Bo: Stories of Memory

Still from Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), courtesy of Photofest
Still from Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), courtesy of Photofest

Finally, after so many years of bondage and cruel servitude, the Jewish people are days away from their freedom. In this moment of anticipation one imagines that their minds must have been filled with thoughts of what they will do now that they’re free, of where they will go. Turning to Moshe, who has led them thus far, they might have expected him to talk of what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks describes as ‘the land flowing with milk and honey, or the journey they will have to undertake through the desert’.[1] Instead, Moshe gives them an imperative – to tell their children the story of ‘[G-d] did for [them] when [they] came out of Egypt’ (Ex. 13:8).

Whilst this imperative is literally given to the Israelites of this moment, the Torah’s literary and theological function as the core text of the Jewish people gives this instruction a time-transcending quality which extends far beyond the narrative at hand. Moshe tells his people, at three separate textual junctures[2], how they should answer when their children ask of the exodus from Egypt, telling them to do so with vivid language, careful detail and with the core imagery unchanged: בחזק יד הוציאנו ה’ ממצרים מבית עבדים, ‘with a strong hand G-d brought us out of Egypt, from the house of bondage’ (Ex. 13:14). He describes how the remembrance of the exodus will be signified by ‘a sign […] upon [one’s] hand, and […] a memorial between [the] eyes, that G-d’s Torah may be in [one’s] mouth’, לאות על-ידך ולזכרון בין עיניך למען תהיה תורת ה’ בפיך (Ex.13:9), a practice which is undertaken by orthodox Jewish men every weekday morning as they wear tefillin. At the core of it, however, what Moshe is imploring his people to do, before they have even experienced it for themselves, is to remember this exodus, this miraculous moment of liberation, and tell its story to all those who are to come.

The exodus from Egypt is central to Jewish identity; it is a story told at various times throughout the Hebrew calendar, whether it be reading this parasha itself, reenacting the story textually and culinarily on Pesach, or reading the Shema twice a day. It is told over and over, with renewed curiosity and detail each time, as if it has never been told before, the tellers partaking in the act of storytelling with great animation. Though he is asking the Jewish people to tell a particular story – the themes of which have been recapitulated and echoed throughout Jewish history – Moshe is giving them the opportunity to nurture the ability of storytelling, something which has become characteristic of Jewish people and Jewish culture more broadly. It holds great multi-faceted power, affecting the listener and teller emotionally and intellectually, allowing each to enter different worlds and the minds of people other than themselves. To borrow the words of Harper Lee’s immortal character Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), storytelling allows one to ‘climb in[to someone else’s] skin and walk around in it’.[3]

Stories are transportive, reflective; they allow us to see beyond ourselves, into other epochs, other backgrounds and other ways of life. They allow us to understand things beyond ourselves and things about ourselves, films and novels and poetry often helping us access parts of ourselves that were once hidden, even from ourselves. They allow the teller and the listener to relate to one another differently, as well as to the characters described, Peninnah Schram writing that ‘storytelling stresses the human connection between teller and listener’.[4] She goes on to say that ‘there is no substitute for […] the human voice’, which creates a ‘dynamic and reciprocal relationship between the teller and listener, a dialogue, which is alive, spontaneous, and “in the moment”’, something which Moshe encourages as he tells the Israelites of how they should recount the exodus.[5]

What Moshe is asking, however, is not for the Jewish people to tell a new story, but to recount an old one, a memory to be passed on to successive generations. The act of storytelling imbues memory with renewed life, each storyteller inserting a piece of themselves into the story and giving it new layers of meaning and interpretation. This form of storytelling, a ‘most human experience of storytelling[, is] best shared through story and creates bonds between people’ both literally and textually.[6] As Schram notes, ‘many scholars have referred to the human being as homo narrons, the storytelling animal’, and in telling this story of our ancestors, we become intrinsically connected to them and to their experience of slavery and of liberation.[7] This connection acts as a source of soothing and healing, offering ‘possibilities which can reignite hope where hope has been squelched or “burned out”’, and is something Jews have relied on for centuries, through prosperity and persecution alike.[8] It does not need to be Pesach for Jews to recount this story as Moshe intended, with the words אלא שבכל דור ודור עמדים עלינו לכלותנו. והקדוש ברוך הוא מצילנו מידם, ‘in each and every generation there are those that rise up against us to destroy us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands’, echoing as part of the story and as a source of hope.[9]

In Bo – itself a story within the greater narrative of Tanach – Moshe establishes within the Jewish psyche a tenant of Jewish being. In ensuring that the Israelites tell this story to their children and answer their questions, he solidifies the possibility of a ‘relationship between parents and children’, allowing the latter to ‘understand who they are, where they come from, what happened to their ancestors to make them the distinctive people they became, and what moments in their history shaped their lives and dreams’.[10] From this moment, the act of storytelling – particularly the telling of the exodus from Egypt, the first true experience of Jewish perseverance – became the key to Jewish survival and longevity, becoming embroidered in tradition, theology, identity and experience. Telling this story, and the many stories that have come since, recounting direct and indirect memory, reinforces and strengthens the sense of survival and resilience that has carried the Jewish people thus far, and it will continue to strengthen and nourish the stories which will come next.

[1] Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Judaism’s Life-Changing Ideas, (2020), pg.77

[2] Exodus 12:25-27; 13:8, 14

[3] Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, (1960), pg.33

[4] Peninnah Schram, ‘Elijah’s Cup of Hope: Healing Through the Jewish Storytelling Tradition’ in Storytelling, Self, Society, Vol.1 No.2, (2005), pp.103-117, pg.109

[5] Schram, pg.109

[6] Schram, pg.110

[7] Schram, pg.108

[8] Schram, pg.108

[9] Dayan Dr. Pinchas Toledano, The Passover Haggadah According to Sephardi Usages, (2003), pg.96

[10] Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Studies in Spirituality, (2021), pg.78, 77

About the Author
Originally from London, Nessya is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, whose research focuses on the connection between Tanakh/Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature. She holds a degree in English Literature from King's College, London, and a minor in Near Eastern Languages and Civilisations from University of Pennsylvania. The views in this blog are the author's own.
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