Weekly D'var

PARASHAT TOLDOT
Steven Adelman

In November 2018, I presented a D’var on Parsha Toldot.  Since you all know the story of Jacob and Esau, today I will talk about something completely different – namely, 1. why the Bible is the biggest best seller of all time; 2. a very important lesson that helps explain the Bible’s popularity; and 3. how we should use that lesson to fight the growing antisemitism facing all of us.

When I refer to the popularity of the Bible, I am talking about the 5 Books of Moses. Although this is often referred to as the “Old Testament,” I will call this “the Hebrew Bible” in order to avoid any implication that what Christians call the New Testament is a replacement for the Old Testament. Interestingly, even though Christians believe in supersessionism, they fervently believe in the Hebrew Bible as part of their history and foundational beliefs.  Many study it intensely and often become expert in its stories. For those not familiar with the term supersessionism, let me summarize the Wikipedia explanation:

“Supersessionism … is the … doctrine that the Christian Church has superseded the Jewish people, assuming their role as God's covenanted people, thus asserting that the New Covenant through Jesus Christ has superseded or replaced the Mosaic covenant. Supersessionists hold that … Christians are [now] the people of God…
Most historic Christian churches … hold that the Old Covenant has three components….They teach that … only the, third component, the moral law of the Ten Commandments, continues to bind Christian believers…
Islam teaches that it is the final and most authentic expression of Abrahamic monotheism, superseding both Judaism and Christianity.”

Rabbinic Judaism rejects supersessionism as offensive to Jewish history.

So, if Christians and Muslims believe that their religion has replaced Judaism, why do so many of them read and study the Hebrew Bible?  As I mentioned in an earlier D’var, I believe it is because the Hebrew Bible tells interesting stories. The biblical stories of the Hebrew Bible are about characters that seem real and who are engaged in events to which most people can relate. For example, is there anyone here who has not experienced sibling rivalry – or at least knows a family in which sibling rivalry was impactful? I certainly have seen it and experienced it in my life, in books that I have read, and in movies and plays that I have seen. And is there any better example of sibling rivalry than the story of Jacob and Esau? Although Jacob is younger by a few seconds, G-d tells Rebecca that Jacob is going to be the top dog. He will be the progenitor of a great and mighty people.  To make sure the story ends the way Rebecca wants it to, Jacob essentially steals his older brother’s birthright and cons his father into giving him the Abrahamic blessing that was supposed to go to Esau.

Sibling rivalry clearly goes back as far as the 1st 2 brothers, Cain and Abel, and it was instrumental in the well-known story of Joseph and his brothers – and continues to this day.

And how much of Jacob’s devotion to studying was motivated by his desire to please his grandfather and father? And how much of Esau’s fondness for hunting was to bring Isaac the meat that he craved? And Esau married Ishmael’s daughter only because he saw how happy his parents were that Jacob had married one of his mother’s relatives and how unhappy they were with Esau’s Hittite wives. I’m sure none of you would be surprised if the stories in Toldot were paralleled in a television soap opera or a Netflix series.

But how do I prove that storytelling is the best way to communicate ideas to others.   Well, I can point to the fact that high school students still study The Odyssey written by Homer around the 8th Century BCE, Shakespeare’s plays written in the 1600’s, Dickens’ novels in the 1800’s, and such great best-selling Jewish writers of the 20th century as Malamud, Mailer, and Uris. However, my best proof is my wife’s research and PhD thesis on an effective way to educate people. Dr. Adelman received her PhD from Northwestern University.  When she started in the PhD program at Northwestern, Dr. Nancy Stein was her advisor. While Pam was still working on her doctoral dissertation, Dr. Stein joined the University of Chicago faculty, and Pam continued working with her at the U of C with respect to Dr. Stein’s groundbreaking work on story grammar analysis and its importance with respect to the ability to comprehend an author or speaker’s point. Now, I don’t expect anybody here to know the term “story grammar.”  I only know it because I have read all 160 pages of Pam’s doctoral thesis. So, with Pam’s assistance in writing this part of my D’var, I am going to try to provide a non-technical explanation of her dissertation’s conclusion that a well-formed story helps the reader or listener find a story engaging, cohesive and memorable. As a result, the reader/listener will have a much better understanding of what is being communicated than when he/she just hears facts or opinions without a narrative providing context and details. Their research showed that there should be a setting, characters, a goal, an initiating event, a resolution and an underlying message or moral of the story.  If these components create a narrative that makes sense to the reader, it enhances comprehension, helps the reader or listener think about the story’s message and also to make more accurate inferences.

Now you may ask, “Why are you spending so much time on how good storytelling is so important in getting people engaged and educated?” My answer is simple: It is because the failure of Israel and Jews around the world to explain why Israel is neither colonial nor genocidal is drastically harming Israel’s safety and the safety of Jews here and abroad.

The false narrative that Israel is colonial and genocidal is a significant reason for the attempts to isolate Israel, to support Hamas and Palestinians, and to attack Jews on the street, in their synagogues and at Jewish events.  These false narratives are being spread daily in the public media, in social media, and in the schools, but the response is most often silence, denials or mere statements of fact that do not resonate; they do not convince anyone that the anti-Israel narratives are filled with lies about Israel and about the Jewish people.

We need a pro-Israel narrative that incorporates the elements of story grammar and starts with the Jewish connection to Israel for over 3,000 years.  Pam and I recently read a book that is very helpful in crafting this narrative.  The book is called, “When the Stones Speak” by Doron Spielman.  For the past 30+ years, Mr. Spielman has been involved in the excavation of the City of David, which was located near the first Temple, built by King David’s son, King Solomon, around 950 BCE. The Temple lasted for about 600 years before it was destroyed by the Babylonians.  However, the Jewish people rebuilt The Temple soon thereafter, and the 2nd Temple lasted until 70 CE, when the Romans destroyed it, expelled the Jews from Israel, and later renamed the land Syria Palaestina for the specific purpose of erasing the Jewish identity from the land. Despite the expulsion, Jews remained present in Israel for most of the following almost 2,000 years. When the Stones Speak provides irrefutable evidence of the almost 2,000 years of control prior to the Roman conquest.  After the Jews lost control, the land was controlled by the Romans, by the Ottomans, and by the British – never by people identified as Palestinians.

There are now hundreds of millions of people who not only deny that the Jewish people are indigenous to Israel, they deny the Holocaust happened. They do not know that the term “genocide” was created in 1944 by a Polish Jewish lawyer who escaped the Holocaust and who wanted to describe a governmental intent to destroy a nation or an ethnic group.  And they are ignorant of the fact that the Hamas Charter specifically states it is Hamas’s intent to destroy the Jewish State. In fact, after the October 7, 2023 barbaric massacre and abduction of Israelis, Hamas leadership specifically said that they would do such an attack again, and again, and again, if they could.  In contrast, Israel’s army repeatedly alerted the citizens of Gaza when an armed strike was heading their way and urged the Gazans to relocate elsewhere in Gaza to avoid being hurt.  Clearly, the terrorist group Hamas is genocidal, not the Israeli government.

Why don’t most people know these facts?  I believe it is because Israelis and Jews worldwide have failed to properly tell their story.  Why are there few, if any, editorials, magazine articles, books, lectures, movies or songs that tell our story in a well-organized, comprehensive manner, following the rules of story grammar? I urge you to communicate this story to any person of influence that you know, any organization in which you are involved, so they will tell our story to the world. I know that this commitment to telling Israel’s story is one of the principal reasons that I am so involved with American Jewish Committee. We must not sit in silence or hide from the evil that surrounds us. Unfortunately, that is what the Jews of Germany did.  Even most Jews in America refused to “make waves” during the 1930’s, afraid that speaking up would make our situation worse.  We cannot let that happen again.  We simply cannot be silent in the face of the lies being told about Israel and the Jews.  Use your voice; tell our story!

Am Yisrael Chai