The King's Son and the Maidservant's Son Who Were Switched: The Story and the Way Back

In Chayei Moharan, Rabbi Nathan describes the evening on which the story was told: the night after the Shabbat of the Torah portion Noach, in the year 5570. Rabbi Naftali told news of the war of the French, and the listeners marveled at one who "at first had been a simple servant and he became emperor". Rabbi Nachman answered that perhaps his soul had been exchanged, "for so, in the chambers of the exchanges, souls are sometimes exchanged", and at once began to tell of the queen who gave birth (Chayei Moharan 61).

The same section records a small debate between Rabbi Nathan and Rabbi Naftali over one detail of the story, and Rabbi Nachman said that in these stories, "when one changes one word from how he himself said it, much is missing from the story" (Chayei Moharan 61). So the summary below stays close to the wording of the story, and the full text is worth reading in Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11.

In the words of the story, the midwife switched the babies "in order to see what would come of it and how things would turn out" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:2). The sons grew up and studied together in one schoolroom, but the upbringing did not change their nature:

And opposite him the maidservant's son, raised in the king's house, had a nature "drawn to other ways, unlike the ways of the king", and only his upbringing compelled him to behave like royalty (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:3). The secret leaked from the midwife, people whispered about it, and someone revealed it to the supposed king's son and advised him to "devise schemes" against the other son (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:5).

The book prints a rule for reading here, in brackets: wherever "the king's son" appears without qualification, it means the one who was switched, and only where "the true king's son" appears is the truth in its fullness meant (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:6). A close reading suggests that the whole story is written in the names the world gave, not the true names, until the moment the truth is spoken aloud.

The new king caused the son's adoptive father "harm after harm" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:7), until the father revealed the secret to his son and told him he must leave. The son set out with a great deal of money, angry "that he had been driven out of his country for nothing". And out of that anger "he took himself to drink", and wanted to spend his days that way (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:9).

Here the story draws an exact parallel. The king too, resting by a river, thought about what he had done and was "regretting the sin and the great injustice that he had done", but when he returned home "he occupied himself with his affairs, and the matter mentioned above passed from his mind" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:11). The son too, walking alone, asked "What is this that God has done to me?", and reached the opposite conclusion: if God can switch a king's son, "Is this how I should have conducted myself, as I have done?" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:12).

He went back to drunkenness, but something had already happened: "the thoughts of regret and repentance would disturb him each time" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:12). One can understand that regret did not lift him out of his fall at once; it only would not let him sink into it quietly. With the king, regret was forgotten among his affairs; with the son, it came back again and again.

Then came a dream: to go to a fair and do the first work that came his way, "even if it was not in keeping with his honor" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:13). He put it off and drank more, until they said to him in a dream, "If you want to have pity on yourself" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:14). He left his money and his fine clothes at the inn, put on a simple garment, and hired himself out to a merchant to drive animals. This is the detail Rabbi Nathan and Rabbi Naftali argued over, and Rabbi Nachman answered that he simply left his things there, "not because of a debt" (Chayei Moharan 61).

The son, who "was a very delicate man", was afraid of the merchant (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:16). In a dense forest two of his animals strayed, and he pursued them deep inside, thinking "Either way I will die" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:18). He spent the night in a tree among the cries of the beasts, and in the morning saw the animals standing near him; when he approached, they fled again (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:19).

On a great tree he found another man, who had come there following a horse that had strayed. They joined together, and toward morning they heard "a sound of very, very great laughter" that shook the trees (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:21). The next day they lost each other, and the son found a sack of bread and met a man who said: "I, my fathers and my fathers' fathers grew up here" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:24). The son understood that this was not a human being at all, but the man of the forest did him no harm and drew him close, and said to him:

And he went on: "Enough for you; you have already received what is yours", and "Come with me, and you will come to what is fitting for you" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:25). This is the first time in the story that anyone calls the pursuit by its name: the animals that drew the son into the thick of the forest are not animals at all.

On the way the son met his companion from the tree, starving, who offered "I will sell myself to you in exchange for bread", and the son bought him "as an eternal slave" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:26). The man of the forest led them past snakes and scorpions to his house, which stands in the air (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:27). There the slave lamented his state, and it came out who he was: the king himself, the true son of the maidservant. He too had been troubled by regrets and dreams, until he "cast off the kingship" and left (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:29). The son heard it all "and was silent", and said he would see how to behave with him (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:30).

During their stay in the forest man's house the two sounds were explained. The laughter before morning: "the day laughs at the night", for the night asks the day why, when it comes, she has no name (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:31). And the music at night: the beasts of the forest play "a new melody in honor of the moon", which received a garment from the sun (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:33). The man of the forest told of an instrument he received from his fathers, which begins to play the melody when it is placed on any animal or bird (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:34). When he led them out to inhabited land he gave the instrument to the king's son and sent him to "The foolish country and the wise king": "and there you will come to your greatness" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:35).

At the gate of the country no one was admitted except one who would undertake to restore its first name. The slave urged him to go home, but the son refused, because of the words of the man of the forest (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:36). There he traded the playing instrument for a wisdom offered by another rider, "to be one who understands one thing from another" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:38), and through it he understood that the thing was possible, "even though he still did not know how and what" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:39).

Two tests stood before him. In a garden where silver and gold vessels grow, everyone who enters is pursued. Beside the garden he saw the figure of a king in whose days "there was peace" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:45), and understood that one need not flee, only stand beside that man; and when the figure was set inside the garden, all the ministers entered and came out in peace (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:48). And at the high throne he saw that it was made from the wood of the instrument he had received, and that the rose missing from the top was lying below (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:50).

When he had set everything in its place, they all began to play and gave him the kingship. Then he said to the true son of the maidservant:

A close reading shows that the recognition comes at the end, not at the beginning. All along he lived with the doubt he himself had raised, whether he was the king's son or not (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:9). Only after he arranged what had been lying out of place does he say that now he understands.

After the story the book prints words Rabbi Nachman himself said. Before Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, he said, when people spoke Kabbalah "they would speak in such language" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:55). He hinted that the new melody is the aspect of "the renewal of the moon"; that the bed, table, throne and candelabrum are "the adornments of the Shechinah"; and that the king in whose days there was peace is the aspect of Shabbat, which is why the son stood beside him. And at the end: "And the rest he did not explain" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:56).

He also said: "This story is a great wonder, and it is all one", the animals, the throne and the garden, once by this name and once by that (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:57). And on the way to understand it:

And there: "one who is well versed in the books and whose heart is whole will be able to understand the explanation" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:59). The story testifies about itself that it does not open on one reading, and that the key is the right ordering of things. On why Rabbi Nachman chose to tell stories, see Why did Rabbi Nachman tell stories.

From here on this is our explanation, not the wording of the source. Rabbi Nachman did not explain the story as a parable about a single person, and he himself said that in its explanation "once it is called thus and once it is called thus" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:59). Still, one possible reading is this: a person can grow up far from his place, live under a name others gave him, sink as far as drink and waste, and still have an inner nature "drawn to the ways of royalty" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:3).

It also seems that the story does not present falling and rising as a straight line. Regret comes, and he goes back to drunkenness (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:12); the dream returns several times before he gets up (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:13); and what changes his direction is that someone calls the pursuit by its name and tells him to stop (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:25).

This sits well with what is said explicitly in Likutei Moharan, Part II, Torah 78:

And in Part I, Torah 261: "When a person falls from his level, let him know that it is from Heaven", and the advice there: "to begin anew to enter the service of God, as if he had never yet begun at all" (Likutei Moharan I, 261:1). And to one who falls in his mind over what he has damaged: "If you believe that one can damage, believe that one can repair" (Likutei Moharan II, 112:1). All of this is treated at length on the page Strengthening and "there is no despair", and regret and return on the page Teshuvah.

For someone who feels today far from the place he knows is his, the story may suggest a few things, as a suggestion and not a promise: not to dismiss thoughts of regret even when they do not yet change one's deeds, as with the son, in whom they returned "each time" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:12); to take the simple first step even when it is "not in keeping with his honor" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 11:13); and to remember the words of Likutei Moharan, that one who strengthens himself with whatever he can "still has hope" (Likutei Moharan II, 78:7).