Shlomo’s kingdom over a staff
The rav finds the same idea in the Gemara’s description of Shlomo HaMelech. His rule is pictured as becoming smaller and smaller: first a vast dominion, then Israel, Yerushalayim, his bed, and finally only his staff.
Sanhedrin 20b preserves that progression and records two explanations of his final possession, a staff or a garment. The rav follows the staff image. The phrase still says that he “reigned.” It does not merely say that the staff was all he owned.
That wording becomes the lesson: take away the palace, the crown, the royal clothes, the guards, and even the bed, and something of the king can remain. He must seek to return to his proper place, but his connection to kingship is not exhausted by the furniture around him.
The rav applies this even to the contrast between standing at Sinai in grandeur and feeling crushed beneath the mountain. Shabbos 88a pictures the mountain held over the people. The rav uses that image for a person who feels at the bottom, with no room to move. He still has to remember whose child he is.
The rav also recalls the expression that the servant of a king shares the king’s dignity. The connection to royalty is carried through being a child and servant of the King, not through independence from Him. He describes the soul’s Divine source as the inward basis for that dignity.
The same is true in galus. The nation’s honor is concealed. The world does not recognize its spiritual task, and the people may forget it themselves. Even living in Eretz Yisrael does not mean that the Beis HaMikdash and the full kingship described by the Torah have been restored. The rav distinguishes that hoped-for malchus from the political reality in which Jews presently live. The dignity he is describing cannot depend entirely on current public recognition or political power.
Yosef in the prison
Yosef gives the rav another example. He begins as his father’s beloved son, with dreams of a great future. His brothers turn against him; he is sold into Egypt; after some improvement in his circumstances, Potiphar’s wife falsely accuses him and he is imprisoned. Each stage could seem to disprove the dreams.
Yet Yosef does not stop serving Hashem or acting with responsibility. The Torah describes life in the prison:
וַיְהִי ה׳ אֶת־יוֹסֵף וַיֵּט אֵלָיו חָסֶד וַיִּתֵּן חִנּוֹ בְּעֵינֵי שַׂר בֵּית־הַסֹּֽהַר׃
Hashem was with Yosef and extended kindness toward him, and granted him favor in the eyes of the chief jailer. — Genesis 39:21
וַיִּתֵּן שַׂר בֵּית־הַסֹּהַר בְּיַד־יוֹסֵף אֵת כׇּל־הָאֲסִירִם אֲשֶׁר בְּבֵית הַסֹּהַר וְאֵת כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר עֹשִׂים שָׁם הוּא הָיָה עֹשֶֽׂה׃
The chief jailer placed in Yosef’s hand all the prisoners who were in the prison; whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. — Genesis 39:22
The rav reads Yosef’s steadiness through Rashi’s comment on the words “Yosef was in Egypt”:
וַֽיְהִי כׇּל־נֶפֶשׁ יֹצְאֵי יֶֽרֶךְ־יַעֲקֹב שִׁבְעִים נָפֶשׁ וְיוֹסֵף הָיָה בְמִצְרָֽיִם׃
All the persons who came from Yaakov’s loins were seventy souls, and Yosef was in Egypt. — Exodus 1:5
Rashi emphasizes the continuity of the Yosef who tended his father’s flock and the Yosef who became ruler in Egypt: he remained in his righteousness. The rav extends that continuity across the prison years too. The circumstances change; the commitment within the person need not be surrendered to them.
Yosef therefore prepares a path for Israel within Egypt and for leaving it:
וַיִּקַּח מֹשֶׁה אֶת־עַצְמוֹת יוֹסֵף עִמּוֹ כִּי הַשְׁבֵּעַ הִשְׁבִּיעַ אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר פָּקֹד יִפְקֹד אלוקים אֶתְכֶם וְהַעֲלִיתֶם אֶת־עַצְמֹתַי מִזֶּה אִתְּכֶֽם׃
Moshe took Yosef’s bones with him, for Yosef had firmly adjured the children of Israel, saying: Hashem will surely remember you, and you shall bring up my bones from here with you. — Exodus 13:19
The rav recalls the tradition that Yosef’s merit is present at the sea’s splitting, alongside the account of his bones traveling with the people. For him, this is another expression of the same strength: holiness can be carried into exile without accepting exile as the final definition of who one is.
He connects this with the traditions about preserving Jewish names, language, and dress. The precise versions of those lists require their own source distinctions; his application is the refusal to become ashamed of belonging to Hashem.
Royal clothing in an ordinary crowd
The rav makes the image concrete through a trade show. Many people try to blend into the dress and habits around them. A visibly chassidish Jew may walk through the same room in the clothing of his own community, without treating other people’s puzzlement as proof that he should be embarrassed.
The rav briefly mentions Las Vegas and then withdraws that example as a recommendation of a place to go. His illustration is the trade-show setting, not travel advice or a claim that a particular type of clothing alone establishes someone’s holiness.
He compares this with the distinctive clothing of a British coronation. To someone outside the tradition, royal robes and crowns can look unusual. Yet their wearers understand them as signs of an identity and a responsibility. The rav is not making a judgment about the spirituality of a monarchy. He is asking why a Jew should automatically regard the surrounding crowd’s approval as the measure of his own dignity.
Belonging to the King does not disappear because it is not televised or accompanied by a royal carriage. Nor is it restricted to the clothes. The argument applies to a person’s spiritual and practical circumstances: after a fall, the question is whether he can still act from the identity Hashem has given him.