Our Jewish Stories – Our Jewish Lives Part I
Sermon, Erev Rosh Hashanah 5766
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

We Jews are often called “The People of the Book,” but I think a better term would be “The people of the story.”  We are a people that loves stories.  We love to hear stories and we love to tell stories.  According to the Peninah Schram, “Jews are a storytelling people.  We cherish our memories and celebrate them through our stories.” 

We Jews, of course, do not have a monopoly on stories.  Almost everyone loves stories.  We grow up hearing stories from our parents, and when we become parents we read our children stories.  The popularity of Harry Potter, The DaVinci Code, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul series reflects the importance of stories in our culture. 

But we Jews especially love stories.  As an insightful 14-year-old put it, “Jews tell stories.  That’s the most important thing we do.”

This year, our congregational theme will be “Our Jewish Stories – Our Jewish Lives.”  I am very grateful for the members of our Adult Learning Task Force, (now a sub-committee of our Religious Education Committee), which helped identify this theme, and will help implement it this year.  As we studied adult educational theory and practice, we discovered that an essential component of adult learning is knowing the stories of the other students in the room.  We also concluded that as a congregation and community, we needed to know each other’s stories.

We all have stories to tell; everyone’s story is part of the story of this community, part of the story of our people.  This year we will have many opportunities to tell our stories, to learn about the members of our community.  Each week we will be sharing the story of a member of our congregation.  During our services and holiday celebrations, we will be inviting you to share stories that are relevant to the occasion.  As we share our stories, we will create a scroll containing the stories, in words and pictures, of our entire congregation and community.

In addition, we will be paying special attention to the stories of our tradition:  the biblical stories and midrashim, Chasidic stories, contemporary short stories and novels that are such an important part of our heritage.

My sermons on the High Holy Days will address the theme of telling stories.  Tomorrow morning I will speak on stories as a source of moral teaching.  On Yom Kippur I will discuss stories of life and death and stories of repentance.  This evening I want to explore the importance of stories in Judaism.

Throughout our people’s long history, we have told stories.  The Bible is full of stories that have shaped our people’s history, stories that tell us both who we are and how we should lead our lives.

The medieval biblical commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, better known as Rashi, asks why the Torah—whose primary purpose, after all, is to reveal God’s laws and teachings—why the Torah begins with the story of creation.  I want to expand on Rashi’s important question and ask:  “Why are the commandments presented in the context of the story of our people’s history?”  Why not just present the laws, the 613 mitzvot, and forget about the rest?  Or why not separate the laws from the stories and have a book of laws and a book of stories?

The Torah begins with stories and sets Jewish law in the context of stories because stories are as essential to our understanding of who we are and what God wants of us as the legal material. 

Jerome Bruner, a leading educational researcher, has concluded, (according to theologian Harvey Cox), “that narrative . . . is essential to us for organizing our experience.  Without narratives we would not be able to cope with the fragments of segmented information that constantly surge around us.  Narratives provide a framework that enables us to know our world.  Without a narrative thread, the fabric of the world is no more than rags and tatters,” he observes

Indeed, without the narrative of our people’s history, the Torah would not be the central text of Judaism.  If the Torah contained only the 613 mitzvot it would be an important but lifeless collection of rules and regulations that few Jews would ever open.  And if the Torah were only a narrative of our people’s history, it would be a nice story with significant insights and lessons, but no clear demands on our actions and our conscience.  By placing the laws and teachings of our people in the context of the story of our people, the Torah has become Judaism’s central text.

Only by combining the stories and the laws, the narrative and the mitzvot, do we have a sacred text that contains both our history and our responsibilities, that includes both specific do’s and don’ts and the stories of human beings trying to make sense of those do’s and don’ts. 

Tomorrow we will read the story of the birth of Isaac, the miracle child of Abraham and Sarah.  No sooner do they --and we-- rejoice at his birth, than we are confronted with a significant conflict within this biblical, blended family.  Sarah, upset with how Ishmael treats his half-brother Isaac, demands that Abraham cast out Ishmael and his mother, Hagar. 

We know that this act is unjust; we know that half a dozen teachings in the Torah prohibit such a callous act.  Nevertheless, Abraham casts them out with God’s endorsement.

Without such stories we might think that it is easy to fulfill the laws of the Torah and would condemn ourselves for constantly falling short.  And without the laws, we might delude ourselves into believing that Abraham’s act is just.  Only with both the laws and the stories do we truly understand the challenges of life.

David Noel Freedman, in his book, The Nine Commandments, demonstrates how the narratives contained in the Tanach (our Bible) systematically challenge each of the Ten Commandments.  “Book by book, from Exodus to Kings, Freedman charts the violation of the first nine Commandments one by one—from the sin of apostasy (the worship of the golden calf, Exodus 32) to murder (the death of a concubine, Judges 19:25-26) and to false testimony (Jezebel’s charges against her neighbor, Naboth, I Kings 21).  Because covetousness…lies behind all the crimes committed, each act implicitly breaks the Tenth Commandment as well.”

According to Freedman, these stories served to teach the Jewish community in Babylonian exile “that their fate” was “not the result of God’s abandoning them, but a consequence of their abandonment of God.”

Another example of the conflict of law and narrative occurs when the Jewish people return from the Babylonian exile.  Ezra the Priest demanded that the men cast off their foreign wives.  Even if the women were ready to embrace their husband’s traditions, Ezra insisted that the men send them away, along with any children they had borne. 

How does one respond to such a harsh, unjust decree?  With a wonderful story we call the book of Ruth.  A Moabite woman, Ruth, a foreigner if there ever was one, not only marries a Jew, but insists on remaining part of the Jewish people after his death.  She eventually marries one of her husband’s relatives and gives birth to a child, Obed, who will father Jesse who will father David who will become the King of Israel, and from whom, according to Jewish tradition, the Messiah will come!  So much for Ezra’s condemnation of foreign wives.  I imagine the author of this wonderful story celebrating when we read it each year on Shavuot, while Ezra is rolling over in his grave.

Here is the beauty of our Scripture and our tradition.  Stories challenge laws and laws challenge stories.  And when all is said and done, we have the laws and we have the stories and we have a more vibrant and resonant tradition.

Our people’s love affair with stories continued with the rabbis who, recognizing the power of stories to illuminate texts, created midrash, also known as agadah.  These stories answered questions raised by the biblical text and served to bring the texts to life for a new generation. 

Rabbi Samuel Karff calls agadah “the language of Jewish faith.”  Agadah “proclaims the transcendent meaning and significance of living as a Jew.”  These stories “express and confirm the reality and meaning of the people Israel’s relation to God” according to Rabbi Karff.

Two midrashim about the giving of the Torah illustrate this point.  One midrash teaches that before God offered the Torah to Israel, God offered it to other nations, who asked what it contained and, upon hearing a particular law that it could not observe, rejected it.  When God finally offers the Torah to Israel, the people respond, “Na’aseh v’nishma, we will do and we will obey,” without asking a single question.

The second midrash teaches that when the Jews were gathered at Mount Sinai, God lifted the mountain, held it over their heads and said, “If you accept the Torah, all well and good, but if not, this will be your grave!”

According to the first story we accepted the Torah eagerly and willingly; according to the second we had no choice.  “Eilu v’eilu divrei Elohim chayim/These and these are the words of the living God,” our tradition teaches.  Both stories offer important lessons.  Sometimes we are excited to embrace Judaism while at other times it is a burden.  Both stories are crucial to understanding our relationship to God and what it means to be a Jew.

The Talmud, in the midst of long and often complex legal discussions includes many stories.  In every generation, in every community in which Jews lived, one can find stories which enrich our culture.  Jews in Eastern Europe enjoyed Yiddish stories, such as Sholom Aleichem’s Tales of Tevye the Milkman that are the basis for one of the 20^th century’s most popular stories:  Fiddler on the Roof.

In more recent years, Jews in Israel, the United States, and throughout the world have continued the honored tradition of telling stories.  When Saul Bellow died this past year, he was lauded as perhaps the great American storyteller of his age.

Now, some of us are naturally skeptical with stories.  When we hear a story we immediately ask:  “Is it true?  Did it really happen?”  And we assume that a story’s value depends upon an affirmative answer.  I had a teacher in junior high who said he only read non-fiction because he only had so much time and did not want to waste it on reading fiction.  At the time, I thought he had a point, but a few years later I came across a statement by one of Judaism’s master storytellers, Elie Wiesel, that changed the way I looked at stories.

In the introduction to Legends of our Time, Wiesel describes an encounter with a rabbi who knew his grandfather.

“What are you doing?”  the rabbi asks Wiesel. 

“I am writing,” he replies.

            “Is that all?” the rabbi asks, “And what are you writing?”

            When Wiesel answers that he is writing “stories,” the rabbi wants to know if they are “true stories.”

            Wiesel tries to explain that it is not so simple to call something a “true” story, but the rabbi cuts him off:  “You are writing lies,” he charges.

            Wiesel, however, continues, offering a profound insight to the truth of stories.  He writes, “Some events do take place but are not true; others are [true]—although they never occurred.”  “Some events do take place but are not true; other are [true]—although they never occurred.” 

In other words, the truth of an event or a story, by which Wiesel means its meaning and ultimate significance, the truth of an event or a story is independent of its historicity.  We should judge a story not by whether it is fiction or non-fiction, not by whether it happened or not, but by its message and meaning.  

We should not ask whether a story happened precisely as the Torah says it happened.  We should not ask, “Did God really speak to Moses in the midst of a burning bush?”  or “Did God really part the sea?”  These are the wrong questions to ask of a religious text.  Whether or not these things happened the way the Torah says they happened is beside the point.

What is important is what we learn from these stories.  The rabbis, for example,  asked:  “Why did God speak to Moses from the midst of a lowly thorn bush?”  And they answered, “to teach that no place on earth is devoid of God’s presence.” 

With regard to the splitting of the sea they asked:  “Why does the Torah say that the Israelites went into the sea upon the dry ground?”  It doesn’t seem to make sense; either they went into the sea, or they went upon the dry ground.  The rabbis answered, “this teaches that God did not split the sea for them until they entered it, indeed until the waters reached up to their nostrils!”  Before God split the sea, the people had to demonstrate their faith to go forward and cross; that is the crucial lesson of this story.

Each of these answers offers us profound insights, demonstrating how our biblical stories teach timeless lessons and guide us in our lives.  This year, as we read the Torah each week, we will pay particular attention to the stories and the lessons they teach us.

Harvey Cox, a Christian theologian with a deep appreciation for Judaism, writes about the significance of religious narrative.  “As with all stories they are sometimes based on historical events, often only dimly remembered by way of legends, songs, and sagas, such as the tales of the patriarchs and kings in the Hebrew scriptures. . . . But what sets religious stories apart from other stories is that they point beyond themselves to a crucial dimension of human existence that defies reduction to empirical proof or disproof.  Religious stories are often woven into rituals that enlist not just the mind but also the body and all the senses into the narrative.”

The best example of a religious story woven into a ritual is the Passover seder.  On Passover we say “B’chol dor vador chayav adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatza mimitzrayim/In each and every generation we must see ourselves as if we left Egypt.  We retell the story of the Exodus with food and ritual so that we will identify with our ancestors’ story and make it our story.

And just as we make the Exodus from Egypt our story, we should also make other decisive moments in Jewish history part of our story.

B’chol dor vador, in each and every generation, we should view ourselves as if we responded to God’s call to Abraham to leave home and set out for a new land.

B’chol dor vador, in each and every generation, we should view ourselves as if we accepted the Torah at Mount Sinai.

B’chol dor vador, in each and every generation, we should view ourselves as if we built the Temple with Solomon and experienced it being destroyed by the Babylonians.

B’chol dor vador, in each and every generation, we should view ourselves as if we went into exile and returned to resettle the land.

Each of these stories is an important part of our people’s history.  Each offers us insights into not only who our ancestors were, but who we are as well.

Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver captures the importance of identifying with our people’s history in a moving narrative called “Remembering:  I stood with Abraham.”  It reads in part:

            “I stood with Abraham in his lonely vigil
            And read the destiny of my people in the stars.
            “I was with Isaac when he built the altar
            Where his faith and devotion were put to the test.
            “I stood with Jacob when he wrestled through the night with the angel of despair
            And won a blessing at the break of dawn.

This narrative continues in a similar way with Moses and Joshua, Samuel and David, the prophets and rabbis, the victims of the Holocaust and the pioneers of the state of Israel.  We identify with the stories of our ancestors so that we can experience what they experienced, so that their stories become our stories.

A Jew, according to Elie Wiesel, is “one who transmits the past to the future…who transmits” one’s own experience to one’s children or to one’s friends

I invite you to join us this year as we learn from the stories of our tradition, as we tell and retell them to understand their meaning and lessons.

I invite you to join us as we share our personal stories with each other to discover who we are and what we can teach each other.

And I invite you to join us as we discover our place in the great story of our people.

The early Chasidic leader Dov Baer of Mezritch taught that “if we want to keep our children, we must teach them that we are part of a chain, that we are part of a story that simply cannot stop.”

In this new year, may we truly recognize that we are part of our people’s story, and that our people’s story is part of us.

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