How Rebbe Nachman Discovered That Despair Is an Illusion
An introductory shiur on Likutey Moharan 78 (Madura Tinyana)
This shiur is the opening to a new series exploring Likutey Moharan 78 (Madura Tinyana) — one of Rebbe Nachman’s most powerful teachings, delivered in the final months of his life in Uman.
It’s a longer shiur, but it lays the groundwork for everything that follows: the historical moment, the spiritual context, and the daring idea at the heart of this Torah — that despair is not real.
What we explore in this shiur:
Why Uman was the perfect setting for this teaching
How limitation can become a source of illumination
Why despair is an illusion
How concealment and suffering create the conditions for ascent
The universal struggle for meaning in hiddenness
Parallels to Viktor Frankl, Carl Jung, and modern spiritual psychology
Why Tisha B’Av and Shabbos Nachamu frame the entire Torah
Transcript
Setting the Scene: Rabbi Nachman in Uman
Okay, I’d like everyone to conjure up the following image in their mind. If you need to, close your eyes and listen. Otherwise, do the best you can. Rabbi Nachman is suffering from tuberculosis. It’s a disease that hits the lungs. He has a little bit more than two months to live. That’s it. he will... It’s already a pass from this world. He can barely speak. It’s hard for him to get the words out.
He’s in Uman, a town that has been basically taken over by the Maskewing, who are adamant about taking away Jews from believing in God. He’s living in the house of a man who went to great lengths to make sure that the name of God was never mentioned within the four walls of that dwelling. That man had passed away, now Rabbi Nachman is living in that house. He’s under a government that’s hostile to the Jews. He’s in a place where the...
There’d been a horrible massacre of Jews in the exile. So he’s a man who has, who’s limited in time. He’s limited in audience. He’s had some Hasen who came to him, but I don’t know how many, but that’s, you know, only a number of people came to visit him here on that Shabbos. He’s limited in influence. The Scythians are the influential ones. He doesn’t have the governmental connections that they have. He’s limited in power.
He’s limited in physical capability. He’s limited. And he even says to his Hasidim, I’m limited in knowledge. He said, I don’t know why came to me this time. If I had something to teach you, fine, but I don’t have anything more to teach you. I’m done, he says.
I have nothing left to teach him, a simple man, a prustik, if pronounce that correct. That’s how you say it.
And from within this limitation.
I want to read out the following words, if I can find them.
The Turn: From “I Have Nothing” to a Message for All Generations
Again, we’re from Rav Emder, quoting from the editor of the Kut-e-Maharan. I assume that this is the first editor. He, Rabbi Nachman, drew out these words and said them with great force and wondrous, awesome depth. At some point, Rabbi Nachman transformed from someone who was saying over and over again, I don’t have anything to teach you. I’m just a simple Jew now. I have nothing.
I don’t have any thoughts or any ideas. He transformed from that person to somebody who is alive, it sounds like. And he’s drawing out these words, either because to say a word is difficult for him because his lungs are being deteriorated. Or he’s drawing them out to emphasize what he’s about to say.
in order to teach and to signal every person in all generations, every person. He has something now. He has this chastity. I have nothing to teach you. But I have something now I have to teach you guys. I have something teach everybody. I have Rabbi Nachman who have a couple months left, who has a very little bit of my strength, who have no influence. don’t have.
There’s no Facebook and there’s no TikTok and this. I don’t have any influence. I don’t have any power. I now in this place am going to speak to everybody, he says, in all generations and everybody I believe and understand. It’s not just a reference to the Jewish people, Jews and non-Jews. He has a message. What does he want to tell them? Not to despair in any way.
even should the most dire things happen to him.
Let us think about this for a second. Rabbi Nachman.
is transcending, he says, time and space. And it turns out, as soon as can, he’s right. We’ll get that in one moment. He’s transcending all the limitations of time and space to speak to everyone and tell them, as we already heard, there’s no room for despair.
Now, as an introduction to the Torah, and we’re going to go through this, and we won’t just talk about despair, talk about a lot of things in this Torah, and we’ll go through it step by step, but this one point, let us think about this. Isn’t this a beautiful example of how there’s no room to despair? Isn’t this Torah itself an example of the Torah? Because here you are, there’s every reason to think that it’s... What I supposed to... What for? I have a few chesidim, I don’t have any ideas left.
I’m gone anyway. I barely have any strength. mosquitoes are taking over everywhere. The government hates us. We’re still in exile.
And from within that mass amount of limitation, he break out from all that to infinity and everything, to everywhere, to go to speak to everyone in every place and every time.
There’s no room for despair. It doesn’t matter if he can’t see it, but he knew it. I’d like to suggest, I think he knew it. And that’s why he became alive. Now I asked Chach P.T.
“Ein Shum Ye’ush”: No Despair as a Structure of Reality
I asked him how far-reaching is Revin Nachman’s teaching that there is no despair? That was the wrong question to ask. I’m still going to read the answer and then I’ll get to the right question. Wrong in terms of what I was trying to figure out. But I think the answer is still interesting. Revin Nachman’s teaching that there is no despair at all, Ein Shum Yehush Be’Olam Chlau, is one the most far-reaching and radical ideas in all of Hasidic thought.
not merely psychological encouragement, but a theological statement about the structure of reality itself. And what I’m trying to say with this Torah, is that this Torah, the existence of this Torah, and the context in which it was created, is an example of this theological reality, that this structure exists in reality. It reaches from the individual soul’s darkest moment, all the way up to the metaphysical nature of creation and divine concealment.
Now that’s quite a statement. Let me read that again. what this Torah, reaches an individual soul’s darkest moments.
The Image of Tzimtzum: Light, Darkness, and the Ray
I want to stop here. I understand this line, I want to understand this line, but I want to conjure up another image. It’s an image we all have heard of and know. That Simpson. That there’s an all-encompassing light.
And then there’s a halal, a space within that light. And then there’s a ray of light that pierces through that to the center. Or kind of to center, within, wherever it goes to, within the halal. Now, if you’re inside the halal, and this might not be, you know, I’m not holding back Kabbalah. You know, I friends who delve quite a bit with, I discuss it with them at times. I’ve learned a little bit here and there.
So I’m not saying that this is, what I’m about to say is representative of what this image means or indicates. But imagine you’re within the halal.
You would think that darkness is everything. Everywhere you look, before that ray of light comes in, you’re in the center of it. The ray of light hasn’t pierced through yet. And you look in the distance, all you see is darkness. You turn around, you look up, you look down. You are surrounded by darkness. And you would think and believe and experience that that is reality.
But then in comes this ray of light and pierces through there. And that ray of light is connected to this infinite light.
And now, if you’re able to draw that light in.
So then you show who envelopes who or what envelopes what. It’s the darkness that’s enveloped by the light, not the other way around. And that’s how I’m able to bring that light into this. So if I’m in the darkest moments of the worst despair and I live this reality, there’s no such thing as Yehush. So I’m bringing light into that point. I’m saying it doesn’t matter how all encompassing you get, how
powerful you are, how much of a troll you seem to be. Once I am living the reality that there’s more to this, I brought light into there. I ⁓ read about, I heard this psychologist, right, who I understand works at NFA, works at the facade, or the Shabbat, and that he was one of the first people to meet the hostages, I understand. That’s what I was told. He said, Hirsch, and I forgot.
I forgot the last name. That one of the houses that’s already been nicked back. But many houses said that he gave them hope by quoting Viktor Frankl, who we will quote in a minute about how, you know, not despairing basically. And that you can even find purpose in the worst circumstances. Which means that it doesn’t matter how much they frighten you. Doesn’t mean it matter how much they physically hurt you.
doesn’t matter how many of your brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, they’ve murdered and butchered.
There is still a light you can find there. You’re on the Shrine, they try to convert many these Jews and they refuse to.
We’ll give you more food to make it easier for you. But they wouldn’t do it. That’s that ray of light coming in there. And therefore that’s part of the structural reality. Maybe I can better articulate that another time. Let’s go on here. Key points, ontological scope. For every Nachman, despair isn’t just a feeling. It’s an illusion. Since God’s presence and self fills and sustains every point of existence,
true hopelessness cannot exist.
I’m going to put this my own terms. It doesn’t matter how strong the darkness gets, how evil man becomes. It cannot extinguish that light of Tikvah. That light’s going to burn. It doesn’t have the ability to reach there. Darkness itself is another form of divine concealment, not absence. Okay, that’s interesting. When things are dark, it’s not that God’s not
there is that he’s concealed. That’s a very interesting distinction.
A Discipline of the Soul: Practice, Not Just Theory
Spiritual practice. No despair becomes a discipline of the soul. Commanding the Sikhs, Kshatriyas, precisely in hiddenness. To be that even distance is the path towards closeness. So this is what’s really fascinating right here. A discipline of the soul.
There’s a whole rational approach to reality which is very powerful and very helpful in the right circumstances. But there’s another part of reality where rational analysis, linear thinking, definitions, all that is just not relevant. When you’re dealing with the experience of reality, with the emotions of reality, perhaps you can have a framework which is logically and rationally explained to you.
But in terms of practice and exercise, there is spiritual and emotional exercise you have to go through that all the logic and explanation won’t help if you don’t do the work yourself. And I think a great example of this is exercise. If I read books about the benefits of exercise, if I give courses on it, if I understand all the science behind it, it won’t turn me into a healthy person if I don’t
eat well, I don’t sleep well, I don’t exercise well.
So they’re not despairing. It’s not necessarily a natural initial psychological state or spiritual state. It’s something that we have to learn to live, to actually live.
Is the phrase sometimes religious or not? they frum or not?
Who knows what they would do in the tunnels of Gaza, the Al-Ainu, except for those hostages that went through it.
We don’t know what we would do in these circumstances. We can prepare ourselves. We could, you know, train ourselves, connect ourselves. But if you’re not tested, you don’t know. None of us know. It’s not a criticism. It’s not, ⁓ if, ⁓ if there’s a strenuous physical or, you know, situation, you could work out quite a bit. If there’s an epidemic.
Are you gonna make it through that or not? Who knows? There are challenges, but maybe that’s not the best example. The point I’m trying to get to here is that a discipline of the soul is something you have to work on in terms of being the person who doesn’t despair, just like I have to work on my health. Let’s continue. We’ll sit once another time. Psychological healing. Refames personal suffering and failure.
personal suffering and failure connected. But there’s all sorts of ways to be in pain, physical, psychological, emotional. Every fall he teaches contains a seed of ascent. You read in the Torah, Aliyah, the ascent for the sake of elevation. There are failings in the world. Why do they exist? Why is that part of God’s creation? Because there’s a seed of Aliyah in there. If you think about this, ⁓ you go,
more of another time. But if that’s the case, why would you despair by your suffering? Why would you despair by your failures? There is something to be built in there. Now, there is an interesting thing. If heaven forbid we’re in a situation like the Shoah, where you have murder en masse, and those individuals will not be able to do an ascent afterwards because...
for understandable reasons. But the Jewish people can. We’re aware of them. We’re aware of the Holocaust. And it affects us. And it transforms us. And we do work we wouldn’t have done otherwise. It’s always a difficult thing to say. No one wishes this to be the way that we do it. But once we are aware of the pain and the suffering and the failures and the horrors, we respond.
And if we respond often, at least those who are in tune with the De’echel V’chadosh Baruch and the Torah, and have received this worldview, they respond positively, constructively, helpfully. So there is an ascent, even if it’s not by the particular person who the evil happened to, but it exists within the situation if we broaden our perspective. A difficult topic, absolutely. Historical vision.
applied to the Jewish people, it transforms exile itself into a stage of redemption.
Exile is a stage. Even when Torah faith or moral clarity seem to extinguish the spark, it persists. But I think it’s also that when you’re in exile, you awaken the desire and the work to get back to where you want to be. And so that exile is not ⁓ the end. It is the spurring of a process.
The Human Condition: Meaning, Monkeys, and Bowling Pins
Universal reach, this language, every person, every generation shows that this teaching transcends the boundaries of Jewish experience. It addresses the human condition itself, the struggle to find meaning where none appears.
this I think of a video I saw not about this topic but I’m going to borrow it and bring it here. an experiment they did with monkeys and five-year-old boys. I if they were orangutans or I think they were chimpanzees. Intelligent animals and the boys. They had three bowling pins. All looked the same. All felt the same in terms of weight and everything.
but one of them was weighted, the weight was off a little bit. That’s the important, we’ll get to that in a second. The task was simple, to stand all three up. One, two, three. The monkeys or the chimpanzees have been trained to do this. The boys were told to do this. They did the first one, no problem, the second one, no problem. The third one tips over because it’s weighted more on one side than the other, so you can’t actually stand it up.
But you don’t realize that when you look at it and feel it. It looks and feels just like the other ones. So the chimpanzee will say, when it falls, tries again. It falls, he tries again. Over and over again. Just keeps trying and trying. 10, 15, 20. He won’t stop. He’s supposed to stand. That’s what he’s supposed to do. Just keeps going. The boy tries two, three times. Doesn’t work. He picks it up and he starts looking at it.
He’s not trying to figure out what’s going on. Why isn’t it working? Am I missing something? He’s curious, he’s inspecting, he’s thinking. That built in, that curiosity, that perspective is built into the human being in a similar fashion.
The struggle to find meaning where none appears is built into the human condition. And that’s part of what Rabbi Nachman is saying. There’s no such thing as despair because there’s something there. There’s a growth there. There’s a process there. There’s an ability there. There’s an opportunity there. And so all this, if you look at all this evil and darkness that’s growing and you focus on the
evilness of it, the darkness of it, you’re missing, you’re being blinded.
That’s there to help you discover some meaning that you didn’t realize you had to discover. Now it doesn’t appear because I don’t see the whole reason why you have to go in the search because you’re so blinded to that opportunity in the first place. these difficulties are waking you up to go on a search.
Let’s understand this again. This phrase is so well said. The struggle to find the meaning doesn’t mean you’re going to find it. But you’re going to struggle with it. It’s going to shake you up. I like to use another vision. Imagine you wake up in the middle of the night. You have to go to the bathroom. So you get up and start walking. You know exactly what you’re doing. You know exactly where you’re going.
exactly what you need and want. And on the way you stub your toe.
And what do you do then? You stop and you scream.
and you deal with and focus on the pain. Now a second ago, you were on your path. You thought you knew where you’re going. You thought you knew what you were doing and where you’re trying to head. And you may need to get back to that path. In this case, you will. But the pain stops us and forces us to focus on the difficulty of the moment. That’s built into pain and suffering in this world.
And that stopping, that crying out, and that dealing with, that’s one of the reasons why there is no Yehush, I would like to suggest. Having not gone through this Torah inside yet. Just having heard it mentioned multiple times in multiple ways. Now, I’m going to leave, this has been a bit long, hopefully you’re still with me. I’m going to leave with my follow-up question to ChachapiTea. And then...
Influence: Jewish World and Beyond
And then we’ll tie it all up. How influential has this been to the Jewish world and the non-Jewish world? That’s what I asked my second question. That’s what I meant to ask the first time. How far-reaching is it? By far-reaching I meant beyond Brussels and beyond, but I didn’t articulate it very well. So I made it more specific. How influential has it been to the Jewish world and the non-Jewish world? So Chachabit says,
that this teaching, that there is no despair at all, has become one of the most enduring and cross-cultural ideas in modern spirituality. This idea has been one of the most enduring and cross-cultural ideas in modern spirituality. Now let’s understand, there’s a lot of ideas in modern spirituality. There’s the Muslim movement, there’s the Tanya, and there’s the Feshechaim, and there’s a lot out there.
a lot in Jewish philosophy and there’s a lot there. But this one idea that Rabbi Nachman says in Uman two months before he’s going to die with almost no strength and a small little following and with this recognition that he’s speaking to everyone.
This looks like that idea has spoken to everyone. Within Judaism it has shaped entire generations of Hasidic and non-Hasidic thinkers. And beyond Judaism it has entered the global vocabulary of faith, resilience, and meaning through literature, psychology, and music. Within the Jewish world among breast lovers this phrase became the spiritual anthem. The beating heart of Hitt-Bodh-Dut.
personal prayer and of joy born from brokenness. I think we said before that he voted it self-referential prayer, self-revealing prayer. So that’s a better definition than personal prayer. He voted to be alone with oneself in a davening state.
and a joy born from brokenness.
I have song that I’ll get out there called Better Beautiful Days, think, about beautiful days that come from your pain. It could be a beauty, a joy, an opportunity that comes from pain, if, when we figure out how to deal with that. It deeply influenced 20th century Jewish thought from Rav Kuk’s theology of constant renewal.
Rav Shagar’s postmodern faith in Rav Steintlert’s insistence on human potential. So I don’t know enough about, I don’t even know who Rav Shagar is, ⁓ maybe I I know Steintlert’s from the Gomaras and I know a little bit about Rav Kuk’s theology, but I personally am not connected to it so much. Although people tell me that some ideas are definitely in ⁓ that there’s parallels to what he has to say. So, bach chokavanti. But ⁓ so constant renewal.
I have to think about somebody who knows more about me can explain how that is, but it’s gotten in there. Modern Israeli culture quotes it everywhere. This is what’s so interesting. On posters, songs, and speeches. A shorthand for Jewish endurance. Tick-foot in exile. Survival after the Shoah. National rebirth. It doesn’t mention all the wars and terrorism we have to deal with here, but I imagine that’s one of the reasons why it has such appeal. Because for modern Jews,
Israel, mean, living since post-World War II and leaving the Soviet Union out, the modern Israeli anti-Semitic violence has been focused mostly in Israel. And so this idea of there’s no Yehush, I guess, I assume that might be one of the reasons why it speaks so well here. Although I didn’t phrase it so well, but leave that out. Beyond the Jewish world.
Nachman’s writings, especially the tales of Rabbi Nachman in an empty chair, have been translated into dozens of languages. Maybe that’s for the Jews, languages, maybe. And written in interfaith and secular settings, which that’s kind of interesting. Thinkers like Martin Buber, Avraham Joshua Heschel, and even Carl Jung drew from the psychological depth and vision of paradox, writing joy and meaning within brokenness. It’s the Carl Jung part which I find interesting because
In modern psychology, there’s two foundational pillars. There’s Freud, who I asked about, and there’s no direct connection with Freud, no indirect path that the judge could do about. But they see parallels in the need to bring awareness of the hidden self. But that we’ll save for another time. Jung drew from a psychological depth into absolute, I’m sorry, so Carl Jung was the other,
Carl Jung is the other color. And you can imagine if Carl Jung, who I believe studied the Religious Era, I think he liked the Magna Medeis quite a bit. You know, he’s been learning these Torahs. He wasn’t Jewish Jung. And he’s been bringing into psychology, and it’s going out to academia, into the world. And so it might have a different clothing, different garment, it’d be a particular type of klippa, maybe you could say.
But that idea you see getting out to the world. The idea that despair is an illusion parallels existential therapeutic insights. ⁓ Victor Franco’s Logo Therapy for instance echoes, where we now understand that meaning is never absent, even in suffering. There’s always meaning. Before we said that suffering leads us to a surge. might, different people respond to suffering differently.
We always need to be sympathetic and pathetic to those who are experiencing it. But I’m not sure where I was going with that thought. I don’t know if Victor Franco directly got it from Ruby Nachman, but we see these parallels. So, the culture residents, no despair has become almost proverbial in Israeli Jewish art and music worldwide. A quiet counterpoint to nihilism. Isn’t that interesting? I’m not sure exactly how it’s a counterpoint to nihilism.
whether it is destructive or nihilistic. Maybe you’re living the despair, you’re living the negativity and you become consumed by it and you can’t be adjoined. I’m not sure exactly if that’s true or not about nihilism. Okay, some sort of quiet counterpoint which you have to think about more. In a broader human sense, it serves as a framework for finding God’s purpose or inner light in a secular post-certainty age. Okay.
⁓ I will... ⁓
Parallels to Freud: Bringing the Hidden to Light
I will just look at this one point about Freud. I’m just going to pick out a few things that I think are interesting and hopefully you’re still with me on this. Conceptual resonance. Rabbi Nachman said, both parallel psychoanalysis is an uncovering of the hidden self through speech. So what’s interesting is that what Rabbi Nachman is recognizing is that we have to get aware of ourselves.
There’s a power of speech to do that. we, Nachman thought it was the power of praying to God while dealing with the difficulties of going through. ⁓ For Freud, more of a, sounds to me like an intellectual exploration and certain techniques of self. But they’re both this idea that there’s something to be uncovered and hidden and that darkness is just a, clog, something to be,
removed. It’s a clothing or a partition that has to be removed to reveal something that’s deeper there. His idea that despair can be consumed are illusions that was hidden must be brought to light, that mirrors Freud’s answer to something unconscious material into awareness to heal psychic pain.
⁓ That’s another interesting point. The idea that despair and consumer are illusions.
Now that mirrors, so in other words, despair and concealment. What’s hidden must be brought to light. If you see evil and therefore you despair, you’re not seeing the same deeper going on that you need to be aware of.
whether it’s yourself or in what’s going on in the world. So too, Freud had this idea that there’s things that are unconscious that you need to shed light on. So there’s these interesting parallels. Both turn inward, insisting that the path to redemption or sanity lies through confronting what is most concealed. So you can have different words for it. You’re talking about being sane or insane, functional or not functional, redeemed or not redeemed. But what’s going on has a lot of similarities.
⁓ Now, I’m going to end with this last bit. ⁓ And I’ll probably break this up into a few different videos because it’s over half an hour.
Timing: Shabbos After Tish’a B’Av
When did Rabbi Nachman give this Torah? We’re still in the introductory phase, the introduction of the introduction phase, the first step. He gave it on the Shabbos after Tish’abob. Now, let’s sit back for second and think about the first Shabbos after Tish’abob. Tish’abob, I would suggest, if we had to find a day that gave us
the most reason to despair. What better day is there than Tish’vav? But we recount over and over and over again, not just all the horrors that happened to the Jewish people, but all the mistakes we made. The miraglim and the chet de ego, don’t mention them directly, but we know that, say I think the chet de ego, was that in the Inzayan, is that right? If remember correctly.
Tish, the Moraglimon Tish-Abav. So there’s no greater date to show you how futile it is. We’ve been trying so long, all we do is we get the Tsars over and over again. Look, the Crusades and the Ten Martyrs and the Romans and the Holocaust and the exiles and on and on and on on. A whole day of it. Stepping ourselves into it, experiencing it, mourning. Mourning is a little bit different than sending out despair. But if you have to choose a day...
that you’d say, this is despair day. This is the day that you say, you know, there’s no hope. You might think that Tish-e-Bab is the day to do that.
But just like Rabbi Nachman’s Torah, within Tish’ebob is one of the greatest teachings of Rabbi Nachman. Because the fact that we are here, sitting on the ground, saying, Kemos, remembering all this, we, Jewish people, is the greatest indication of all that there’s no reason to despair. Because what have they not thrown at us? What have they not tried? What evil have they not done? I guess, you know, Hamas we saw.
There’s always a new variation, a new way that can still shock us. But at the end of the day, nothing they’ve done, but it’s the ultimate in love, the ultimate in hate, the ultimate in ignoring, doesn’t make a difference. We survive. We don’t just survive, we thrive. We grow, we contribute. I read somewhere, one second, ⁓ I read somewhere,
that
If you ask some people, how many Jews are there in the world? I don’t know exactly where the survey was then or who they asked. But their perception was 50 million, 100 million. We are in the news so often. People talk about it so much. There’s so many famous Jews, so many different contributions that the assumption for many non-Jews is that this is a large people.
It’s quite remarkable. So we don’t just survive. We thrive. We contribute in all sorts of ways.
And if there’s any day to realize there’s no reason to despair, it’s Tisha B’av, the ultimate day. And we nachman an shavas nachamu, when we start the consolation process. Once you recognize that you don’t have to despair, that there’s a hope, that there’s something, purpose, it’s a struggle to be done. So you’re already in the stage of consolation. You’ve already taken it one step out of the suffering.
That’s the day that Rabbi Nachman came up with this Torah. Alright, there’s a lot in that. I might put the whole thing out. Everyone go, I might break it up. I don’t know, breaking it up takes time, we’ll see. But hopefully that was worthwhile for everybody. And we’ll continue. All the best.
Couldn't agree more. How do you see these ancient teachings connecting with modern computational approaches to well-being? So insightful.