the gift of storytelling
10/02/2024 09:15:23 PM
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5875 | 2024
When students are studying to be rabbis, we are assigned to small communities for the High Holidays that don’t have full-time clergy. From the very beginning of one such visit, a community member (let’s call her Louise) made herself known. She would show up 30-45 minutes early to every service, sit in the front row while we rehearsed, and insist that we were not doing something correctly. She argued with us about the Hebrew to English ratio, the tunes we used, the candles that weren’t where they were supposed to be. It seemed like everything had a right way, and that she saw it as her mission to insist on it. I took her comments graciously and attempted to adjust details as best I could. However, I found myself growing frustrated that whatever I did was not good enough.
Rosh Hashanah came and went and soon I was back for Yom Kippur hearing much of the same dissatisfaction. And then we reached the Yizkor service of Yom Kippur, the service in which we remember our loved ones who have died. As per usual, Louise was in the front row. And just a few minutes before Yizkor started, she opened her mouth and I braced for what I thought was coming. Surely, I had prepared the bima incorrectly or needed a reminder on what liturgy to include. Maybe she wanted to correct my articulation of one of the prayers in the earlier service. I steadied myself but prepared to receive her warmly.
But what she had to tell me at that moment was of a different nature. She began to tell me about her late husband. He was a rabbi. Immediately my brain began to process this information, and although I’m not proud of it, I’ll admit that I thought this could explain why she may have been quick to correct me, given that her husband was a rabbi. She simply thought she knew better. But she continued speaking and in doing so gave me a precious gift.
She told me about her husband’s sudden death at a young age at the beginning of his rabbinic career. She spoke of the kindness she received from the synagogue where he worked in the wake of his death and how she was even given a job there. And in hearing more of her story, it became so clear to me how important her role of rabbi’s spouse had been to her and what an important role Jewish community had played in her life, supporting her and taking care of her when she needed it most. It was only then that I understood that beneath her protests was a story of who she was. She wanted to share her knowledge with me, she wanted to share her identity with me, and she wanted to honor her tradition the way she understood it. In doing so, she was honoring the memory of her beloved. In telling me her story, she gave me the gift of being able to see a more full person.
I am so grateful for the way that Louise shared her story with me in a moment of great vulnerability. It would have been easy for me to go on believing the single story that stood in front of me: a woman who could not be satisfied by the rabbinic leader in front of her. Yes, this was part of her story, but there was another story just waiting to be told.
We all fall victim to this tendency, to believe a single thing about a person and then build an idea of who we think they are without ever really learning about them. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, acclaimed Nigerian author, spoke of this very phenomenon in a Ted Talk on the danger of the single story. She warned her audience that, “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”1 I could have believed just one idea about Louise but in slowing down and listening, I learned a deeper story—a story which was also not all of her but an important and relevant piece of her personhood.
I admit that I did jump to conclusions about Louise - that she was a bit of a noodge. Jumping to conclusions like this one is what our brains do to protect us. When we are missing facts, we fill them in for ourselves to make sense of the world. The amygdala is the part of the brain that processes emotions, motivation and memory and so it is naturally inclined toward emotion over fact. It exists to alert us about external dangers and keep us safe, whether that threat is real or perceived. In fact, when the amygdala takes over, it redirects blood flow to the extremities and away from the prefrontal cortex that might otherwise engage the logical part of our brain. It is only when we take a moment to slow down, breathe, and listen that we might realize that something or someone is not a threat at all. Because it is our natural tendency to jump to conclusions to stay safe, we have all the more reason to slow ourselves down to learn about the people who surround us.
While this reminder is important to us throughout our lives, it feels particularly salient in a moment like the one we are living through today. With a national election just weeks away in our own country and in a world almost one year after October 7th, it feels as though no one is listening to each other. If a person should even utter the word “Zionist,” they might immediately be ostracized from an entire community they once called home because of the assumptions people have tied to that word. On the flip side, a person who says a word about the suffering of Palestinians might immediately be deemed “anti-Zionist” having been given no chance to say a word about what they actually believe, why they believe it, and who they actually are. A person could say “democrat,” “republican,” “occupation,” or “apartheid” and immediately we could craft a story about the person who stands before us. But I urge each and every one of us to consider why this knee-jerk reaction is actually not serving us. Rather it is cutting us off from the world around us and preventing us from seeing human beings who live alongside us.
This is true for us today just as much as it was true for humans throughout history. And it is even true of our matriarch Sarah, a woman we idealize in our tradition for her bravery and strength of will. To know Sarah, we must understand that it took a long time for her to become pregnant with her son Isaac. And before there was Isaac, son of Sarah and Abraham, there was Ishmael, son of Hagar and Abraham. Sarah was the wife of Abraham and Hagar was Sarah’s maidservant, whom Sarah instructed Abraham to have a child with in her place when she was unable to conceive.
Isaac and Ishmael were the sons of Abraham’s wives but Ishmael was older. In biblical times in particular this made for contentious relations between family members for whom birth order was of the utmost importance. Torah has explained to us that Sarah already held feelings of contempt for Hagar and possibly her son, Ishmael, for this coveted status they had acquired. So, when Sarah saw Isaac and Ishmael playing together one day, her apprehension grew into rage. She insisted that Hagar and Ishmael be thrown out of their home exclaiming:
גָּרֵ֛שׁ הָאָמָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את וְאֶת־בְּנָ֑הּ כִּ֣י לֹ֤א יִירַשׁ֙ בֶּן־הָאָמָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את עִם־בְּנִ֖י עִם־יִצְחָֽק
“The son of that servant shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac”2
Where one person might see brothers playing, she saw a threat to her son’s inheritance. In the text, what is recorded is simply that:
וַתֵּ֨רֶא שָׂרָ֜ה אֶֽת־בֶּן־הָגָ֧ר הַמִּצְרִ֛ית אֲשֶׁר־יָלְדָ֥ה לְאַבְרָהָ֖ם מְצַחֵֽק
“Sarah saw the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing.”3
Our tradition is quick to defend Sarah’s actions and, of course, to spend many pages debating what is meant by that simple word “playing.” One rabbi suggests Ishmael is engaging in idol worship, something not allowed in our tradition.4 He even goes on to give an alternative argument saying “no, this text means to say that Ishmael was quarreling with Isaac about the inheritance.”5 Another points out the shared Hebrew root involved claiming that the word ‘Metzahek’ or the word for playing is the same root as the name Yitzhak (Isaac). It was not that he was playing at all but rather that he was trying to out-Isaac his younger brother, thereby attempting to take the inheritance for himself.6 All of these commentaries on the story attempt to explain the thought that must have been going through Sarah’s head for her to react so harshly.
Where an outsider might see a child playing, even two brothers playing, Sarah saw a threat to her son’s inheritance. She filled in the blanks and she acted with rashness to protect herself and Isaac. It is, perhaps, what any person might have done. Maybe both are right and maybe there are many things going on.
But I wonder how this story could have ended differently if Sarah had other pieces of the story. Perhaps Ishmael was not a threat to her son’s eventual legacy, but a companion for her young son. Perhaps Hagar was not just the “other woman” but a woman who gave up her autonomy for the sake of Sarah, a woman who could not conceive and who wanted to give her husband a child and heir.
Hagar and Sarah were so far apart from each other. It was like they were existing as separate islands rather than living as part of a grand narrative of Torah. I wonder what bridges they could have built between them had they taken the time to listen to and consider the other’s story and perspective.
When we tell each other pieces of our stories, we begin to build bridges towards one another. I might know nothing about a person in front of me, but if someone were to tell me that, just like me, they are a potter, immediately I have a point of connection with them. We might be entirely different people. We might share very few values, but if we both do pottery, well then I have a stepping stone. I have a piece of the puzzle to understand them.
john a. powell7, a law professor and director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, speaks at length about the importance of building bridges as a way to cultivate belonging and that storytelling is a way to build those very bridges. These stories connect us to one another. They make the people who are “ the other” someone a little closer to home. He recounted a conversation with a pastor friend of his who questioned how difficult this might actually be to carry out.
The pastor asked “john, are you saying I need to bridge with the devil?” And powell’s answer was twofold. First, he said, “don’t start there. Start with a shorter bridge.” That is to say, we need not pick the person who is farthest away from us when it comes to building bridges, sharing stories, and developing connections. We can take baby steps toward understanding the people who are right next to us, not just the ones who feel a universe apart. When we do this we begin to flex the muscle of understanding and compassion. One day, we may just have the strength to attempt to understand the people who do feel a universe away.
powell went on to make a second point. He warned his pastor friend, “be careful who you call the devil.” If our neighbor is the person right next to us ideologically, philosophically, or politically, then it seems that “the devil” is the person who is farthest away from us and powell instructs his friend and all of us to be careful to whom we assign this harsh label. Doing so will make the bridge an even more arduous construction project that we might never get to it.
I will not tell you that you must befriend every person who is not like you. I will not tell you that you must understand a person who hates you. And I will not tell you that every bridge that is attempted will be built. But I will tell you that sharing stories is the first step towards bridging people. Stories make us more compassionate people. They have the power to get us out of our fears and into our hearts.
On this Erev Rosh Hashanah, I want to welcome in a new year, one in which we are more inclined to listen, one in which we need not have every answer but rather every question, and one in which we are more willing to hear each other’s stories.
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1https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?subtitle=en
2Genesis 21:10
3Genesis 21:9
4Rashi on Genesis 21:9
5Rashi on Genesis 21:9
6https://parshanut.com/post/167015868466/playing-around-with-the-torah-parshat-vayeira
7powell intentionally does not capitalize his name for philosophical reasons