the prince removes all his clothing, gets on all fours, starts eating crumbs from the floor, and starts making gobble-gobble sounds like a turkey.

His parents, as you can imagine, were beside themselves. What in the world is going on? They give him a few days, hoping it’s a phase, but he’s still on the floor, debasing himself and acting like a turkey. And so, they swallow their pride and start calling in the experts. Psychiatrists prescribe him medication, therapists try every modality under the sun, educational experts cycle through the royal palace. But the prince is still on the floor claiming to be a turkey.

Let’s pause here and try to understand what is going through the prince’s mind. The prince is not as crazy as he seems. On the contrary, it is the king and queen and all the royalty who are the crazy ones. You see, the palace life is full of choreography, rules of etiquette that must be abided by, outfits that must conform to the royal protocols, curtsies and bows and pleasantries. Life in a palace is one big show, or more accurately, it’s one big fraud. Everyone is following a script, and no one, absolutely no one, is themselves.

The prince is a thoughtful young man. While everyone is standing in adoration of the king and queen, he sees right through it. We’re not special. Our blood is not blue, we have no special gifts, it’s all one big game. If anything, says the prince, you know what we really are? We are no different than an animal in the wild. We eat, we sleep, we enjoy ourselves. That’s all I really want, and that’s who I really am. And so, the prince, the one honest person in the palace, strips off his stifling clothing, he drops his ridiculous royal mannerisms, and gobbles-gobbles like a turkey.

Nietzsche, one of the most influential philosophers of all time, made the same argument as the prince in Rav Nachman’s story. Humans, he writes, were once driven by instinct, and as long as that was the case, we were truly the kings of the world. But then we developed something called civilization, with rules that curbed our instinct. They forced us to act against our inner animal. In this state of being ‘civilized,’ in this state of living by a moral code that went against our natural spirit, we became divorced from who we really are, and in his words, we became “the sickest of animals.”

It’s the prince who is the most authentic person in the palace. He embraces his base desires, his yearning for unbridled freedom, for no rules. “This is who I am.” Of course, every doctor who tried to cure him was unsuccessful. How could they be? They were trying to tell him that he is someone he is not. They are trying to force him to be inauthentic. Once the prince tasted the richness of being true to thyself, there is no allure to the palace life with all its games.

Who here feels like a turkey?

Who here feels stifled by the rules we must abide by? And I don’t even mean the rules of the Torah. The rules of life. The smiles we need to plaster onto our face, the pleasantries, the unspoken rules that dictate our every move. The prince is far more relatable than we thought.

The story continues:

One day an old man came to the door of the palace. He said he had a cure for their son. He had no credentials, but they were desperate, so they ushered him in. The old man enters the room that the prince is in and finds him under the table, unclothed, eating scraps of meat that have fallen to the floor. The old man removes his jacket. He then removes his shirt. He then gets fully undressed and gets under the table next to the prince. The prince eyes the old man suspiciously.

But the old man ignores him and starts gobble-gobbling himself. He joins him in eating the scraps of food off the floor. He spends a week under the table as a turkey.

At the end of the week, the old man snaps his fingers, and the king’s servants drop his and the princes’ clothes under the table. The old man starts to get dressed. The prince turns to him, incredulous: “What are you doing? I thought you were a turkey?!” And the old man explains that just because he’s a turkey doesn’t mean he can’t wear dignified clothing. The prince ponders this for a moment and then puts on his own royal outfit. But they are still under the table.

A week later, the old man snaps his fingers, and the servants bring him food on beautiful China and magnificent cutlery. And again, “What are you doing? I thought you were a turkey?!” And the old man explains that just because he’s a turkey doesn’t mean he shouldn’t delicious food.

And this continues until finally, the prince is acting like royalty; with all the clothing and mannerisms that it entails. All the while, the prince still considers himself to be a turkey. Only that now he realizes a turkey could act like a human, a turkey can even wear a crown.

What Rav Nachman is trying to convey in this profound story is that the prince was right; we are all just animals. Some people embrace that reality – I will follow my instincts, I will embrace what other people may call my flaws, and I will just be true to myself. And there are others who are completely divorced from reality; they have no self-awareness, no sense of who they are, they are living their lives conforming to whatever they are told to do. The life of the true-to-thyself prince is myopic and self-centered, and the life of the superficial king is stifling and inauthentic.

And then there is the wisdom of the old man, who tells us that we can and we must know who we are, perhaps we are an animal at our core. But that doesn’t mean we cannot act in the most dignified fashion. That knowledge does not preclude us from acting like and embracing the divine. True growth and true greatness comes precisely from the individual who knows who they really are, who is brave enough to go to the darkest of places and face their inner demons. The richest life is live by he or she who is bold enough to confront the gap that exists between who we really are and where we need to be.

I’d like to share with you something a little esoteric. Today is Rosh Chodesh Adar Rishon. The Jewish calendar is a hybrid between the cycle of the moon and the cycle of the seasons. One of the rules of the calendar is that Pesach must always fall out in the spring season. But because there are less days in a lunar year than there are in a solar year – there are 365 days in the solar calendar and 354 in the lunar, a 10.5-day gap, our Sages instituted an extra month to “catch up,” and ensure that the two remain in sync.

The mystics point out that the moon is so to speak more authentic than the sun. The sun shines every day. The moon waxes and wanes. Which one of those is more aligned with human nature? Absolute consistency or days of highs and days of lows? It’s the moon, of course. The moon that almost disappears, as we feel like almost giving up, and then, boom, we bounce back with a vengeance.

The gap between the lunar calendar and the solar calendar represents the gap between who we are and who we want to be. When we acknowledge our deficiencies, when we acknowledge our moon-like behavior, when we embrace our moon as we do in a Jewish leap year by adding a lunar month, you know what happens? The lunar calendar actually becomes longer than the solar year. This year there are 384 days in the lunar calendar. Says the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Adar Rishon, this extra month, this month that represents our acknowledgment of our deficiencies, this month of kaparas pasha, is a month that propels us forward well beyond the years in which we ignore who we really are. Those who forget they are turkeys live an inauthentic life but those who remain turkeys live an incomplete life. It’s the prince who now wears a crown, who knows who he is, who lives the richest life of all.  

This idea is not limited to people shying away from their own weaknesses. There is a similar phenomenon of people who are afraid of difficult theological questions. These “kings and queens” pretend there are no questions, no difficulties, and stifle their inner voice whenever she makes a peep. And there are those “prince-like” people who get so weighed down by their questions on G-d, and they just give up. They are both missing out on the richness of seeing the light after grappling with darkness. This is the message, and this is the power of Adar Rishon, the extra lunar month that propels us forward; face the darkness, work through your demons, and then, and only then, will you taste the richness that life has to offer.

There is a beautiful letter written by Rav Yitzchak Hutner to one of his students who wrote to him about some terrible failings. This is how Rav Hutner responded:

“…Know my friend, that the key for your soul is not the tranquility of the yetzer hatov, but the war against the yetzer hara… There is a saying in English, “Lose the battle and win the war.” You surely have stumbled and will stumble again, and you will be vanquished in many battles. However, I promise you that after you have lost those battles, you will emerge from the war with a victor’s wreath on your head.

The wisest of all men [King Shlomo] said [Mishlei 24:16], “The tzaddik will fall seven times and will rise.” The unlearned think that this means, “Even though a tzaddik falls seven times, he will rise.” The wise know well that the (true) meaning is: “Because a tzaddik falls seven times, he will rise.”…”

Sharing in your suffering,

Confident that you will prevail, 

Praying for your success, 

Yitzchak Hutner

The prince is right. We are all turkeys. But we would be fools to remain living under the table.

A Spiritual Revolution Parshas Yisro

by | Feb 3, 2024 | Sermons

There is a famous psychological phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence overestimate their abilities. For example, students who get D’s and F’s on their exams tend to think they scored much higher. Elderly people who can no longer drive very well often think they are still excellent behind the wheel. In a study on emotional intelligence, participants were asked to rate their own emotional intelligence, meaning, how well they understood themselves and others. Those who scored the lowest rated themselves the highest. I find this to be an incredibly scary thought; we are often blind to our own deficiencies, and we foolishly walk around overestimating our abilities.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is quite well-known; I’d venture to say that most of you are familiar with it. But there is another component to the Dunning-Kruger Effect that is not as famous. And that is the inverse. Those with high levels of competency often underestimate their abilities. The students who got an A often assume they got less. The excellent driver thinks she is not so great at driving. And those with high emotional intelligence do not realize how emotionally intelligent they really are.   

There is a parallel phenomenon in the spiritual world. It doesn’t have a name and because I wrote this when I was quite exhausted, we are going to call it the Spiritual Dunning-Kruger Effect. I know, very creative. The Spiritual Dunning-Kruger Effect represents the fact that we often overestimate in the material realm and underestimate in the spiritual. Take the Jewish People traveling in the desert as an example. They are a group of slaves who were beaten daily and fed a measly diet, if they were fed at all. Two days into their exodus from slavery, they all of a sudden felt that they need meat. A heavenly bread falling from the sky was not enough for them; they “could only survive” if they had a good juicy steak, something they presumably did not experience in Egypt. And yet, when it came to spirituality, when G-d started speaking to them on Har Sinai, they begged Him to stop. Despite being the descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, despite having a piece of G-d, i.e., a soul, within them, they claimed to not be holy enough to hear G-d’s voice; “it’s too much for us.” They overestimated their physical needs and underestimated their spiritual abilities.

And as bizarre as this seems, hos different are they than all of us who want nicer vacations, bigger homes, better food, and even the best secular education. But when it comes to our spiritual needs, we are content with a whole lot less. “I’m not that spiritual.” We overestimate our physical needs and abilities and underestimate in the spiritual realm.

Truth be told, es chato’ai ani mazkir hayom, I want to publicly acknowledge a failing of my own. I, Yisrael Motzen, underestimated your spiritual aptitude. I did.

In mid-September, I gave a speech on Rosh Hashana (not that one…). I spoke about Rabbi Akiva and the importance of learning Torah. And I thought I was being so bold by asking of you all to learn for a maximum of 13 minutes a day. The topic I was asking you to learn was an easy one, the weekly parsha. And here we are, just a few months later, and about 140 people in our shul have been studying a page of Talmud a day, a difficult 35–55-minute daily endeavor.

There have been hiccups, challenging hiccups, and now is not the time and place to get into all that. But the bottom line is I was wrong. I sold you short. I too suffered from a form of the Spiritual Dunning-Kruger Effect. (I know, I know, we need a better name.)

All the research on the Dunning-Kruger Effect points to one effective way of overcoming these biases, and that is feedback; having someone else tell you who you really are, how your actions are seen by others. So allow me to right my wrong and give some feedback this morning on what I am seeing:

What I am seeing in this room and in our Ner Tamid community is nothing short of a spiritual revolution.

I am sure many of you are thinking, “Eh, this is nothing. We just did it for the money.” Maybe you think you did, but I don’t believe you. I do not believe that you spent all that time just for the money. I just don’t.

I sent out a poll this past week on the Daf Yomi chat with some questions about people’s past learning experiences, and over 2/3 of respondents stated that prior to this Daf Yomi initiative they were not learning daily, with 33% of respondents saying they almost never learned Torah. One of the questions that was asked on the poll was, what did you cut out from your day to make time for the Daf? And most respondents wrote, ‘leisure time.’ Many of us realized that we do not need as much unwinding as we previously assumed. I could get by with less TV, less scrolling, less listening to music. In short, a good percentage of our community just made a significant 90+ day change to our daily habits.

On Rosh Hashana, I mentioned the dirty little secret, which is not much of a secret, the sad reality that for some reason, in Modern Orthodox circles, the centrality of Torah learning and the level of Torah learning is not as strong as it is in other Orthodox circles. There’s no reason a school cannot have exceptionally high standards of secular education and exceptionally high standards of Jewish education, but for some reason, parents are often left choosing between them. These past three months have given me hope that maybe we can change that. And that’s because when I go to the youth lounge every Shabbos to teach the daf to a group of teenagers on a Saturday morning and they are engaged, and they ask me deep questions, and they are thirsty for more Torah, I have hope. This is nothing short of a spiritual revolution.

When I see people who never opened a Jewish book in their life walking around with a gemara, when people tell me that their whole household is walking around listening to the Daf Yomi podcast, when I come to shul meetings and the topic of conversation is yesterday’s daf, when our shul has what I believe to be the highest concentration of women doing the daf in North America, when I wake up in the morning and open my phone and see tens of people who started their day with some Torah learning, this is nothing short of a spiritual revolution.

That’s my feedback. I underestimated you, I underestimated myself. I underestimated our community. We are capable of so much more.

And so now the question is, what’s next? Do we just collect our $1000 and catch up on all the episodes of Suits that we missed? That’s what the Jewish People did in the desert; they received the Torah and 40 days later they were dancing around a calf. They didn’t get it. They didn’t realize how far they came, how much they grew. They didn’t believe in their spiritual aptitude. But we can.

And so I’d like to share with you all a menu of different daily learning programs. Whether you participated in the Daf Yomi project or not, you can still join this revolution. There is truly something for everyone, whether it’s Daf Yomi, Amud Yomi – a class I hope to start here where we will learn half a daf daily, Nach Yomi, or Mishna Yomi. And we’re going to keep that chat – that whatsapp chat that I initially thought was sooo annoying where everyone typed in that they learned that day. It’s a chat I’ve grown to love and be inspired by. It reminds me throughout the day what we are doing here.

One more thing – if you recall, when I came back from Israel, I shared with you a story about a woman we met outside the destroyed police station of Sederot. This young woman’s husband was a police officer who was killed by terrorists on October 7th. Our learning of the Daf was done in memory of her husband. In less than four weeks from now we will be celebrating our conclusion of Bava Kama, and this woman, Hodaya Harush, and her three adorable little children, will be joining us for a weekend.

When I met this woman, she was a police officer. However, her husband, Eliyahu, had always told her you are capable of so much more, you would make an excellent police investigator. After shloshim, she decided, this widow with three orphaned children under 8, to go further, to grow in her career, to be able to do more for the Jewish People, to be a greater merit to her deceased husband, and she enrolled in a program to become a police investigator.  

You’ll meet her soon, and you will see how she is brimming with faith; not only faith in G-d, but a healthy faith in herself, in what she can accomplish. Rav Tzadok HaKohein writes that inasmuch as we are commanded in this week’s parsha to believe in G-d, we are also commanded to believe in ourselves; to stop selling ourselves short.   

I look forward to being able to share with Hodaya not only what we already accomplished in her husband’s memory, but what we will continue to accomplish. I look forward to continuing together in this spiritual revolution. Because each one of us is capable of so much more.