The Story of the Seven Beggars: A Key to Rabbi Nachman's Last Story

The story opens with a king who wanted to hand the kingship to his son in his own lifetime, and made a great feast in honor of it (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:2). In the midst of the joy he tells his son that he has seen in the stars that he is destined to fall from the kingship, and commands him:

And whoever cannot hold himself in joy at the time of the fall, says the king, is "not fit for kingship" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:3).

The king's son loved wisdom, and in the story's words the sages became heretics and drew him too into their view (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:4). But because there was good in him, he would sometimes remember where he stood in the world, and groan and sigh (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:5). Here the story leaves him, and the conclusion of his part was never heard (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:85).

Chayei Moharan records what Rabbi Nachman said just before he began the story:

And Sichot HaRan relates that the story began from talk about a letter in which Rabbi Nathan had written to his friend "that he should be joyful" (Sichot HaRan 149). It seems that joy is the starting point of the whole story; on its place in his teaching see joy in the teaching of Rabbi Nachman.

During a flight from a certain country, two children, a boy and a girl, were lost in a forest, "four and five years old". A blind beggar came to them, gave them bread and blessed them "that they should be old like him", and the children understood "that God, blessed be He, had watched over them" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:6).

After him came a deaf beggar, then one heavy of speech, one with a crooked neck, a hunchback, a beggar without hands and a beggar without feet. Each gave them bread and blessed them that they should be like him (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:7, Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:9).

The children grew up going from door to door, and all the beggars knew that these were the children lost in the forest (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:10). At a great fair the beggars decided to match them, and they made the wedding in a pit they had dug, from the bread and meat they had gathered at the feast of the king's birthday. In the midst of the joy the bride and groom remembered the kindnesses done for them in the forest, and longed for the blind beggar (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:11), and at that very moment he appeared and said: "Here I am!" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:12).

From here comes the structure of the story: on each of the seven days of feasting one of the beggars arrives, turns the blessing from the forest into "a complete gift for the wedding", and tells a story proving that his defect is no defect (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:12, Sichot HaRan 149).

Each beggar begins by correcting what the children thought of him, as the blind one does: "And you think that I am blind?" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:12). This is what the story itself reveals about each of them:

• The blind one: the entire time of the world "does not amount for me to the blink of an eye". His gift: long life (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:12).
• The deaf one: the whole world "amounts to nothing to me, that I should hear their lack". His gift: a good life (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:19).
• The one heavy of speech: the words of the world "that are not praises of God, may He be blessed, have no wholeness in them", while in his own riddles and songs "there are all the wisdoms" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:32).
• The one with the crooked neck: he does not want to let out breath "into the vanities of the world", and in truth he has a voice that can produce every kind of sound (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:42).
• The hunchback: he has shoulders that are the aspect of "the little that holds the much" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:52).
• The beggar without hands: he has strength in his hands, "only, I do not use the strength in my hands in this world" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:67).
• The beggar without feet: his day, the seventh, was never told (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:85).

In Sichot HaRan Rabbi Nathan sums it up: the blind one "has no gazing at all at this world" and is therefore blind, and the deaf one "hears no sound of this world" (Sichot HaRan 151). A close reading suggests that the defect is the outer face of a high quality: the beggar lacks something in this world because he stands above it. This is our explanation, not the wording of the source.

On the third day the one heavy of speech tells of the heart of the world, which stands at one end of the world and longs for a spring at the other end (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:36). At the end of the story this is linked to King David and to the verse "From the end of the earth I call to You" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:86). On the heart and the spring see at length will and longing.

The blind beggar explains to the couple what they saw in him:

And he says further: "I am very old, and yet I am still entirely young", and he does not say this on his own; rather he has "an endorsement of this from the great eagle" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:12).

This is the story he tells: ships were broken at sea, the people were saved and went up into a tower, and there they agreed that each would tell what he remembers "from his first memory" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:13). They honored the greatest elder to begin, and he said: "I remember even when they cut the apple from the branch." From there each is younger than the one before and remembers something earlier: when the candle was burning, when the fruit began to take form, when they carried the seed to plant it, the sages who devised the seed, and then the taste, the smell and the appearance of the fruit before they entered it (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:14, Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:15).

The blind beggar, who was then "a complete infant", said that he remembers all these, "and I remember nothing at all" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:16). The great eagle explained: the apple cut from the branch is the cutting of the navel cord, the burning candle is the time in the womb, and so on, up to the taste, the smell and the sight, which are nefesh, ruach and neshamah. And about the infant he said (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:17):

The eagle brought them out of the tower in order of age, and brought the infant out first, "for in truth he is older than all of them". The story states the reversal outright: "For whoever was younger was older" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:16).

In Sichot HaRan Rabbi Nathan relates that Rabbi Nachman himself explained to him the order of the elders, and that the blind one's words mean that he remembers "when there was not yet any existence" (Sichot HaRan 149). And at the end of the story it is recorded that he said there is something similar in the Gemara: Shmuel boasted that he remembers the pain of circumcision (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:90).

One may understand that the story measures age not in years but in the depth of memory: whoever remembers closer to the source, to what comes before body and soul, is truly the elder. And indeed the blind one's gift to the couple is "long life" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:30). This is our reading. Chayei Moharan records that Rabbi Nachman said of himself "I am the elder of elders", and that one who looks into the account of the blind beggar and the elders will understand this somewhat (Chayei Moharan 272).

In Sichot HaRan Rabbi Nathan describes the order of the telling. On a Shabbat night the opening and the first day were told, and he himself was not there: "I was then at my home in Nemirov". When his friend told him the story, "I stood trembling and astonished" (Sichot HaRan 149).

The second day he told on a Wednesday, after Rabbi Nathan had spoken before him about how even the great rich men are full of lacks and had cited a verse from Ecclesiastes. Rabbi Nachman answered: "Why, this is our story!" The third and fourth days he told on a Shabbat night, and the fifth and sixth on the days after (Sichot HaRan 149). The talk about lacks fits the deaf beggar of the second day, who does not hear the lack of the world; this is our observation.

It is also told there that the third day was told when Rabbi Nachman's grandson was gravely ill, and that before it he spoke "about the matter of the heart that is being pursued". And Rabbi Nathan adds a general rule: every story came about through a conversation about worldly matters (Sichot HaRan 151).

At the end of the story it is recorded that the end of the story, that is, the seventh day of the beggar without feet, and also the conclusion of the account of the king with which it opened, were never heard (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:85):

Sichot HaRan describes the moment: after the sixth day one of his followers told a story, and Rabbi Nachman answered, "Why, this belongs to the matter of the story of the seventh day!" He wanted very much to tell it, but "he never told it again" (Sichot HaRan 149).

Beyond this the books do not say what happened on the seventh day, and so neither will we. What has been preserved is how Rabbi Nachman regarded the story as a whole: "If I did not know any other matter except this story", that too would be a very great novelty (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:86). And on the meaning of the figures: "who and what and when, this is deep, deep" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:84).

The deaf beggar explains why he does not hear:

And he adds: "And even all the joys in the world all come only because of a lack" (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:19).

A possible application, not a promise: someone who notices that most of the voices around him, and within him too, are a cry over some lack, can ask whether his own joy depends only on filling what is missing. The beggars rejoice at a wedding held in a pit, from bread gathered at someone else's feast (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:11), and the king at the opening asks his son for joy precisely at the time of a fall (Sippurei Maasiyot, Story 13:3). One can see in this an invitation to a joy that does not depend on one's standing; this is our reading of the story.

And for one who wants to study the story: Rabbi Nachman said that it would have been better not to reveal hints in the stories, "for when the matter is hidden, one can accomplish more through it" (Sichot HaRan 151). So it is worth first reading the story as it is, noticing the hints the book itself provides, and telling them apart from later interpretations. On why he chose to tell stories at all, see why Rabbi Nachman told stories.