The Insight That Begins With “I Know Nothing”
One of Rebbe Nachman's most enduring & influential Torah's is his statement that there is no such thing as despair. But the story of how he came up with this Torah is no less worth learning.
Imagine walking into a grand symphony hall.
You’re there to hear a world-class pianist.
The lights dim, the hush falls, expectation rises…
and then — he starts playing Chopsticks.
Chopsticks.
Not a flourish, not a clever reinterpretation…
Just the simple, innocent tune every five-year-old bangs out when they first meet a piano.
Five minutes pass.
Then ten.
Then fifteen.
Twenty.
And at this point, everyone in the audience is thinking:
“What is happening?”
The Tzaddik Who Plays Chopsticks
Rebbe Nachman says something remarkably similar happens with a true tzaddik, a spiritual virtuoso.
Sometimes, he isn’t teaching.
He isn’t revealing deep Torah.
He isn’t illuminating worlds.
Instead… he speaks in the language of simple, ordinary people — what they used to call a prustik.
And Rebbe Nachman isn’t criticizing this.
He’s stating it as a fact of reality.
And that alone is strange.
Why would a spiritual virtuoso act like a beginner in the middle of his symphony?
Why would he “play Chopsticks” in front of his students?
Why does Rebbe Nachman want us to know this?
Why does he think this matters?
A Moment Near the End
To understand this, we look at one of the most striking parts of this Torah —
its almost autobiographical tone.
It is Shabbos Nachamu, just after Tisha B’Av, in Uman.
Rebbe Nachman has very little time left to live.
A group of chassidim gathers to hear what may be his final Torah.
They’re expectant, reverent… waiting.
And Rebbe Nachman looks at them and says — with absolute sincerity:
“Why are you here? Why did you come?
If I had Torah to teach, I would understand.
But now… I know nothing.
I have no Torah to give.”
And yet — sometime later that same Shabbos — he reveals one of his most enduring teachings:
אין שום ייאוש בעולם כלל
There is no such thing as despair.
So how does a person go from “I know nothing”
to “There is no despair in the world at all”?
Emptying the Mind
Ironically… Rebbe Nachman gives us the answer in a Torah he wrote before that moment.
He explains that sometimes a person must empty the mind —
clear out old perceptions —
to make space for new ones.
Here’s the image he’s pointing us toward:
Imagine you have glasses that help you see clearly,
but they’re tinted purple.
Take them off — vision becomes blurry…
but suddenly the world is full of colors you haven’t seen in a long time.
Our perceptions are like those glasses.
They help us see.
They clarify the world.
But they also tint it.
And sometimes, to see something new…
to see something richer…
we have to remove them.
We have to let go of the old perspective so a new one can enter.
The Beginning of a Transformation
That is what Rebbe Nachman is doing at the start of Torah 78.
He’s laying the groundwork — quietly, subtly — for a profound transformation.
And as we continue through this Torah,
we’ll see how that foundation unfolds
and why it matters so deeply.