It was after Cantor Bitton’s Jewish TV theme song program. I turned around and asked my 12th graders, “why do you think there were/are so many Jews in Hollywood?” They didn’t accept the implicit premise of my question--that either there was a much higher percentage of Jews in Hollywood than in the general population--or explained that Jewish presence was just about contacts and who you know. It was as though my question struck their ears as racist.
D'var from Saturday, March 24, 2018 - Gail Sherman. Recorded and edited by Ed Kraus.
Passover has long been called the Jewish Master Story. Other names for this type of story are a master narrative or a meta-narrative. In short, when a single story can robustly define and explain a people’s history, hopes, dreams and defeats, we can think of it as a master story. Master stories resonate with every member of a society or an audience precisely because they give expression to that person’s deeply held values.
You’ve heard the phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I simultaneously love and hate this saying. I love it because we can come out of obstacles and challenges in life stronger and wiser. On the other hand, when you’re in the thick of the challenge itself, these words can often discourage more than they encourage.
I love words. You can’t be a storyteller or a poet if you don’t. Thankfully, I am hardly alone. Of perhaps all religious traditions, Judaism is arguably the most word-driven. The Torah, of course is “the word of God.” Then there’s the Talmud, all 2,711 pages of it, and millions of pages of commentary. We utter brakhot, blessings, before eating or lighting candles or smelling a rose, all to sanctify our ordinary actions.
There are times when I feel like I’m floating in a chaotic abyss. These are usually moments when there is so much going on that I don’t have time to sit down, take a breath, and center myself on the work I need or want to do. Or I feel like I haven’t seen my kids for days, and my relationship with Duncan feels like it’s made up entirely of texts and online chat sessions.
Jewish time. I’m not talking the tired joke about how all our events start late. Rather, you’ve previously heard me discuss how historically, every culture of substance has maintained its own calendar and its own clock. Time, after all, is the medium by which we measure the space between events. Each culture chooses which events it wishes to remember, celebrate or mark. That’s historical time—the way we carry the past into the present.
