The Clever Man and the Simple Man: The Joyful Cobbler and the Sage Who Believed Nothing

The story opens with two wealthy householders in one city, each with one son. The two boys studied in one cheder; "one was a quick-witted one, and the other was a simple one", and yet "these two sons loved each other very much". The text before us adds a bracketed gloss on the word simple: "not that he was a fool, but he had a simple and lowly intellect" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:2).

This distinction is close to what is preserved in Sichot HaRan: "Yet even with simplicity, it is forbidden to be a fool. Nevertheless, sophistication is not needed at all" (Sichot HaRan 51). The simple man of the story is not foolish. He is simple.

The fathers lost their fortune and told the sons: "Do for yourselves whatever you will do" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:3). The simple one learned to be a cobbler, while the clever one "did not wish to occupy himself with such a simple trade" and went out into the world (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:4).

The clever man's path is built on one question that returns again and again. Already in Warsaw he asks himself: "why should I tie myself to these people? Perhaps there is a better place than them?" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:5). He leaves the merchants who brought him, becomes a servant, and from there sails to Italy and Spain (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:8). After learning goldsmithing in a quarter of a year, he reflects:

The same reckoning leads him to gem cutting and then to medicine, "for that is a thing that is always needed and esteemed" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:11). And the result: "the world began to be as nothing in his eyes". Even when he decides to marry, the consideration is what others will see: "I will go and return home, so that they will see what has become of me". And on the way home "he had no one to talk with" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:12).

A close reading of the story suggests that every step the clever man takes is measured against the gaze of others: what is esteemed today and what will be esteemed tomorrow. That is why no step brings him rest, and every achievement only gives rise to the next question.

The simple man learned shoemaking with difficulty, "and he was not fully expert in the craft", so his livelihood was "in great hardship and scarcity", until he ate only while sewing (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:13). He would ask his wife for sauce, meat and other dishes, and for each one he received a piece of bread and praised it. And then we read:

So too with drink: he asked for beer, mead and wine, received water, and praised it (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:15). He and his wife had "one simple coat" in partnership, and as the need arose he called it an overcoat, a kapote or a jupa, and each time: "How fine" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:16).

And his shoe, which "presumably" came out with three corners, was in his words "a shoe of honey and sugar". When his wife asked why other shoemakers take three gold coins while he takes only half a thaler, he answered: "That is his doing, and this is my doing! And besides, why should we talk about others?", and went straight on to reckon what he earns (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:17).

This is our explanation, not the wording of the source: the simple man does not claim that the shoe is straight, nor that he earns as much as the others. He refuses to set his own work against someone else's. For the clever man the question is always whether there is a better place, and for the simple man the question is what is in my hands now. On the place of joy in Rabbi Nachman's teaching, see the page on joy.

In the eyes of the world the simple man was a laughingstock. People came to talk with him deliberately in order to mock him, because he seemed to them like a madman. This was his answer:

The continuation explains that he did not want "to go any deeper and think up clever ideas, since that itself is mockery". And when he saw that their intention was mockery, he said that if they were wiser than he, "on the contrary, then you are a fool" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:18).

The same phrase returns at the turning points. When the messenger tells him that the king wants him to come, he asks "Only without mockery!", and only after the answer "Certainly it is true, without mockery" is he filled with joy (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:30). And so again at the city gates, when he is told he has been appointed governor (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:31).

It seems that here runs the line between simplicity and gullibility: the simple man accepts things wholeheartedly, but he will not be made a fool of. Sichot HaRan preserves a heading that joins the two: "Happy is he who walks in simplicity, without sophistication and mockery". And there it is explained that the cleverness and mockery of people "who appear to be respectable" do harm precisely because people do not flee from them (Sichot HaRan 81).

The clever man returns home and finds that his father's house "went to ruin and was lost" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:20), and the simple man invites him to live with him (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:21). But "the clever man was always full of suffering". The ring he made for a nobleman did not please, and he knew that in Spain it would have been thought wondrous. A stone he engraved for another nobleman did please, but he erred in it in one thing "which no person could perceive, only he alone" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:22). And about a lapel the tailor did not get right he said: "if I were in Spain with this lapel, I would be a laughingstock" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:24).

A close reading suggests that the clever man compares himself not only with the people around him. He measures himself against an imagined audience in Spain, against judges who are not in the room. Even when the customer is satisfied, an error only he can see is enough to rob him of his joy. And opposite him stands the simple man, whom a shoe with three corners makes happy.

Then comes the dialogue at the heart of the story. The simple man asks: "Why, a wise and rich man like you, why do you always have suffering?" And he adds: "If only you would come to my level!". The clever man replies that he would reach the simple man's level only if his mind were taken from him, but that the simple man should reach his, "that is impossible in any way". And the simple man answers:

The king sees the two names, Clever and Simple, in the register of residents and wishes to see them (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:27). The simple man sets out at once, is made governor on the way, and leads the province "with simplicity, with truth and uprightness" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:32). An adviser teaches him sciences and languages, but "he did not use the sciences at all, but conducted everything in his simplicity as before" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:33). The king marvels: "I see that he is so wise, and nevertheless he conducts himself with such simplicity!", and appoints him minister over all the ministers (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:34).

The clever man never sets out. He wonders why a great king would send for "a lowly person like me", and concludes "that there is no king in the world at all" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:35). Every piece of evidence against him becomes proof for him: the messenger did not receive the letter from the king's own hand, and the soldier has never seen the king (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:36, Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:37). He and his companion wander the world until they become "poor men going on foot" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:38), and when they see wagons of sick people before the house of the Baal Shem, the clever man laughs: "This is a lie and a very wondrous error" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:39).

After being beaten for their mockery, they come to seek justice before the minister, who is the simple man himself. The clever man does not recognize him, and the simple man begins:

And further: "See, I have already come to yours", while you have still not come to mine (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:42). Even the demon who sends for them does not convince the clever man; in his eyes it is his brother who is angry with him (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:46). He is carried off to the mire, and there too he cries out "Is there then a demon in the world?" and explains to himself that wicked people are tormenting him (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:47).

The simple man, who remembers his friend, comes with the Baal Shem and rebukes him: "Do you still hold on to your clever notions, and you do not believe in anything" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:48). Only when the mire vanishes and they stand on dry land is he "compelled against his will to admit everything, that there is a king" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:49).

After the story the book prints two notes. The first points to teaching 19 in Likutei Moharan Part II: "Concerning this story the teaching was said", one that "speaks about clever notions and simplicity, that the essence of perfection is only simplicity and plainness". About Agag it adds that even when he saw his downfall "he still did not believe" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:50). And in the teaching itself: "For Amalek was a philosopher and an investigator and denied the fundamental principle" (Likutei Moharan II, 19:2).

One may understand that this is exactly the clever man of the story: he sees the letter, the soldier and the wagons of the sick, and still does not believe, and even in the mire he finds an explanation. It is worth remembering that at the end of that teaching the writer's bracketed note is printed: "This teaching I did not hear from his holy mouth itself" (Likutei Moharan II, 19:3).

The second note is short and enigmatic:

This is our explanation, not the wording of the source: a shoe with three corners is the simple man's shoe, which came out crooked because he did not know the craft completely, and he rejoiced in it (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:17). If a prayer that is not as it should be is such a shoe, it seems the simple man teaches how to stand before it: neither denying the flaw nor despairing over it. This is close to what Likutei Moharan Part II, 44 says about those who are overly exacting, that "they are always in melancholy, because" it seems to them they have not fulfilled their obligation (Likutei Moharan II, 44:1). The clever man, who suffers over an error in a stone that only he can see, is such a figure. On praying with simplicity, see the page on prayer.

What follows is a possible application of our own, not the wording of the source. First, comparison. The simple man's answer to his wife, "why should we talk about others?", is a question one can ask at almost any moment of comparison: before checking how much someone else earns, reckon what is in your own hands (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:17). The clever man, by contrast, suffers even before an audience that does not exist: "if I were in Spain" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:24).

Second, joy in what one has. In the words of the story, the simple man felt in the bread the taste of every dish "because of his simplicity and his great joy" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:14). It seems that his joy does not come after the lack is filled but before it, and perhaps that is why it is possible even for a man whose livelihood is in hardship.

Third, suspicion. The clever man is not stupid; he is sharper than everyone around him. But a cleverness that believes in nothing turns every new fact into confirmation of what it has already decided. And on the other side, the simple man is not gullible: he asks "Only without mockery!" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 9:18). And Sichot HaRan gives a deeper reason for plainness: "simplicity is higher than everything", for God "is simple in the most absolute sense" (Sichot HaRan 101).

For a wider study of simplicity in Rabbi Nachman's teaching see simplicity and plainness, and on why he chose to speak in stories see why Rabbi Nachman told stories.