The Way of a Jewish Storyteller
The daughter of an Orthodox cantor, I grew up loving Jewish music, but because I was a female, I could never sing in my father’s synagogue choir. As a teenager, wanting very much to participate in services, I joined the co-ed choir at Congregation Beth El, the Conservative synagogue in my hometown of New London, Connecticut, under the leadership of Rabbi Benjamin Kreitman (United Synagogue’s executive vice president emeritus) with Cantor Eliezer Bernstein and organist Victor Norman. On Friday evenings, after my father returned from his synagogue and we had had our family Shabbat dinner, he would accompany me on the one-mile walk to Beth El’s 8:30 service. This was my father’s time to tell me his favorite Jewish stories.
That weekly experience, when I grew to love performing publicly, was my initial contact with Conservative Judaism. Since college I have belonged mostly to Conservative synagogues, and for years I sent my two children to Camp Ramah. In addition, the family cantorial mantle has been handed down to my son who was invested as hazzan at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2006. Perhaps those Friday evening walks were my direct journey to the Conservative movement.
Even though music played an enormous part in my home life, storytelling – both around the table and during our walks – was central to my parents’ transmission of our traditions. I was nourished by the wisdom of the Jewish people, by my father’s stories from the Bible and Talmud, his stories about Elijah the Prophet, and by my mother’s tales and sayings with their embedded ethical messages. Listening to my parents, I not only was filled with wonder but also received subliminal advice on how to be a mensch and live Jewishly. Their stories created a long-lasting bond between us. Is it any wonder that I became a storyteller?
The storyteller has played an important role in many societies, originally in an oral tradition and later in written form. Jews especially have used song, humor, questions, riddles, narratives, and clever plays on words to convey their wisdom. Family storytellers, as well as educators and clergy, molded the Jewish character by transmitting knowledge, traditions, laws, and values. It was these stories that assured the continuity of the Jewish people through the centuries.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though, the roles of the rav – the rabbi – and the maggid – the storyteller – began to diverge as the rav became the arbiter of halakhah while the maggid taught through stories. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Dubner Maggid, Jacob ben Wolf Kranz, was famous for his parables illustrating the key concepts and values of Judaism. At the same time, the Vilna Gaon, Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, was the embodiment of the scholarly rav, and it was the rav who was held in higher esteem. In reaction, the nascent Hasidic movement moved the maggid to center stage (or perhaps we could say center bimah). The Baal Shem Tov, Reb Nahman of Bratzlav, the greatest of all storytellers, and other Hasidic masters used stories and niggunim, or wordless melodies, to approach God directly during prayer, a tradition that is still highly treasured.
The Jewish oral tradition – the accumulation of customs and folk wisdom passed along by word of mouth – includes all folklore genres: fairytales, legends, parables, fables, mystical, supernatural, allegorical, and religious tales, trickster and “fool of the world” (Helm) stories, and various styles and different versions of the same stories. In addition, a wealth of interpretations is added in every age. Integrating folklore into contemporary literary work is a form of recycling that continues to revitalize our culture and nourish the soul, keeping the oral tradition vital and vigorous.
All through the ages, Jewish stories have been distinguished by their ethical lessons. Even a humorous, seemingly frivolous trickster tale presents an opportunity to impart a valuable lesson. It has been my hope that rabbis and educators everywhere would incorporate more storytelling into their sermons, classes, and informal educational experiences. And sometimes – though perhaps not often enough – rabbis are taught how to tell stories.
Twenty-five years ago, JTS professor Rabbi Joseph Lukinski brought his Alternatives to Preaching class to the Jewish Storytelling Center at the 92nd Street Y. I had organized the center after the first Jewish Storytelling Festival, hosted by Yeshiva University’s Stern College in 1984. For more than 20 years, we held monthly meetings and offered workshops and performances to encourage and help storytellers – a group that included clergy, educators, parents, and writers – develop and integrate storytelling into their work and life. Now, the center mainly co-publishes the Jewish Storytelling Newsletter in partnership with the Florence R. Silverman Storytelling Network of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education.
The future rabbis in Rabbi Lukinski’s class were learning to integrate storytelling into more conventional methods of teaching, using traditional folktales and classic midrashim and creating new ones. Both old and new truths can be taught by midrashim, themselves either age-old or fresh from a modern midrashist’s pen. In fact, using midrash is quintessentially Conservative, given that the movement requires open inquiry and demands that all tools and texts be utilized to deepen our understanding of the world. Through creative narratives rabbis can teach long-lasting lessons that appeal to one’s imagination and sense of wonder.
Stories told from the heart work best in teaching long-lasting messages. As Rabbi Nahman taught, stories bypass the intellect and enter directly into the heart. Judaism’s core declaration of one God, the Shema, includes, “You shall take to heart these words that I command you this day.” Or put another way, “These words, which I myself command you this day, are to be upon your heart.” As explained by the rabbis, when a lesson is taken to heart it is waiting, ready to enter the heart whenever that heart opens. By telling stories, teacher and listener enter together into an embracing dance of waves in an ocean of hearts. When King Solomon prays for, and receives, an understanding heart (lev shamaya – a heart that listens), “God gave him a heart of great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore…. He was wiser than anyone else” (I Kings 4:29-33). In Jewish folklore, too, the heart is a repository of wisdom and emotions, a combination of the cognitive and the affective.
We know that the Torah is written in shorthand. However, when we expand the sacred text through stories, we can reach insights and deeper meanings that connect our lives to the text. While the written word provides a framework, the spoken word must also be treated with great respect as illustrated by Proverbs 25:11: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” “Apples of gold” may be the content of the word, its weight and its value after generations of gathered wisdom, while “settings of silver” may be the verbal form and frame. Text study and storytelling are partners and should be encouraged to walk side by side. Whether in the synagogue, the classroom or the home, storytelling is a dynamic interactive experience that gives inviting form to the content.
Peninnah Schram is associate professor of speech and drama at Stern College of Yeshiva University and author of nine books of Jewish folktales. She received the Covenant Award for Outstanding Jewish Educator (1995), the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Network (1999), and the National Storytellers Network 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award.
