Aggadah: Constructing Personal and Communal Narratives

Context: The Judeans were exiled to Babylonia in 597 BCE by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. After King Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon, he allowed the Judeans to return to Judea in 539 BCE. The following is the story of the returning exiles, having forgotten their traditions while in exile, celebrating Rosh Hashanah once again, for a "first time."

Zakhor, by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1982)

At the very heart of this book lies an attempt to understand what seemed a paradox to me at one time – that although Judaism throughout the ages was absorbed with the meaning of history, historiography itself played at best an ancillary role among the Jews, and often no role at all; and, concomitantly, that while memory of the past was always a central component of Jewish experience, the historian was not its primary custodian.

These significant dualities have often been obscured by rhetorical flourishes and a certain semantic confusion. The Jews, after all, have the reputation of being at once the most historically oriented of peoples and as possessing the longest and most tenacious of memories. Yet such accolades can be profoundly true or completely false, depending upon what one means by "history" or "memory." If they are not to be completely meaningless, we should at least want to know what kind of history the Jews have valued, what, out of their past, they chose to remember, and how they preserved, transmitted, and revitalized that which was recalled. (xxxiii)

...

It may help to point out...that in repeatedly employing such terms as "collective memory" or "group memory," I do not have in mind some vaguely genetic endowment, not an innate psychic structure analogous to the Jungian archetypes. Contrary to a theory widely held as late as the seventeenth century, a child left in the forest to its own linguistic devices would not speak Hebrew spontaneously, not even if it were a Jewish enfant sauvage, and neither would it "remember" that Abraham journeyed from Ur to Canaan. Only the group can bequeath both language and a transpersonal memory. It was the abiding merit of Maurice Halbwachs...to have insisted to psychologists and philosophers alike that even individual memory is structured through the conscious efforts and institutions of the group. (xxxiv)

The Value of Generational Storytelling

Researchers have begun to establish a causal link between storytelling and thriving. In 2001, psychologists compared children's psychological health with their knowledge of their own family history. They measured this knowledge on a "Do You Know?" scale using questions like:

• Do you know where your grandparents met? Your parents?
• Do you know of an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family?
• Do you know what went on when you were being born?

The results surprised even the researchers. They found: "The more children knew about their family's history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem, and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. The 'Do You Know?' scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children's emotional health and happiness." Two months after this study was conducted, the September 11 attacks occurred. The psychologists went back and studied how the same group of children responded to that trauma. The results were the same: "The ones who knew more about their families proved to be more resilient, meaning they could moderate the effects of stress."

To explain the connection between story and resilience, the psychologists coined the term "intergenerational self." It's a sense that you're part of something bigger, that your life is an episode in a larger narrative. Marshall Duke, one of the study's authors and a professor at Emory University, who also happens to be Jewish, compared this idea to a bubbemeise, Yiddish for "grandmother's tale." In his family, Duke recounts, the grandmother will say, " 'You're having trouble with math, kid? Let me tell you, your father had trouble with math. You don't want to practice piano? Boy, your aunt Laura didn't want to practice piano, either.' Whatever problem the child has, the grandmother has a story for it—even if it's made up!"

More than just entertain and amuse, these cross-generational stories serve a higher purpose. Family stories let children know that they're not alone, and that those who came before them celebrated triumphs and overcame struggles, just as they do. The researchers define three types of family narratives. The ascending narrative says, we came from nothing and now we've succeeded. The descending narrative says, we used to have it all and now we have nothing. Finally, "the most healthful narrative . . . called the oscillating family narrative," says we've had ups and downs, and we've persevered, as a family. This third narrative is, indeed, the story of the Jewish people. When we sit around the Passover seder table each year, we invite the next generation into the Jewish family story. As the Mishnah (P'sachim 10:5) teaches, "In each generation the individual is obligated to see themself as though they [themself] left Egypt, as it is written: 'And you shall explain to your child on that day, 'It is because of what the Eternal did for me when I went free from Egypt' (Exodus 13:8)."

(Rabbi David Segal, Ten Minutes of Torah, URJ, http://www.reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/vayigash/our-stories-ourselves)