66 | APRIL 18 • 2024 
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t remains one of the most 
counterintuitive passages 
in all of religious litera-
ture. Moses is addressing the 
Israelites just 
days before their 
release. They 
have been exiles 
for 210 years. 
After an initial 
period of afflu-
ence and ease, 
they have been 
oppressed, enslaved and their 
male children killed in an act 
of slow genocide. Now, after 
signs and wonders and a series 
of plagues that have brought 
the greatest empire of the 
ancient world to its knees, they 
are about to go free. 
 Yet Moses does not talk 
about freedom, or the land 
flowing with milk and honey, 
or the journey they will have to 
undertake through the desert. 
Instead, three times, he turns 
to the distant future, when the 
journey is complete and the 
people — free at last — are in 
their own land. And what he 
talks about is not the land itself, 
or the society they will have to 
build or even the demands and 
responsibilities of freedom. 
Instead, he talks about 
education, specifically about 

the duty of parents to their 
children. He speaks about the 
questions children may ask 
when the epic events that are 
about to happen are, at best, a 
distant memory. He tells the 
Israelites to do what Jews have 
done from then to now. Tell 
your children the story. 
Do it in the maximally effec-
tive way. Re-enact the drama of 
exile and exodus, slavery and 
freedom. Get your children to 
ask questions. Make sure you 
tell the story as your own, not 
as some dry account of history. 
Say that the way you live and 
the ceremonies you observe are 
“because of what God did for 
me” — not my ancestors but 
me. Make it vivid, make it per-
sonal and make it live.
He says this not once but 
three times: “It shall be that 
when you come to the land 
which God will give you as 
He said, and you observe this 
ceremony, and your children 
say to you, ‘What does this 
service mean to you?’ you shall 
say, ‘It is a Passover sacrifice to 
the Lord, who passed over the 
houses of the Israelites in Egypt 
when He struck the Egyptians 
and spared our homes.
’” Ex. 
12:25-27 
“On that day you shall tell 

your child, ‘It is because of 
what the Lord did for me when 
I came out of Egypt.
’” Ex. 13:8
“In the future, when your 
child asks you, ‘What is this?’ 
you shall tell him, ‘With a 
mighty hand, the Lord brought 
us out from Egypt, from the 
land of slavery.
’” Ex. 13:14
Why was this the most 
important thing he could do in 
this intense moment of redemp-
tion? Because freedom is the 
work of a nation, nations need 
identity, identity needs memory, 
and memory is encoded in the 
stories we tell. Without narra-
tive, there is no memory, and 
without memory, we have no 
identity. 
The most powerful link 
between the generations is the 
tale of those who came before 
us — a tale that becomes ours 
and that we hand on as a sacred 
heritage to those who will come 
after us. We are the story we tell 
ourselves about ourselves, and 
identity begins in the story par-
ents tell their children.

LIFE’S 3 FUNDAMENTAL 
QUESTIONS ANSWERED
That narrative provides the 
answer to the three fundamen-
tal questions every reflective 
individual must ask at some 

stage in their lives: Who am 
I? Why am I here? How then 
shall I live? There are many 
answers to these questions, 
but the Jewish ones are: I am a 
member of the people whom 
God rescued from slavery to 
freedom. I am here to build a 
society that honors the free-
dom of others, not just my 
own. And I must live in con-
scious knowledge that freedom 
is the gift of God, honored by 
keeping His covenant of law 
and love.
Twice in the history of the 
West this fact was forgotten, 
or ignored, or rebelled against. 
In the 17th and 18th century, 
there was a determined effort 
to create a world without 
identities. This was the project 
called the Enlightenment. It 
was a noble dream. To it we 
owe many developments whose 
value is beyond question and 
that we must strive to preserve. 
However, one aspect of it failed 
and was bound to fail: the 
attempt to live without identity.
The argument went like 
this. Identity throughout the 
Middle Ages was based on 
religion. But religion had for 
centuries led to war between 
Christians and Muslims. Then, 
following the Reformation, it 
led to war between Christian 
and Christian, Protestant and 
Catholic. Therefore, to abolish 
war one had to move beyond 
identity. Identities are partic-
ular. Therefore, let us worship 
only the things that are uni-
versal: reason and observation, 
philosophy and science. Let 
us have systems, not stories. 
Then we will become one 
humanity, like the world before 
Babel. As Schiller put it and 
Beethoven set to music in the 
last movement of the Ninth 
Symphony: Alle Menschen 
werden Brüder, “
All men will be 
brothers.
”
It cannot be done, at least 

The Story We Tell

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

