I Met the King in the Field

Yanky Herzog is a businessman living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He was interviewed by JEM’s My Encounter in September of 2022.

I was twelve years old when my father first took me from London, England, to visit the Rebbe. My Bar Mitzvah was coming up and we came a few months before then for the holiday of Simchat Torah. It was 1973, which meant that the Yom Kippur War had broken out just over a week before and was still going on.

In his public addresses throughout the preceding summer, the Rebbe had paid an unusual amount of attention to the education of Jewish children, as well as to the spiritual power that children have to nullify any threats to the Jewish people. In this context, he repeatedly invoked the verse from Psalms 8:3, “From the mouths of babies and little children You have established strength… to put an end to the enemy and avenger.”

When children came back home from summer camp, he called for special gatherings to be held for them, where they would hear words of Torah and give charity. Since the month of Elul was coming up, he had also said that children should specifically be told the parable of “the king in the field.”

According to this chasidic allegory, first explained by the Alter Rebbe, the founder of the Chabad movement, G-d is compared to a king who can normally only be approached in his palace, and then only by his ministers and members of his court. But when he is returning from one of his travels, and passes through the fields outside the city, he is accessible to all people. Men, women, and children can come out to greet him, and the king receives them with a smile.

Similarly, during the High Holidays, accessing G-d is like encountering the king in his palace. However, during the preceding month, Elul, anyone can meet Him. As the Rebbe pointed out, this parable is not only something that children could understand, but it has a special relevance to them: One has to be an adult to become a minister in the royal court, and children cannot simply go into the palace to meet the king on their own – but they can when he is in the field.

During this period, it had been hard to understand which enemy he was trying to ward off, and what was driving the Rebbe to speak about the power of children with such urgency. But when the war broke out, it became clear that he had been preparing for this. The attack on Yom Kippur put Israel in a very precarious state, and the Rebbe wanted the children to bring about as much merit as possible to ensure a better outcome for the Jewish people

And so, when my father and I had our audience with the Rebbe, it seemed like the Rebbe spent more time speaking to me than to my father. He gave me a blessing for my upcoming Bar Mitzvah and asked what I was learning. I replied that I had been studying the Talmudic Tractate of Shabbat, and he asked me a few questions about it.

Then the Rebbe wanted to know whether I was also studying any chasidic teachings, to which I replied that I had been learning Likkutei Torah, a collection of discourses from the Alter Rebbe.

The Rebbe seemed pleasantly surprised: “Likkutei Torah before Bar Mitzvah!” he exclaimed. “Which discourse are you studying?”

I had been studying a famous discourse about the month of Elul, entitled “Ani Ledodi, Vedodi Li.” This is the discourse that contains the parable of the king in the field – and so the Rebbe asked me about the highlight of the piece.

“Have you learned the parable of the king in the field?” asked the Rebbe.

“Yes,” I answered.

The Rebbe pressed further: “And did you ever meet the king in the field?”

A little dumbfounded by this question, I didn’t respond. Instead, the Rebbe gave me the answer.

“Every time you say the words ‘Baruch ata Hashem,’” meaning Blessed are You, G-d, the first words of every blessing, “you have met with the king in the field.”

In that audience, I learned a very important lesson. Connecting with G-d – meeting the king in the field – doesn’t demand being on a very high spiritual level. As is said of the Torah, “It is not in the heavens.” It is within our reach.

People think that it’s very difficult to have a connection with G-d. But the lesson we learn from the king in the field is that you don’t have to perform any lofty or arduous task in order to connect. In fact, it’s very simple: When you speak to Him while reciting a blessing, or when you do a mitzvah, you connect with the King. This was what the Rebbe wanted to impart to me.

When I look back at that audience, at how the Rebbe spent time with me and explained all this to me, there is another thing that I feel: Since being connected with a tzaddik helps us connect with G-d, in a certain sense, I felt the king in the field right there, in that audience with the Rebbe.