Search Library

Our own story
Contributed by Geri Garfinkel

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

Telling our own story

From "Hasidic Tales" by Rabbi Rami Shapiro 

When you see friends on Monday morning and someone asks you what you did over the weekend, you don’t read the appointments listed in your calendar. You tell a story: “Sunday morning started out normal enough, but on my way to the grocery store there was this incredible car accident, and I rushed over to help. You won’t believe who was in the car....” The same is true when you meet with family or friends at the end of a day and relate what hap- pened at home, work, or school. Unless you are a teenager talking to an adult, the answer to “What did you do today?” is rarely “Nothing.” You tell a story. And the story you tell determines the meaning you derive from the events of your life.

The quality of our lives depends to a great degree on the kinds of stories we tell. Miserable people tend to tell stories of woe; joyous people tend to tell stories of hope. The question we must ask is this: Do our tales reflect the personality of the teller, or do they create it? Does the tale mirror the teller, or does the teller come to resemble the tale?

The safest answer, of course, is that it is a bit of both. But my own experience as a congregational rabbi and professional storyteller is that the tale has greater power than the teller. This is why so many of the great spiritual teachers told stories. These are the great parables, the Zen koan, and the teaching tales of the world’s wisdom traditions. Listening to these tales with full attention lifts us out of our own story and reveals an alternative drama that may offer us a greater sense of meaning than any of the tales we tell ourselves.

These tales shift our attention from the mundane to the holy while leaving us firmly grounded in the ordinary realities of our everyday lives. The most powerful teaching tales never take us out of the world but plant us more deeply in it. While often dealing with matters of the spirit, they continually ground us in the facts of daily living, for heaven and earth, nirvana and samsara, this world and the World to Come are simply different ways of experiencing the singular reality of this very moment. And that is what great stories do: They show us a different way to engage reality. Nothing changes but our minds, and this, of course, changes everything.
haggadah Section: Maggid - Beginning
Source: http://www.jewishlights.com/PDF's/HasidicTales.pdf

Featured clips


More clips from Geri Garfinkel