66 | APRIL 18 • 2024
J
N
I
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