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.