A king decreed forced conversion throughout his country. Every Jew had a choice: convert or leave. Some abandoned everything—their homes, their wealth, their entire lives—and fled into poverty rather than betray their faith. Others could not bear to lose what they had built. They converted publicly but practiced Judaism in secret. These were the anusim (אנוסים)—the "forced ones."
The king died. His son took the throne and ruled with an iron fist, conquering many countries. His ministers, resentful of his severity, conspired to assassinate him and his entire family. The conspiracy reached deep into the court—powerful men in high positions, plotting in whispered meetings, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Among those ministers was one of the anusim. This man thought carefully. If the king is murdered and the country descends into chaos, everyone will devour each other. A country cannot survive without a king. So he went to the prince and revealed the conspiracy. The king investigated, confirmed the plot, and crushed it. Every conspirator was caught, tried, and sentenced.
Then the king turned to the anoos who had saved him and his family from assassination. "Name your reward. Shall I make you a minister? You already are one. Shall I give you money? You already have it. What do you want?"
The anoos said: "Swear by your crown and your kingdom that you will grant my request." The king swore. The anoos replied: "All I want is permission to be a Jew in public. To wear a tallit (טלית) and tefillin (תפילין) openly, without hiding."
The king was shaken to his core. His own father had expelled every Jew from the country. The entire legal and social order was built on the absence of Jews. But he had sworn an oath on his crown. He had no choice. He granted the request.
This fourth tale from Rabbi Nachman's Sippurei Maasiyot is deceptively simple. The anoos had everything a person could want—wealth, political power, the king's ear, a comfortable double life that cost him nothing externally. But none of it compared to the one thing he truly wanted: to pray as a Jew in the open, without shame, without concealment. He saved the king's life not for gold or status but for the right to stop hiding who he was.
In Kabbalistic terms, the story is about the soul in exile—concealed within the kelipot (קליפות), the husks of the material world, practicing its devotion in secret, waiting for the moment when it can reveal its true identity without fear. The oath the king swore on his crown is the divine promise that cannot be revoked: one day, the soul will worship openly, and no power on earth will prevent it.