Rabbi Elizabeth Dunsker
Kol Nidre 5786
Congregation Kol Ami, Vancouver WA
The Balagala
The Maggid of Dubno was known as a great sermonizer. He would travel from town to town teaching lessons and telling stories that would explain every verse in the Torah. He was known especially for being able to clarify difficult passages in the simplest of terms. And because he travelled so much he had a wagon driver who would take him everywhere. In Yiddish he’s called the balagala. So one day the Maggid and the Balagala are stopped for lunch and the Balagala says, “You know I’ve been listening to your sermons every day for year’s now. I feel as though I must know them as well as you do. You know, you and I don’t look so different, I bet I could present myself as you and the people wouldn’t know the difference.” The maggid agrees and they switch clothing. The Bagala gets in the carriage and the Maggid sits in the front, picks up the reigns for the horses and drives to the next town. When they get there, it goes just as the Balagala said it would. The people assume he’s the Maggid, they lead him to the synagogue where he gives one of the Maggid’s sermons word for word, with all the same nuances and flourishes the Maggid typically uses to gets his points across. And he’s a great success, no one can tell he’s not the Maggid. Then someone raises his hand to ask a question. The Balagala listens and says, “I’m not going to answer your question. It seems to me you might already know the answer. Because the answer is so simple that even my Balagala can give you the correct answer.” He looks to the Maggid sitting in the congregation and says, “Balagala won’t you answer the question?”
There is apparently another more recent version of this story that features Albert Einstein changing seats with his limousine driver to also fool an audience who have come to hear the brilliant thoughts of the famous genius.[1] I have no idea whether or not either story is true. But they both bring up some good questions.
Kol Nidre is a turning point. Who have we been and whom do we want to become. Last year we were each the person we were, the next 24 hours offers us the opportunity to pause and think about the person we want to be. Last week I spoke about imposter syndrome and Tina Fey’s idea that it requires both extreme egomania and the feeling of being a fraud. The Balagala didn’t have imposter syndrome. He was an actual imposter. He knew he wasn’t the Maggid, but he had been learning from the Maggid at least enough to impersonate him. He could parrot the words and put on the same kind of show as the Maggid, but he was missing the deeper understanding that comes from study and experience. Was it hubris or egomania that caused him to believe he could stand in for the great Maggid or was it exactly because he knew he was a fraud that he wanted to see if he could pull it off.
One of my great teachers in Rabbinical school, Dr. Eugene Borowitz used to say that whenever he wanted to learn about something he would offer that topic as a class, because there is no better way to learn than to teach. And as the Balagala finds out, to truly teach, one must be prepared for the questions. It is through asking questions and seeking answers that any learning can take place. I think this is true in many aspects of our lives, not just as teachers but as doctors, and lawyers, and scholars, and scientists, and parents, and engineers, and actors, and politicians, and United States citizens, and Zionists, and even sometimes athletes. If we are unprepared to accept questions even when we don’t have all the answers than we are in some way faking it and not living our authentic lives. Or doing our work, whatever it is to the highest levels.
At it’s core, this story of the Maggid and the Balagala is about authenticity and I think that’s also what Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur ask of us. What does it meant to be truly ourselves? What does it mean to know ourselves? There’s an old Yiddish joke that says, be yourself unless you’re a shmuck, then be someone else. But Yom Kippur actually asks more of us. It asks us to notice that we might be not so great sometimes and rather than become someone else we are asked to become better versions of ourselves. Sometimes to figure that out we need some outside pressure, like a day of prayer and fasting in a room full of other grumpy people doing the same thing. We talk about Teshuva, repenting and turning apologizing for our misdeeds and mistakes and making a different choice going forward, but I think in order to understand what we have done in the past, we need to know who we are and only then can we decide who we want to be.
There is the famous story of Zusya which I find myself telling quite a bit, so if it sounds familiar, it probably is. Zusya lies on his death bed, his students around him telling him what a great teacher and human he has been. But Zusya is trembling with fear. The students tell him again, he should have nothing to fear from death, he has lived his life as a mensch, he has been kind and giving. He has been as wise as Moses and as brave as Joshua. He says, when I die, I am not afraid that I will be asked why I wasn’t more like Moses, I am afraid I will be asked why I wasn’t more like Zusya. Yom Kippur asks us to prepare for our deaths. How do we answer for the person we have been and how do we become more deeply the best version of ourselves we can be.
One last story which comes from the Maggid of Dubno but it isn’t about him, It is about an ape who is actually a man pretending to be an ape.
This man could be anyone, but let’s call him Benjamin. Benjamin needs a job and he applies at the zoo thinking he might get work taking care of the animals. But it turns out that what they need is for someone to stand in a cage wearing a gorilla suit. The actual gorilla had died, and the zoo couldn’t yet afford a new one and all the people were complaining about there being no gorilla. The zoo wanted to give the people what they were asking for, so Benjamin was put in the suit.
Benjamin got pretty good at chest thumping and swinging from branches, he enjoyed bananas, and overall he became a pretty decent gorilla. He was a success as an ape. Crowds formed regularly in front of his cage, and there was talk about this new gorilla being even more fun to visit that the old one had been. He even started to believe he was Bobo the Majestic even more than he was Benjamin the poor shlub wearing a gorilla suit pretending to be something he wasn’t.
He does notice though, that the animals aren’t always treated so well and it’s hard to be stared at day after day expecting to always perform even when you don’t feel like it. Also the suit is really hot and therearen’t many opportunities for bathroom breaks. But one day, everything changes. Some kids were being particularly badly behaved and started throwing popsicle sticks into the cage hitting Bobo the Majestic. At first he swatted them away, but after getting poked in the eye with a flying stick he couldn’t take it anymore and he yells the scream that has been building inside of him. He roars, “Is that any way to treat a Gorilla?” a shocked hush falls over the zoo visitors. The popsicle stick boys freeze, a mother gasps, a baby starts to cry.
At the end of the day, as he’s taking off the gorilla suit, the manager tells him he’s fired. You can’t be a guy in a gorilla suit at the zoo. You’re either the gorilla or you’re a human.
We can only pretend for so long. If we are not living our lives authentically as ourselves, at some point our souls, our bodies, our subconscious, whatever will scream out—“This is not who I am!”
None of us is Moses or Zusya, or the Magid or the balagala or even the gorilla. But possibly there is a part of each of us who is Benjamin wearing a suit and faking it.
We might actually fake it till we make it. And that’s a different thing altogether. That’s not actually faking it, that’s learning and putting what we learn into action. Dr. Borowitz taught so he would learn. That’s not pretending at something that’s challenging ourselves and growing.
When I think about the story of the Maggid and the Balagala, I always want a different ending. I think the Balagala might have really become a Maggid, a teacher and story teller in his own right if instead of turning the question he was asked over to the Maggid of Dubno whom we expect gave “the right” answer, he had turned the question back to the one who had asked, saying something like, “That’s a very good question. I’m wondering what you think the answer might be?” Or rather than get the “right answer” from the Maggid, I so deeply wish the story had ended with the balagala coming up with his own answer and the Maggid realizing it is better than the answer he would have given. The story would then end with the Maggid saying something like, “It is my great honor to continue to drive for such a learned scholar.” And the two might spend the rest of their days learning from each other and the communities they serve. The townspeople would never know if they were learning from one or the other and it wouldn’t matter because both men had great lessons to teach and they would continue to deepen their own knowledge by learning from each other.
Over these next 24ish hours, let us learn deeply from each other and let us learn deeply from ourselves by spending this time thinking about our own souls and what makes us each more authentic versions of ourselves. May we never be afraid of asking hard questions and may we never be afraid of having hard questions asked of us.
Ken Yehi Ratzon, may this be God’s will.
[1] Many thanks to Rabbi Billy Dreskin for his new song which raises up this story.