The oral tradition among Jews, like their literary tradition, is highly developed, particularly in those exposed to Hasidism. The recognition that words spoken aloud to another person have particular power is a notion that weaves in and out of Jewish culture…
…A story told aloud, to progeny or peers, is of course more than a text. It is an event. When it is done properly, the listener is more than a mere passive receiver or validator, he is changed…
…Whether done in individual lives or by a cultural or generational cohort, private and collective lives, properly re-membered, are interpretative. Full, or thick, description is such an analysis. This involves finding linkages between the group’s shared, valued beliefs and symbols, and specific historical events. Particularities are subsumed and equated with grander themes that are seen as exemplifying ultimate concerns. Then such stories may be enlarged to the level of myth as well as art -- sacred and eternal justifications for how things are and what has happened. A life, then, is not envisioned as belonging only to the individual who lived it; it is regarded as belonging to the world, to progeny who are heirs to the embodied tradition, or to God.
Such re-membered lives are moral documents, and their function is salvific, for inevitably it implies that all this has not been for nothing.
- Barbara Myerhoff, Stories as Equipment for Living
- What, according to the text above, is the power of sharing a story with another person? What is the storyteller able to do? In what ways is the listener transformed by hearing the story?
- What does it mean to re-member? What is our obligation to Re-member on Passover?
צֵא וּלְמַד מַה בִּקֵּשׁ לָבָן הָאֲרַמִּי לַעֲשׂוֹת לְיַעֲקֹב אָבִינוּ: שֶׁפַּרְעֹה לֹא גָזַר אֶלָּא עַל הַזְּכָרִים, וְלָבָן בִּקֵּשׁ לַעֲקֹר אֶת־הַכֹּל. שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי, וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה וַיָּגָר שָׁם בִּמְתֵי מְעָט, וַיְהִי שָׁם לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל, עָצוּם וָרָב.
Haggadah, Magid
Go out and learn what what Lavan the Aramean sought to do to Ya'akov, our father; since Pharaoh only decreed [the death sentence] on the males but Lavan sought to uproot the whole [people]. As it is stated (Deuteronomy 26:5), "An Aramean was destroying my father and he went down to Egypt, and he resided there with a small number and he became there a nation, great, powerful and numerous."
This text is the centerpiece of the Maggid, or storytelling, section of the Passover Haggadah. How does this text relate to the narrative and experience of the Passover Seder?
This is capsule history at its best. The essentials to be remembered are all here, in a ritualized formula. Compressed within it are what we might paraphrase as the patriarchal origins in Mesopotamia, the emergence of the Hebrew nation in the midst of history rather than in mythic pre-history, slavery in Egypt and liberation therefrom, the climactic acquisition of the Land of Israel, and throughout -- the acknowledgment of God as lord of history.
Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, p12.
How do we distinguish between history and memory?
(לז) ובכל דור ודור חייב אדם להראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים. שלא את אבותינו בלבד גאל אלא אף אותנו גאל, שנאמר (דברים ו): "ואותנו הוציא משם, למען הביא אותנו לתת לנו את הארץ אשר נשבע לאבותינו".
And in every generation, a person is obligated to present himself as if he left Egypt. That not only only did God redeem our ancestors, but God redeemed us as well, as it is said, "and us He freed from there, that He might take us and give us the land that He had promised on oath to our fathers."
בְּכָל־דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת־עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְהִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר, בַּעֲבוּר זֶה עָשָׂה ה' לִי בְּצֵאתִי מִמִּצְרַיִם. לֹא אֶת־אֲבוֹתֵינוּ בִּלְבָד גָּאַל הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, אֶלָּא אַף אוֹתָנוּ גָּאַל עִמָּהֶם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְאוֹתָנוּ הוֹצִיא מִשָּׁם, לְמַעַן הָבִיא אוֹתָנוּ, לָתֶת לָנוּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר נִשָׁבַּע לַאֲבֹתֵינוּ.
In each and every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he left Egypt, as it is stated (Exodus 13:8); "And you shall explain to your son on that day: For the sake of this, did the Lord do [this] for me in my going out of Egypt." Not only our ancestors did the Holy One, blessed be He, redeem, but rather also us [together] with them did He redeem, as it is stated (Deuteronomy 6:23); "And He took us out from there, in order to bring us in, to give us the land which He swore unto our fathers."
1. Why do the three different instructions above use distinct language to discuss our relationship to the Passover story? How does being commanded to either remember, see ourselves, or show ourselves change our obligation to tell the story on Passover?
2. Is the telling of the Exodus story an act of remembering our collective history? Are we reliving the past or reenacting the past?
3. Which action most resonates with you? Why?