H

oward Gardner, professor of 
education and psychology at 
Harvard University, is one of the 
great minds of our time. He is best known 
for his theory of “multiple intelligences,” 
the idea that there is not 
just one thing that can be 
measured and defined as 
intelligence but many dif-
ferent facets — which is one 
dimension of the dignity of 
difference. He has also writ-
ten many books on leader-
ship and creativity, including 
one in particular, Leading Minds, that is 
important in understanding this week’s 
parsha of Ki Tavo.
Gardner’s argument is that what makes 
a leader is the ability to tell a particular kind 
of story — one that explains ourselves to 
ourselves and gives power and resonance 
to a collective vision. So Churchill told 
the story of Britain’s indomitable courage 
in the fight for freedom. Gandhi spoke 
about the dignity of India and non-violent 
protest. Margaret Thatcher talked about 
the importance of the individual against 
an ever-encroaching State. Martin Luther 
King Jr. told of how a great nation is col-
or-blind. Stories give the group a shared 
identity and sense of purpose.

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has also 
emphasized the importance of narrative to 
the moral life. “Man,” he writes, “is in his 
actions and practice, as well as in his fic-
tions, essentially a story-telling animal.” It 
is through narratives that we begin to learn 
who we are and how we are called on to 
behave. “Deprive children of stories and 
you leave them unscripted, anxious stut-
terers in their actions as in their words.” To 
know who we are is, in large part, to 
understand the story or stories of which 
we are a part.
The great questions — “Who are we?” 
“Why are we here?” “What is our task?” 
— are best answered by telling a story. As 
Barbara Hardy put it: “We dream in nar-
rative, daydream in narrative, remember, 
anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, 
plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, 
learn, hate and love by narrative.” 
This is fundamental to understanding 
why Torah is the kind of book it is: not a 
theological treatise or a metaphysical system 
but a series of interlinked stories extended 
over time, from Abraham and Sarah’s jour-
ney from Mesopotamia to Moses’ and the 
Israelites’ wanderings in the desert. Judaism 
is less about truth as system than about truth 
as story. And we are part of that story. That 
is what it is to be a Jew.

A NATION OF STORYTELLERS
A large part of what Moses is doing in the 
book of Devarim is retelling that story to 
the next generation, reminding them of 
what God had done for their parents and 
of some of the mistakes their parents had 
made. Moses, as well as being the great 
liberator, is the supreme storyteller. Yet 
what he does in parshat Ki Tavo extends 
way beyond this.
He tells the people that when they 
enter, conquer and settle the land, they 
must bring the first ripened fruits to the 
central Sanctuary, the Temple, as a way 
of giving thanks to God. A Mishnah in 
Bikkurim describes the joyous scene as 
people converged on Jerusalem from 
across the country, bringing their first-
fruits to the accompaniment of music and 
celebration. Merely bringing the fruits, 
though, was not enough. Each person had 
to make a declaration. That declaration 
become one of the best-known passages 
in the Torah because, though it was origi-
nally said on Shavuot, the festival of first-
fruits, in post-biblical times, it became 
a central element of the Haggadah on 
seder night: “My father was a wandering 
Aramean, and he went down into Egypt 
and lived there, few in number, there 
becoming a great nation, powerful and 

A Nation of Storytellers 

62 | AUGUST 31 • 2023 

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

