Redemption Through Storytelling: The Stories We Tell Ourselves (Part 2)

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Arielle Krule — Rabbi Michael Hattin, Beit Midrash Program, Pardes Center for Jewish Educators

The Rambam relates that "it is a positive command of the Torah to recount on the eve of the fifteenth of Nisan the miracles and wonders that were wrought for our ancestors in Egypt". While this mitzvah is concisely mentioned in the Torah on four occasions, it was only later during the Mishnaic, Talmudic and medieval periods that the exact procedures of the Seder night including the story of the Exodus were crystallized into a liturgical text: the Haggadah. It is instructive to note that the grammatical root of the noun Haggadah (literally “the telling”) and the infinitive להגיד (literally “to tell”) is actually נגד. This root is more commonly employed in its prepositional form signifying “opposite” and sometimes “in opposition” and is always used in a relational sense. For instance, when we sit at a table opposite a friend, we are positioned נגדה (negdah). We may therefore more accurately translate the term Haggadah not as “the telling” but rather as “the discussion that occurs between people who are in lively conversation with each other.” While a סיפור is a story that is told to a listener who listens, a הגדה is a conversation that takes place between two or more active partners. The particular pedagogic strategy that the Haggadah employs to foster this conversation involves asking probing but open-ended questions that are suitable for all ages offering general responses, which are intended as starting points for further conversation, and encouraging us to experience the evening through multiple modalities. To refer to the evening's telling as the הגדה rather than, for instance, the סיפור, is to suggest that our retelling of the Exodus story is not intended to be a detached, historical account communicated frontally to an audience of passive listeners but rather a dynamic, vigorous exchange of ideas that engages all of the participants in active dialogue.

All of that is easy to understand but there is one final verb. The fourth verb is "v'ga'alti etchem," and I will redeem you. What does that add to the picture? What does it mean to be redeemed?

Whenever you go through a trauma, it's not just enough to be saved from the trauma; the trauma leaves its mark. Somehow you need to be made whole. It's all the more so when the trauma is in some way self-inflicted.

How do you become whole when the wound that you've suffered in some way came from you. In those situations, to really be redeemed means to face the source of the wound. To look at what you did to make it happen. To replay your history, but to redeem that history, to repair it, to make yourself stronger.

God gave us the chance to do just that with the Pesach offering. We have to face the horror of the sale of Joseph. We couldn't just sweep that sorry chapter of our history under the rug. We had to replay the events, but to choose a different ending. We had to pull our brother out of the pit.

In our case, God redeemed us very, very deeply. Not only did He allow us to replay the acts that brought us down to Egypt, the sale of Yosef, and to somehow replay those acts redemptively, but he also allowed us to replay the dynamics behind those acts. Why did we do it? We replayed that too.

Why did we do it? In Goats and Coats One, in Goats and Coats Two, we betrayed our brother. We deceived our father, all because we so desperately wanted to be father's firstborn child. We struggled over the bachor. So how do you redeem that? You have to somehow take that flaw and turn it into a strength.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Arielle Krule — “Manifesto of the Brave and Broken-Hearted” by Brene Brown, PhD

There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers than those of us who are willing to fall because we have learned how to rise. With skinned knees and bruised hearts; we choose owning our stories of struggle, over hiding, over hustling, over pretending. When we deny our stories, they define us. When we run from struggle, we are never free. So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye. We will not be characters in our stories. Not villains, not victims, not even heroes. We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings. We craft love from heartbreak, compassion from shame, grace from disappointment, courage from failure. Showing up is our power. Story is our way home. Truth is our song. We are the brave and brokenhearted. We are rising strong.

The optical delusion Einstein refers to is the idea that we are separate from those around us as well as from those who came before us. Yet, we've seen again and again, we're connected to people in our family history whose unresolved traumas have become our legacy. When the connection remains unconscious, we can live imprisoned in feelings and sensations that belong to the past. However, with our family history in view, the pathways that will set us free become illuminated.

Sometimes the simple act of linking our experience to an unresolved trauma in our family is enough.... For some of us, the awareness of what happened in our families needs to be accompanied by an exercise that brings about a release or creates great ease in our bodies (Chapter 1, pg. 145-146).

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Arielle Krule Bonus Material - Brene Brown, PhD Resource of Stormy First Drafts

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