When We Are Slaves To Our Own Narrative

וַאֲפִילוּ כֻּלָּנוּ חֲכָמִים כֻּלָּנוּ נְבוֹנִים כֻּלָּנוּ זְקֵנִים כֻּלָּנוּ יוֹדְעִים אֶת הַתּוֹרָה מִצְוָה עָלֵינוּ לְסַפֵּר בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם. וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה לְסַפֵּר בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם הֲרֵי זֶה מְשֻׁבָּח.
Even if all of us were scholars, even if all of us were sages, even if all of us were elders, even if all of us were learned in the Torah, it would still be our mitzvah to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Moreover, whoever expands on the story of the Exodus is worthy of praise (Haggadah of Pesah).

The essential mitzvah of the Pesah seder is to tell the story – to open our mouths and articulate it – regardless of how well we might already know it. Why? Because to do so is an act of freedom. Being free means that we get to tell our story as opposed to having it imposed on us by others. It means that we get to define ourselves instead of having others define us. Hence, telling our story in our own words is a mark of liberation. Doing so reminds us that we are no longer slaves.

But the Haggadah does not stop there. It calls on us to be marbeh l’saper, to expand the narrative, to widen its dimensions from year to year. Why? Because, if we allow our telling of the story to be static and unchanging, the mitzvah backfires. Ironically, in that case, we turn into our own Pharaoh. We become slaves to the rigidity of our own narrative. True, we are defining ourselves, but we are doing so in a way that limits our horizons, that cuts off our vision. To avoid that trap, we have to tell the story expansively, in a way that leaves room for ourselves to grow.

What does it mean to become slaves to our own narrative, to become trapped within a single way of telling the story? Let me point out one version of the story that, in times of trauma like this, threatens to exclude all others. It appears in the Haggadah itself as a reflection on the memory of oppression. It declares that the story of our suffering in Egypt is a tale of endless repetition.

שֶׁלֹּא אֶחָד בִּלְבַד עָמַד עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ, אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלוֹתֵנוּ
For not just one has risen up to destroy us, but in every generation, they rise up to destroy us. . . .

Who, according to this telling of the story, are the unnamed enemies that rise up to devour us in every generation? Why does the verb have no subject? Here, our enemies are anonymous (even the original Egyptians go unnamed). Our adversaries are a faceless “they.” They are faceless, first of all, in that they never change. Their hatred is constant, like a law of nature. They have no history, no narrative of their own that might help us to understand them, to acknowledge their uniqueness. They are the same as they have always been and always will be. Moreover, they are faceless in that they are monolithic. There are no distinctions to be made among them, no gradations of guilt. There are no individuals – and hence, no innocents – in their midst. In both senses, our enemies have no names.

The Haggadah offers this grim version of the story as one option among many by which we might choose to narrate our experience. But in times of fear and grievance like the times that we are living through right now, this version of the story threatens to crowd out all others. When we are haunted by collective nightmares as we are today, we reflexively revert to it, as if there were no other way to tell the story. We look at those who threaten us and cannot see their faces or acknowledge their distinctiveness. We contract into isolation. We become prisoners of our own narrative.

At a time like this, what might it mean to challenge ourselves to be marbeh l’saper, to tell our story in a more expansive way, which honors the reality of our past suffering without enslaving us all over again? Let me offer an example. It comes from Moses’s words in Deuteronomy. As he speaks to the new generation that will claim the land of Israel, he recalls their ancestors’ enslavement in Egypt. But in evoking that memory, Moses turns the conventional meaning of the story upside down.

לֹא־תְתַעֵ֣ב מִצְרִ֔י כִּי־גֵ֖ר הָיִ֥יתָ בְאַרְצֽוֹ
You must not loath an Egyptian since you were a sojourner in his land (Deut 23:8).

According to this telling, our experience in Egypt – far from giving us permission to dehumanize Egyptians – is precisely what denies us that permission. Moses forbids us to reduce Egyptians to a faceless, loathsome “they” (as if to emphasize the point, he speaks of an Egyptian in the singular). We might ask “Why shouldn’t we loath them, given our experience with them?” Moses answers that it is exactly our experience with them that rules that out. We are forbidden to dehumanize Egyptians because, for better or worse, we know them. We lived alongside them. Hence, they cannot be nameless to us. We must acknowledge their humanity, not in spite of our experience but because of it. If all that we remember is that they collectively oppressed us, we are not truly remembering at all. We must remember also that they had names and faces.

It is a striking inversion of the story that we tend to tell at times of trauma such as this current moment, a story of the faceless and eternal enemy, the timeless, monolithic “they.” But it is only when we challenge ourselves to be marbeh l’saper – to expand our narrative in ways that make room for our own humanity as well as that of our adversaries – that we can turn a story that threatens to enslave us into one that makes us free.