Point of Departure

Jacob as outer space Haman with the mask he made at Herbrew school

Dear friends, 

The story of this war begins on October 7th, 2023. No, it begins several years earlier when Gaza was closed off. No, it begins in June 2007 when Hamas beat Fatah and took over the Strip. No, it begins on August 16th, 2005 when Israel pulled out of the Strip. No, it begins November 5th 1995 when Rabin was assassinated. No, it begins in 1967 when it was conquered. No, in 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees arrived. No, in 1939 with Hitler. No, in 1897 in the First Zionist Congress. No, it really begins on October 8th, 2023. 

Different ways of telling the story create vastly different stories, with incredibly different messaging, and very different realities. The point of departure is key, in both senses of the word “point.” At which point in time do you begin your telling, and what is the purpose of your story? 

This is true for the war, and it is no less true for our national and religious stories.  

In the last century BCE, our rabbis of blessed memory were tasked with framing the story of Hanukkah. The tale they had been handed down was one of victorious religious zealot-warriors. The nationalistic story of the Maccabees, the oppressed few who took up arms and beat the great Greek army was accompanied by violent acts of bigotry toward the less nationalistic Jews. The rabbis decided to completely transform the story. Theirs began at the end of the war, when the search for holy oil began at the temple. For hundreds of years the focus of the holiday was the miracle of the oil. It was only after the Holocaust when the Zionist movement brought the Macabbees back into the forefront, as a means of empowering a beaten down nation with the possibility of taking history into their own hands. 

For the past three weeks I have been in the business of challenging the way we tell the Passover story. This weekend we are devoting two performances of Pharaoh to a discussion about how we tell our stories. Last night, in the talkback with Rabbis for Ceasefire, we examined the relationship between the way the Exodus story is told, and the story Jews tell about this current war.  

Tomorrow night we will be joined by Professor Richard Schechner, a theater visionary who changed the way stories are told in the theater, by bringing a multi-cultural approach to the stage. In my “Intro to Theatre” class in undergrad I was taught about Schechner’s work on Rasa, an ancient Indian approach to emotion in performance, which offers an antithesis to the realistic acting style practiced in the west. The melding of ancient sensibilities with contemporary edge, which Schechner explored with The Performance Group,  (later to become The Wooster Group) brought about an entire new field called Performance Studies. Schechner is considered the pioneer and leader of this influential movement. 

When we seek other modes of storytelling, even for our own stories, we open ourselves to fresh thinking, and invite not only our familiar methods, but the universal mind that exists within each of us. The prophet Ezekiel promises us in this week’s haftarah that we will be offered “a new heart.” “I will remove from you the heart of stone, and will give in you a heart of flesh,” we are promised. May our stories, and the ways we tell them bring us closer to that reality.  

I hope you can snag one of the few remaining tickets and join me tonight or Saturday at 8pm (with Prof. Schechner), or Sunday at 3pm for the final performances of Pharaoh.  

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha