The quote is often attributed to Blaise Pascal and reflects the sentiment that simplicity is hard. Anyone can make something complicated. It takes real wisdom to make something simple.
There is a
story about a rabbi who delivered a forty-minute sermon. A congregant who was a
TV producer loved the message and told the rabbi, “This belongs on television
so more people can hear it!” The rabbi was thrilled, but there was one problem.
The television program could only give him two minutes. “Can you shorten your
sermon to two minutes?” the congregant asked. “Of course!” the rabbi replied
enthusiastically. “So why didn’t you?” retorted the congregant.
We live in a world that prizes complexity. We admire complicated ideas, sophisticated arguments, and people who seem to know everything. Judaism, however, teaches us that sometimes the deepest truth is the simplest one.
“Tamim tihyeh im Hashem Elokecha - You shall be tamim with Hashem, your God.” (Devarim 18:13)
The word tam means simple. We recognize it from the Haggadah and the simple child who asks, “What is this?” But simple does not mean stupid, and wholehearted does not mean naïve. In fact, becoming a tam may be one of the most difficult things a sophisticated person can do.
Rashi understands tamim tihyeh in the context of the verses which prohibit various forms of divination and attempts to discover the future. Do not consult those who claim to know what tomorrow will bring. Instead, “Tamim tihyeh im Hashem Elokecha,” be wholehearted with God. Trust Him and accept that there are things we will not know. Ramban emphasizes that we should not place our faith in the predictions of others. We want certainty. We want to know what will happen next. Judaism says, “You may not know what tomorrow holds. You can, however, know Who holds tomorrow.”
There is a famous story about King Shaul. Before his final battle with the Philistines, he visited a Baalat Ov, a medium, who told him that he would lose the battle. Shaul subsequently went to war and was defeated. That does not mean the Baalat Ov was right. Perhaps Shaul had already been psychologically defeated. Once he believed that defeat was inevitable, he acted as someone who had nothing left to fight for.
Orde Wingate, the British military officer and passionate Christian Zionist who spent time in pre-state Israel training members of the Haganah, reportedly stood on Mount Gilboa one day looking down at the Jewish settlements in the valley below. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Saul was a fool!” His Jewish companion asked, “Saul who?” “King Saul,” Wingate answered. Why? Because, in Wingate's view, Saul had an opportunity to defeat the Philistines. He had a small, mobile force positioned behind the enemy. But the prediction had gotten into his head, and he allowed the prophecy to become his reality.
Sometimes the greatest danger is not what someone tells us will happen. It is when we start believing that it must happen. The lesson of tamim tihyeh is not that experts are always wrong; it is that experts are not God. Predictions are not destiny. The future belongs to God.
One of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's most famous stories is “The Sophisticate and the Simpleton.” Two childhood friends take radically different paths through life. The Sophisticate is brilliant. He studies medicine, languages, philosophy, and every conceivable field of knowledge. He travels the world and accumulates wealth. He is impressive, but he is also miserable. He analyzes everything and questions everything. Nothing is ever good enough. He becomes trapped in his own sophistication until he loses everything.
Then there is the Simpleton, a shoemaker, who makes crooked shoes. His clothing is simple, his food is plain, yet he is happy. When people laugh at his crooked shoes, he doesn't become defensive. He finds joy in what he has. He experiences gratitude instead of comparison. Ultimately, the Simpleton becomes beloved by the king.
Rebbe Nachman is not advocating ignorance or opposing wisdom, but wisdom without simplicity can become its own form of foolishness. You can know more and understand less. You can analyze everything and appreciate nothing. You can become so sophisticated that you are incapable of being happy. Perhaps most dangerous of all, you can become cynical. The Sophisticate has a voice in his head that keeps saying, “This isn't perfect. This isn't real.”
We sometimes hear a similar voice. It is the voice that prevents us from simply enjoying a Shabbat meal or a family activity because we are comparing it to someone else's or what we see online. It is the voice that tells us that our Judaism isn't meaningful unless we have reached some imagined level of perfection. Rebbe Nachman's Simpleton teaches us something fundamental: Keep it simple. Keep it real.
Onkelos translates tamim as sh'lim, which means complete or whole. The opposite of tamim is not intelligent; it is fragmented. We live increasingly fragmented lives. We can be one person at work, at home, in shul, or online and another when no one is watching. Tamim tihyeh im Hashem Elokecha calls us toward something different. Be whole. Let our values and actions line up. Let the Judaism we profess in shul influence the way we treat our spouses at home, our neighbors in the community, and strangers we encounter on the street.
In the Megillah, Mordechai is described as in “ish Yehudi,” a Jewish man. Our Judaism should be as apparent as our humanity. Children do not need a DNA test to know who their parents are. They just know. Judaism, at its best, is not supposed to be an elaborate performance. It is supposed to become part of who we are.
Of course, Judaism demands thought, questioning, and growth. We should never be afraid of intellectual sophistication. But there is a difference between depth and complication and between doubt and cynicism. The greatest sophistication may be the ability to return to something simple. That is what tamim tihyeh ultimately asks of us. Not to know the future or be perfect. Rather, to bring our whole selves to God. Our faith and our doubts. Our learning and our simplicity. Our private selves and our public selves. All of it.
We may not know what tomorrow will bring. We do know Who holds the future, and we can choose how we live today. We can choose authenticity over pretense, wholeness over fragmentation, and simplicity over cynicism. We can stop trying so hard to impress and start trying to be real. The deepest wisdom is not discovering something complicated; it is remembering something simple: God is with us. Our task is simply to walk with Him wholeheartedly, authentically, and as ourselves.
Keep it simple. Keep it real.
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