Lecture dated 26 Elul 5766, Part 1

Monday night, the eve of the 26th of Elul 5766, a lecture by Rabbi Michael Abraham. Okay, today I want to begin with a well-known story by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. We’ll try to learn something from it that’s relevant to repentance, which is really what occupies us this month. And afterward, if we have time, there’s another passage from Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, mainly that. So I’ll start with the story. It’s the story of the turkey prince, the wise man and the turkey, which is a well-known story. “Indik” means turkey. A disaster struck the royal household. The king’s son, who until then had been sane and well-mannered, sank into melancholy and began imagining delusions, rolling around under the dining table on the floor and dragging bits of bread and bones that he found there, saying that he was a turkey. He went insane. And that wasn’t all; he also insisted on no longer wearing his clothes, on the grounds that a turkey does not wear clothes. This caused the king great sorrow. The king summoned his doctors and wise men, but to no avail. The king’s son stuck to his line: I am a turkey, and there is nothing strange about my behavior, because all turkeys behave this way. I am a normal turkey. One day, after all the doctors and wise men had long since despaired of healing him, a certain wise man came from a distant city and claimed that he would take it upon himself to heal him completely, as in all the stories. What did the wise man do? He too took off his clothes and sat under the table next to the king’s son, and he too began dragging crumbs and bones around with an innocent expression, as though this were the most natural thing in the world. The king’s son fixed puzzled eyes on him and then asked him, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” The wise man replied, “What are you doing here?” “I am a turkey,” the son answered innocently. “I too am a turkey,” the wise man echoed him. A number of days passed, even weeks, and the two got used to one another as they ate together from the same food, with no clothes on their bodies, and a strong bond was formed between them. The wise man understood that the time had come to begin real action. He signaled to those around them to throw two shirts under the table, and turning to the king’s son, the wise man said to him, “Do you suppose that a turkey can’t wear a shirt and still remain a turkey?” And so the two of them put on shirts. Some time passed, and then the wise man signaled again, and they threw them trousers to wear, and turning to the king’s son he said, “Do you think that if one wears trousers one can no longer be a turkey?” So the king’s son put on one garment after another without any resistance. Again a considerable amount of time passed, and the wise man signaled to those present to throw human food down to them from the table, and once again he said to the king’s son, “Do you think that if one eats good food one stops being a turkey? It is possible to eat such food and remain a turkey.” And he ate. Here they had reached one of the final stages toward his complete healing. After some time, the wise man turned to the king’s son and asked him to sit with him on a chair next to the table, and from there it did not take long before he restored him to the full course of normal life, without the king’s son sensing that he had become a turkey performing human actions in every respect. That’s more or less the story.

The publisher—I saw this in some Breslov pamphlet—explains what this parable is actually meant to say: how a person can overcome some destructive feeling, a special kind of evil inclination that tells him that the service of God is only for tremendously great righteous people; it’s not for small people like us. We’re turkeys. We’re not really human beings, so the service of God isn’t meant for people like us. And this parable comes to teach, so says that publisher or that pamphlet, how to deal with such an evil inclination. He says: okay, you know what, you’re a turkey—but reciting Grace after Meals with concentration doesn’t interfere with that, right? So try reciting Grace after Meals with concentration. After that, prayer, honoring parents, whatever, the whole halakhic system, little by little—and that’s how one can overcome this kind of turkey evil inclination. So beyond the question of whether that is really the intended parable—I have no idea how much of that he invented or received or whatever—and beyond the question whether that interpretation is correct and whether that’s really how one should deal with that kind of impulse, let’s actually look at the story itself. What interests me in this context is the parable itself more than the moral. Maybe it’s actually a parable for other things.

The most basic difficulty I at least see in this story is that in practice nothing happened. That is, the king’s son is still sick even at the end. That’s the fundamental difficulty here, right? In the end he remains convinced that he is a turkey; only behaviorally he behaves like human beings. Because okay, now he sits on a chair and is still a turkey. So in fact, on the psychological, mental level, he didn’t really change or really recover. He’s still sick. The only thing is, he’s now a sick person who behaves normally. Behaviorists will say he’s already healthy. Fine—but he’s not healthy. So that’s really the most basic question. It’s not clear how a story like this can even claim that this is a way to heal something, that this is actually how healing works. I’m not even talking about the moral yet. I mean the story in itself—how do we read this parable? Is the word “healed” used in the story? I don’t remember exactly. Is the word “healed” there? He was an expert physician. No, but at the end did he heal him? I don’t know. Maybe he just stopped embarrassing the family. It says: “he took it upon himself to heal him completely.” Ah, to heal him completely. I know, with these verbal nuances I’m not sure—I assume it was written in Yiddish and translated, at least probably. So I’m not sure how much every word here is exact. But clearly, also according to the moral reading, the idea is that this is supposed to be a process of recovery. Like a criminal who goes through some rehabilitation in prison—was he healed of criminality, or did he just adapt himself? I don’t know, no idea. So it’s an interesting question. Maybe he adapted himself back to his family without embarrassing the king anymore, behaviorally, but psychologically he’s sick to exactly the same degree.

So the first question that comes up here is really: why does Rabbi Nachman think this Jew was healed at all—this king’s son? He was sick, and he remained sick now too; nothing happened at the psychological level. According to the behaviorists, this is the method of healing. Yes, but even among behaviorists there are different shades. There are sane shades. The behaviorists also need to be healed. There are sane shades who say that the right tactic for dealing with things is to treat them on the empirical-behavioral plane without entering into the recesses of the soul and psychoanalysis. But it’s not that they deny the existence of such recesses; they only argue that we have no way of knowing what happens in there, and it doesn’t matter. If you’re afraid of elevators, we’ll teach you how to go into one. First we’ll show you a picture of an elevator. Fear of elevators maybe really isn’t an illness; it’s just a functional problem. Never mind—I’ll try to cure him of the fear, but they’ll tell him: come, see what’s preferable. Fine, but the whole problem with fear is that he won’t get on an elevator. What do I care if he gets on an elevator and is afraid—is that called sick? He’s just afraid. So what? As long as he functions normally, what’s the problem? But there are things that are themselves an illness, and the symptoms are only symptoms of the illness. The illness is not the symptoms; it’s the other way around. With an elevator it really is like that. What do I care that someone is afraid of elevators? Maybe it would be preferable if he weren’t afraid, but it’s not really important. A brave person is someone who knows what he’s afraid of, they say.

But if you see this person now behaving normally, sitting at the table clothed, eating, and all the while firmly believing that he’s a turkey, then his condition is grave—he remains psychotic. But everyone will say he’s fine. They’ll say it because they don’t see it. Fine, but in truth he isn’t fine. The truth is that he isn’t fine. Is that true with regard to commandment observance? Never mind, let’s leave the moral reading aside for now, because I’m not sure it resembles the story. Let’s talk about the story, because that’s what interests me. Maybe the healing is that socially no one even asks you what you think you are. Yes, the truth is that socially, the indication really isn’t what happens inside him. To think that if a person is normative, has a reasonable human existence, is part of society, then he’s clean—that doesn’t mean he’s healthy. Maybe the psychosis doesn’t interest the author of the parable. Fine, okay, that’s possible. Although I think what troubles the king is, at least it seems to me—I don’t know what would trouble me if this happened to my son—it’s not only that the boy isn’t wearing clothes and is under the table. Those are interesting and important symptoms, but it seems to me I’d also be very disturbed by the fact that he thinks he’s a turkey. After all, that also seems to be part of the illness. What Miki is saying is: is that why psychiatric patients are in locked hospitals? Because they’re the minority? Ah, well, I don’t know, another story of us against everyone else, of us being sane. But why is the parable about a king and not about one of us? One of us worries about our children. The king—how can he receive guests like that? How can he host ministers of state with the turkey under the table? These are treatment risks; parables are always about kings. It’s not, you know—if my son were sick, some wondrous healer wouldn’t come from the ends of the earth to heal him, whereas if I went to him and paid properly… A king, you know, people come to him from all over the country to try to heal the son. Those are just devices to create utopia in the parable, it’s not… It seems to me there are two characterizations of the king. I don’t know—the public-relations aspect is totally different from our situation. So you might say the illness is only behavioral. He can’t host people, and the whole atmosphere of the royal house.

Come, let’s leave Rabbi Nachman’s parable for a moment. I’m using it because it’s dear to me and has a certain angle. Once I asked—there was some rabbis’ conference, a Tzohar rabbis’ conference, and one of the participants asked the psychologist there about homosexuality. Then the statement came up—indeed I think at one of the meetings—the statement by the American Psychiatric Association that they had removed it from the DSM, right? That it’s not on the list of psychiatric disorders. And I argued that this is utterly meaningless. What difference does it make to me if they removed it or inserted it? What they did wasn’t on clinical grounds. It was on grounds of norm. That is, once they decided that this thing doesn’t bother them because it’s okay, then it leaves the category of illnesses. After all, who decides what is a mental illness and what isn’t? Unlike a medical illness, where you can say: fine, there are metrics. If he’ll die from it, he’s probably sick. Even then someone might still come and say: okay, dying doesn’t bother me. That can happen. But today they say there are voices demanding to remove pedophilia from the list of disorders as well. Again, therefore I say: this discussion is a normative discussion, not a clinical one. And therefore the decision of the professional establishment is completely irrelevant to this issue. At best they can tell me whether it can be treated, whether it’s genetic or not genetic, how one treats it if at all. Those are expert questions—you need to investigate, yes, no, what’s known, what’s not known—but that’s something that makes sense to ask experts. But to ask whether it’s an illness or not—that doesn’t interest me at all, what they say. They are not the relevant people for that matter.

Why am I saying this? Because there too this tension comes up, between behavioral characterization and psychological roots. That is, on the behavioral level, if you’ve gotten used to it and it’s okay, then the illness has disappeared. What’s the problem? If we all accept this behavior as normative behavior, or if you change the behavior without changing the inside, no problem, everything is fine. That is essential behaviorism, okay? Not just tactical, not just as a way of analyzing things, but seeing reality through behaviorist eyes. It is a view that says that in essence everything is behavior, that psychoanalysis doesn’t really exist, or that we don’t use it. I think the simple understanding is not like that, and really this is indeed an illness, and once the person returns to behaving normatively, that still doesn’t mean the illness itself has been cured. That’s the first thing that bothers me when I read this story.

Another point—we’ll open another parenthesis in this context, because it’s just an important remark. It’s not important for our topic, but still—many times in our society in general there is a kind of behaviorism, not in the psychological sense but in entirely different senses, moral and social. And very often we settle for fixing things on the behaviorist level. That is, one example I like in this context: if we want to divide a cake between two children in the fairest possible way, into the two most equal pieces possible, by the most equitable method possible—how do you do it? A known tactic from game theory: let one divide it and let the other choose first. Right? One divides and the other chooses first. Then obviously the divider will divide it exactly equally, because if one piece is even a little bigger, the other will immediately choose the bigger one. That’s the way to ensure that the division is exactly equal, and then each one can take whichever half he wants. But what comes out of such a tactic? What comes out is that the divisions will be perfect. The division is absolutely precise. It’s exactly half and half. But the people come out bad. And the worse they come out, the more perfect the division will come out. That is, the more self-interested you are—after all, this is a method built for self-interested people—the more self-interested you are and the more important it is to you that the other not get even a millimeter more than you, the better and fairer the division will come out. So there are many situations in which behaviorism contradicts essence. That is, correction on the external behavioral level, fixing the objective situation in some sense, exacts a heavy price on the essential level.

This is the principle of the separation of powers, right? All these ideas of solving social illnesses through social engineering or political engineering. That is, introduce a constitution, change this law and that law, the electoral system, or whatever—it’s basically techniques that try to solve essential problems by technocratic means. Usually that doesn’t work so well. It works on the level of the cake. On the level of the cake it’s a very simple problem. What I need is that two children each have a piece exactly equal to the other. That’s a simple problem, easy to solve by technical means. When the problems are a bit more complicated, like social and political problems and so on, usually when you solve this problem, that problem pops up, because the technique can’t really—there is no perfect technique that solves all problems. It solves this and creates a problem there. Therefore in those areas, it seems to me one must not surrender to behaviorism. That is, one has to deal with problems on their essential level and not try, by technical means, to arrive at the desired behavior. Fine, that’s just an aside. I think this parable can also serve as a parable for that issue.

Maybe that’s the basis of Yaakov Talmon’s book The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. Yes. He argues that the attempt to implement the principles of justice of Rousseau and the like basically gave rise to monsters like communism and worse. Fine, I don’t remember all the arguments, but we see this at every step around us. That is, the attempts are always—there is no demand of the individual to behave like a human being. Of course, someone who behaves like a human being is a precious person and greatly respected, but that cannot be a systemic demand. In contrast, say, this also finds expression in legal systems. The more legal systems are positivistic, the more defined they are, the more they move from the rule to the particular case, the more technical they are. There are legal systems that are more casuistic, that proceed on the basis of various cases, and the judge is supposed to see what is similar and what is not, where of course considerations of justice enter far more significantly than in such logical systems where everything comes from principles and I derive practical conclusions from them. But today we trust less and less the non-technocratic considerations—the considerations of common sense and justice. To some extent maybe with justice as well, we don’t trust them because once a society has no consensus, you can’t build on everyone’s shared values, because there really aren’t many. And then you really do have to arrive at more mechanical systems. Fine, let’s close that parenthesis.

The second difficulty that arises in this story, and it seems to me that it hints at the solution to the first difficulty—there was some remark in the story that caught my eye. When this wise man goes down under the table, takes off his clothes and goes under the table and begins gathering crumbs, the king’s son fixes puzzled eyes on him and asks him: “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Why does he ask him that? Fine, another turkey came by and is wandering around here—what’s the problem? In the first place, that was the wonder. It’s obvious that when the king’s son sees a person sitting under the table gathering crumbs without clothes, something bothers him. That means he understands that this is a human being and not a turkey. Well then, look in the mirror. Don’t you understand that you’re really the same thing as he is? No, he doesn’t look in the mirror. So now there’s another problem here. If so, then it’s not clear—before I asked how, in the end, he was not healed, and now I’m asking the opposite question: he was never sick at all. That is, he was healthy the whole time. So what exactly were we supposed to heal him from? Of course, these two questions seem to me to be two sides of the same coin.

And I think that the essential point really is—and here we come to concepts of sin and repair, which we touched on in one of the previous times—that if there really is a person in whom something is flawed at the root point itself, there is no way to change that. And usually treatment of a person, psychological treatment for the sake of this discussion, has to take something that exists in that person as an Archimedean point, something I can lean on, and use it to fix damaged things around it. Maybe it even has to be more basic than those things, I don’t know exactly—there’s room to discuss it. But there has to be some point that is a healthy point. Because if everything is sick, everything is crooked, there is nowhere to begin the repair from, except with hammer and chisel—that is, someone from outside recreating him. But usually that’s not really something one can do. If I want to take the person himself and help him progress and repair what requires repair in him, I have to use some healthy point that exists in him even at the stage when he is sick. If there is no such point, then this is usually an incurable illness. There has to be some healthy point, something inside that still understands who is a human being and who is a turkey, so that I can begin to treat him. There is no other way to do it.

On the other hand, even though this healthy point exists, it exists inside. Still there is some illness here. Something causes the behavioral symptoms; apparently something inside too is not okay. There is some combination here: a certain point that is healthy, and some kind of perspective that sees correctly, and around it all kinds of things that apparently prevent it from moving from potential into actuality. And the repair is to direct the person’s attention to the healthy point, to the correct perspective, and from there remove all the obstacles, everything that prevents that point from expressing itself in behavior. So if that’s so, then perhaps we can move a little further, both in understanding this parable and through it in understanding the processes of sin and repair—or repentance, really. Because in fact, if so, a process of sin and repair has to assume two assumptions that perhaps somewhat contradict one another. One assumption is that something inside must be healthy, otherwise there can be no repair; and a second assumption is that something outside must be sick, otherwise there is no sin. Right? That is, there must be some encounter in which something is healthy and something is sick, and the process of repair is to try to take the healthy thing and use it to repair the sick parts.

So how does one do this now? If we really understand that this is an illness—or at least a type of illness—that can be repaired, there may be incurable illnesses and then there’s nothing to do, but if an illness has a cure there must be something sound within it. Somewhere this person has to understand what a human being is and what a turkey is, and that someone like this is a human being, not a turkey. If he doesn’t understand that, we will have no way of explaining it to him. It has to come from somewhere within him, only that it is apparently covered by all kinds of shells that one somehow has to peel away. But something inside must know this, understand this. So now, how does the process of repair take place? Now perhaps we can understand better why this repair really is a repair. Why? Because basically I’m saying to the person: look, after all, why are you deceiving yourself that you’re a turkey? You know that you’re a human being. I don’t say it to him, but that’s how I approach him, from that assumption. After all, you know you’re a human being. Why are you deceiving yourself that you’re a turkey? Apparently because you have some inclination or some desire to behave like a turkey. It’s good to be without clothes, to eat crumbs under the table, and not to be obligated by all the social obligations that human beings are usually bound by. So it’s good for me. I declare myself a turkey, and then I even convince myself of it, like every nice idea, and that’s it, and that’s how I become sick. So what is the way to get a person out of his illness? Well yes, the author of Sefer HaChinukh says that hearts are drawn after actions, and I think he means this. Hearts cannot be drawn after actions to become something other than what they were—but if indeed something inside this heart is healthy, then if, in its healthy implications, he behaves in an entirely behaviorist way, entirely on the external plane, that will ultimately help him peel away the wrappings around the sick point.

You can perhaps see this even more strongly if we look at the famous—and puzzling—Maimonides in the laws of divorce. I don’t know why it’s famous. Usually the famous passages in Maimonides are the puzzling ones. I don’t know why. It’s like in the news: a man bites a dog is news, but a dog bites a man isn’t. Maimonides is like that too, yes? The famous Maimonides is the puzzling Maimonides. “We beat him until he says, ‘I want to,’ and he writes the bill of divorce, and it is a valid bill of divorce. And likewise, if gentiles beat him and said to him, ‘Do what the Jews tell you,’ and Jews pressured him through the gentiles until he divorced, it is valid. But if the gentiles on their own coerced him until he wrote it, since the law requires that he write it, this is a disqualified bill of divorce.” Disqualified here means only rabbinically; in principle it is still valid on the Torah level. “And why is this bill of divorce not nullified? It is disqualified but not nullified, meaning disqualified only rabbinically, although he is coerced by gentiles or by Jews. For we do not call someone coerced except one who is pressured and forced to do something that he is not obligated by the Torah to do, such as one who is beaten until he sells or gives.” That is the sugya of someone who is beaten in order to force him to sell or give a gift and so forth. Then it is coercion and it does not work. “But one whose evil inclination overpowered him to neglect a commandment or commit a transgression, and he was beaten until he did something he is obligated to do, or until he distanced himself from something forbidden to do—this one is not considered coerced by others, rather he coerced himself with his own evil mindset. Therefore, this one who does not want to divorce—since he wants to be among Israel, he wants to perform all the commandments and distance himself from transgressions, and it is his inclination that overpowered him—and once he has been beaten until his inclination is weakened and he says, ‘I want to,’ he has already divorced of his own will.”

Today, and especially today, this sounds completely incomprehensible. So a person insists—he does not want to divorce his wife—and according to the law he is obligated to divorce her. Cases of women refused a bill of divorce. So the law really is—fundamentally it should be the case, if indeed the law obligates him to divorce—not that… you don’t always have to beat a man in order for him to divorce his wife. But in a case where the law obligates divorce, then they beat him, and then what happens? He says, “I want to.” That means he says “I want to,” because he doesn’t want to keep getting beaten forever, unless he’s extremely stubborn; there are such people too. And then that’s okay. Now the basic halakhic assumption, of course, as is well known, is that a coerced bill of divorce is invalid. That is, a bill of divorce written under coercion, under pressure, not of the free will of the writer, is not a bill of divorce. The divorce is not valid. So what’s different here? After all, here too this is a coerced bill of divorce, written not of the writer’s own will. Why is it valid here? Maimonides says: every Jew basically wants to do what the Torah says. So given that, after they beat him, his strength gives way and he repents, and when he says “I want to,” he means it seriously. He really—seriously? He wants you to stop beating him. In other words, it’s the same thing. Instead of saying, “Stop beating me,” he says, “I want to,” because that’s the formula, because he knows otherwise they won’t stop. So what exactly is the meaning of this Maimonides? What kind of claim is that?

It seems to me that Maimonides’ claim—and it’s indeed somewhat hard to understand today because the reality is different today—is the following. This is the turkey, exactly. Maimonides says this: the basic assumption is that a Jew wants to fulfill what the Torah places upon him. That is the basic assumption. Once, every believing Jew who lived in a society in which it was self-evident that what the Holy One, blessed be He, says must be done—that, apparently, was quite obvious in many societies once. Today it is less obvious, and therefore this whole claim is indeed problematic today. But once it was self-evident that if someone sins and does not fulfill what the Torah said, then that’s the evil inclination. Not because he truly doesn’t want to—there is no such thing. If he is really a believing Jew, then he wants to fulfill what the Torah says. So what then? He has an evil inclination. What does that mean? He represses his will. The truth is that he really does want it. It’s just that he represses his will—why? Because he does not want the result that comes from this value of fulfilling what the Torah commands. He does not want to give the bill of divorce, to write the bill of divorce and hand it over. Therefore he behaves as though he basically does not want to obey the Torah, no, he is not subject to the Torah. What do we do? We say to him: listen, my friend, you’re going to get beaten; in the end you’re going to give the bill of divorce anyway. We will recognize that bill of divorce as valid even though it isn’t valid. It isn’t valid because you really don’t want to. But we will recognize that bill of divorce as valid in our eyes; we will fictively decide that it is valid. So now what? Now there is no point anymore in hiding from the thing that you actually want anyway. After all, in any event you won’t achieve what you want. This whole game is only aimed at one thing: that in the end you not give a bill of divorce and you chain your wife, not release her. But I’m telling you: it won’t work for you. In any case you will release her. And we will recognize this as a release, meaning she will be permitted to the market, free to marry others. So what will it help you? You have no reason to continue with all these games. All these games are, in the end, an attempt to repress something that exists within you—that is Maimonides’ claim—that a Jew basically wants to fulfill the Torah. But because he does not want to arrive at the result, how does a person rationalize to himself, how does he cause himself not to give a bill of divorce even though Jewish law obligates it? He says: I do not want to do what the Torah says. I am rebelling against what the Holy One, blessed be He, says. But not really. In truth he really is subject to the Holy One, blessed be He. Human beings are complicated creatures. When he wants to reach some outcome, he looks for the logical anchor—what will lead to that outcome. So here: I am now not subject to the Torah, and therefore I do not want to give a bill of divorce. Even though the Torah obligates it, I do not want to. But the truth—if our assumption is really that the truth is that he does want to fulfill the Torah, if that is the assumption—then this is exactly the turkey. That is, this person really knows what a turkey is and what a human being is. Why does he