I want to talk about story.
This week, we begin the book of Numbers, B’midbar in Hebrew. It starts on a very boring note: census data. Parshat B’midbar is seemingly not the most exiting stuff in the world. The book B'midbar will contain many stories. Indeed most of the book is story.
Funny thing is, looking at the census data, it too is story. Once you being to look at the all this information you begin to see things. People’s names in particular.
7. From Judah: Nahshon the son of Amminadab. [1:7]
3. And on the east side toward the rising of the sun shall they of the standard of the camp of Judah camp their armies; and Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, shall be captain of the sons of Judah. [2:3]
Stories can be put together from many places. So we read of Nahshon back in Exodus
23. And Aaron took him Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab, sister of Nahshon, to wife; and she bore him Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. (Ex. 6:23)
Nahshon is Aaron’s brother-in law. If we read a later text we find:
20. And Amminadab fathered Nahshon, and Nahshon fathered Salmon, 21. And Salmon fathered Boaz, and Boaz fathered Obed, 22. And Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David. [Ruth 4:20-21]
Nahshon is the Grandfather of Boaz, who will marry Ruth. Ruth and Boaz in turn will be the great grandparents of King David. In the book of Ruth, we also find that Nahshon was descended from Tamar and Judah.
Names lead us down the path of stories. Nahshon is only mentioned nine times in the entire biblical text. He is not a very big character himself. Yet he can be connected to just about every major figure in the bible. Stories are meant to be embellished, and indeed Nahshon’s story has one particular embellishment.
R. Judah b. R. Il'ai expounded: When Israel stood by the Red Sea the tribes stood contending with each other, one saying, ' I will go in first,’ and the other saying, ' I will go in first.’ Thereupon Nahshon leapt into the waves of the sea and waded in. [Numbers Rabbah 8:4, Sota 37a]
The rabbis couldn’t resist adding the story of Nahshon most people remember. He was the first into the drink, even before it split. He didn’t talk, he just acted, and it was his act that caused the miracle according to some stories. If you knew of Nahshon you probably didn’t know he was a grieving uncle when Nadab and Abihu died. But you did know the powerful lesson, one driving all of Judaism, that it is our actions that are paramount.
One story that I repeat far too often lately is the one of the Hasidic Rabbi Leib. Rabbi Leib went to study with the Great Maggid not to learn Torah, but to learn how the Maggid of Mezhirech ties his bootlaces. To know the deeds of sages in even the little acts of everyday life and to tell stories has a powerful effect. We might have explicit rules but we also need to have something else to get us to do those rules. Story, aggadah, is that thing. We in Judaism do not believe in enforcement. Indeed the verb root for enforcing a rule is the same word for oppression. Instead we look to a different way, we model the behavior of our best and brightest, and we communicate that behavior through story.
As one of the greatest models for much of Modern Jewish behavior, The Baal Shem Tov believed when one tells stories in praise of the tzaddikim, it is though he were engaged in something as powerful as Mystical study. Stories, unlike law, tend to stick to us, because we have the experience that the rest of the world has. There is something concrete, and something emotional about Nahshon’s story, which is so different than merely stating a principle of “deeds, not words.” Nahshon entering into the Red Sea for me brings back images of being afraid to be the first to dive into the camp swimming pool. The fear is there. It is a very real place and time in my memory. Your vision of the event like Nahshon’s may be different. Yet, I believe that most everyone had a time and place they felt like the Israelites at the Red Sea, whether they did what Nahshon did or what the Israelites did there.
Story is summarized by my tagline, “It is a matter of Torah and I am required to learn.” [Ber 62a] If tying shoelaces is not enough, R. Akiba and his students telling stories of the toilet habits on one’s teachers in these stories on folio 62a of Tractate Brachot crosses the line past the absurd. We learn something incredibly important in such absurdity however. Our bodies are creations of God, everything done with them can be done in holiness and intention. I can make the statement or tell the story. The story is what is remembered and understood.
B’midbar is a collection of such stories set in the wilderness, the chronicle of the journey from Sinai to being at the shores of the Jordan, ready to enter the land of Israel. We meet many people besides our main characters of Moses and Aaron. We will meet pagan magicians, talking donkeys, rebellious relatives, slanderous sisters, irritated father in laws, a guy who works on Shabbat and his brilliant daughters. We get Satan’s first appearance in the biblical text, and a consortium of bad guys. People will whine, argue, lie, get sick and many will die. In all of these stories we will also see a bunch of whiny slaves turn into an unstoppable fighting force, only to be stopped by an application of social psychology. By the end, we find a people who are responsible enough to begin a new journey and a new story, the story of living in the land.
While we do not live in the wilderness, sometimes the events in our lives make us feel that way, in the next few weeks we get to revisit stories which help in those times. We get the emotional relief that we are not the first to see an unknown land, be it a new job or school, and feel like grasshoppers compared to the inhabitants at first glance. At the same time we are told by Caleb not to fear for we can do this thing, merely because we can. God is with us.
Abraham Joshua Heschel decried the over-emphasis on Halakah, the law, over Aggadah, the stories where we get our motivations, ethics and theology to follow the Halakah. They need to be a polarity, not one or the other but a balance. As we enter into the wilderness with the stories of the Israelites, lets’ look for the beautiful gems of story that can improve our live by telling them and living them. Maybe we will become stories too.
No comments:
Post a Comment