Our own stories get used against us. Gifted journalist Matti Friedman recently made this observation, when he noted how our enemies turn us against ourselves. The result? We get remade into the villains of our own stories. The pharaohs of the Exodus. The executioners, God forbid, of the Holocaust. The land-dispossessors in the fulfillment of our very own covenant.
What then ought we do? Have better get-togethers with our stories. Deeper familiarity with them. With what they’re about. Indeed, with what we’re all about. Yes, that’s what Passover’s seder is for. It’s also what this past Shabbat was for.
Its special name is associated with remembering (Shabbat Zachor). It always precedes Purim, the Jewish calendar’s last holiday, with Passover, a month later, marking the birth of our people at the Exodus. Despite Purim’s fun, it’s a grim remembering. Before puppets and face-painting, it brings us face-to-face with dark danger and a perilous fast day.
What’s so often missed by those who seek to claim and remake our stories is the centrality of accountability. They’re less about rights. They’re more about responsibilities. Our right to become free from slavery shifts to a 3,500-year-career of responsibility to help bring others out from under it. So too with opposition to mass murder. And with upbuilding and statecraft.
Inspiring educator Dr. Chaim Peri recently shared a personal reflection. As a young child he’d walk each day from his home in an Arab neighborhood north of Haifa to visit his mother who needed institutional support to his school. Daily, he traversed this triangle of instability. Today, 60 years later, at the midpoint of the same triangle, sits one of his Village Way educational campuses for Arab Israelis that kindles hope and bright futures for hundreds of at-risk teens each year. It’s a brilliant illustration of how remembering a true past can serve as the foundation for true and trustworthy futures.
“Delusion is not a nutrient,” writes memoirist Tara Westover. “You cannot build a true future from a false past.” This Shabbat, may you find your way from grim settings, damp and dark with deafening hollering, into regions where notions, tenderness, and curiosity are active. And may you find yourself replenished by nutrients from your very own true past as you fortify more faithful futures.
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