The kingdom of the Jewish people is Malchut Beit David (the Jewish kingdom). If you look at the actual stories of how it came about, they seem almost—I don't know the right words—almost like very sloppy stories. I don't know if that's an appropriate word to use for Torah stories, but they don't seem like simple, neat stories. Follow me here. In next week's parasha, Yehudah has two sons. Each one is married to a woman named Tamar. He dies because he sinned. The next one is married to Tamar. He dies, and now Yehudah pretty much wants to cast Tamar because he thinks she's a killer. Eventually, he accidentally marries Tamar, not knowing why she has children. At the last second, right before he has her executed, he has to admit, “By the way, I just realized from the ring and from the staff that the children she's carrying are mine.” One of those children would be the father of Malchut Beit David. One of those children would be the father of the Jewish kingdom. Why can't it be a nice, wonderful Jewish family? They dated six times, they went at a wedding, they got married, they had a child, went to a good yeshiva, and he became the king. Why does it have to come from this embarrassing story?
And if that's not good enough, generations later, there'll be a woman named Ruth, and Ruth would marry this man named Boaz. Another story that's not so simple and neat. How does Ruth meet Boaz? In the middle of the night, Boaz is sleeping, and she's by his feet on a pile of wheat. What's she doing there? And then, of course, everything is kosher, and eventually they get married. But when they get married, it's not even clear to the world yet that she's allowed to marry a Jew because she's Moaviyah (Moabite woman). Hashem, you're going to make this woman the matriarch of Malchut Beit David, the matriarch of the kingdom of David. Why can't it be simple? Why can't it be clean? Why is she coming from a foreign country? Why is she converting to Judaism? Why is she poor? Why is she at the edge of the wheat? Why is she not marrying God? And he is marrying God, and the people are not sure if he's allowed to marry her, and he dies the next day. Why can't we have another simple Shaare Zion wedding?
And the best example of this is David himself. The Midrash (rabbinic homiletical tradition) says that this is the story of David. David's father was a man named Yishai. Yishai got married and had many children—seven boys. After he had the seven boys, he separated from his wife for three years. After three years, he decided he was going to marry his maid, just like Bilhah and Zilpah, just like Hagar. He thought she was beautiful, and he was going to marry the maid. The maid said, “This does not make sense. This is not okay.” She went to Yishai's wife and said, “It doesn't make sense that I'm going to be married to your husband and not you.” So they came up with a plan: the wife married him that night, just like Rachel and Leah, and next thing you know, the wife is expecting. And all the boys say, “One second, how is our mother expecting? She's been separated from her father for three years. It must be she's expecting because she was not faithful to her marriage and she was mezaneh, and she committed a terrible sin.” Which means that the boy she gives birth to is a mamzer (illegitimate child). When David was born, he was born red, and his brother said, “That's another proof of the fact that he's a mamzer; he's not a legitimate child.”
The answer is that Hashem makes the world this way: nobody, no being, is perfect. Nobody gets the right to feel perfect. Nobody gets to put their head on their pillow and say, “I am doing great.” You might feel, “I'm doing good in some areas; I'm doing a great job in other areas,” but to feel that I am complete is not a human's or any animal's feeling. It's only Hashem's feeling. Hashem wants us to have a little bit of a black hole inside. Even King David would have a black hole inside. And that's why, if you look at the story in Sefer Shemuel, you see that David is called again and again, Ben Yishai, Ben Yishai, the son of Yishai. Why is he called Ben Yishai a hundred times? Because they have to authenticate that Yishai is really his father. It's not his mother's son; Yishai was really his father. And the Torah says it so many times. No one else in the Torah has ever been described as “the son of, the son of, the son of.” Yosef is not Ben Yaakov (son of Yaakov), Ben Yaakov, Ben Yaakov. It's just Yosef. David is Ben Yishai, Ben Yishai, Ben Yishai to authenticate this.
Every Jew needs to realize that you're not going to feel great. It's supposed to be that even if you're doing great, there's a certain sense inside of you that there's more. Maybe it's because you feel a little failure. Maybe it's because of something your parents did. Maybe it's because you compare yourself to other people. Or maybe it's simply because, as a child, you thought success would do it, and it doesn't do it. It's not because you're missing something. It's not because you're different from anybody else. It's because Hashem deliberately makes our lives be Sheva yipol tzadik (A righteous person falls seven times). Hashem makes our lives so that we fall, and that makes us and motivates us to get up.
The great Jewish family, the monarchy of the Jewish people—King David—came from Yehudah and Tamar. That's a questionable story. From Boaz and Ruth, that's a questionable story. And the story of Yishai and his wife is a questionable story. Not questionable stories. All the stories were perfect. Let's be clear. All the stories were perfect. But they look from the outside like a questionable story. Because we want the greatest Jew in the world to have a little black hole inside him.
So, if what we started with is true—that everyone has a little sense of being a little down on themselves at times, or down on their life, or down on what they're doing, or down on what they're accomplishing, even if they're doing great—and you feel like, “Why do I feel this way? I wish I could do something to remove that feeling”—there's nothing a human can do to ever feel fully complete. And that's what drives us. And that's what makes us. And so that means every person, when you wake up in the morning or go to sleep at night, may sometimes feel a little emptiness inside. That emptiness...