Cantor Vera's Corner
Cantor's Bi-Monthly Message
January/February 2020
January and February—Teiveit and Sh’vat—are a time for sitting still. If a fireplace is easily accessible to you, it may be a time for countering the sedentary dark and cold with the warmth and movement of flame. (My practice of staring at the fire includes hot chocolate.) And what do we do when we don’t want to move, when it’s hard to ford our way through snowdrifts, and the nights are long and the TV and work are equally unsatisfying? We tell each other stories.
As Jews, of course, storytelling is nothing new. We tell stories all the time—most notably, each time the Torah comes out. We center our religion around this one great story. The weight and gravity of the Torah story are unparalleled. It’s a story that has it all: strong narrative arc, compelling foundation in our people’s history, vivid scenes, emotional tie-ins to issues and situations that feel personal to us. Our personal stories in relationship to Torah appear to me like yarn twisting around the end of my knitting needle: following their own, often disorderly, paths, but always touching that strong eitz chayyim, that guide and pointer around which they’re wound. The story of Torah helps shape the way we experience and tell our own stories, even when they’re not exactly parallel.
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie asserts, in an extraordinary TED talk, that the power of a single story—one overarching narrative, deeply believed, whether true or fictitious—is great. It can shape our perceptions through hardwired confirmation bias: if we are persuaded that a story is true, we are more likely to try and use it to organize future information we learn and to explain away or discard new information that doesn’t neatly fit that story. “How vulnerable we are, in the face of a story,” she reminds us. I think of the injunction in the Talmud against calling someone by an insulting nickname, which is prohibited even if the person has become used to it. (Talmud Bavli, Bava Metzia 58b, emphasis mine.) Torah knows: a person can be told they are worthless so many times that they come to believe it. A single story about a person, or a group of people, can overwhelm competing truths until all that is left of a complex, rich reality is that one story.
When we tell great stories, therefore, we hold great responsibility. We must ask: what other stories might be pushed to the margins by the single story on which we focus? Adichie does not say that the solution to the single story’s potential for carrying all before it is to make sure it’s a good story, or even the right story. Rather, she pushes us to push back against the single story’s juggernaut by seeking out and listening to competing stories. Similarly, the oral Torah, the Mishnah and Talmud, always preserves the dissenting voices to halachic (legal) rulings. They model the crucial Jewish practice of listening attentively to what you are not disposed to agree with. If you’re telling a story about someone else, Adichie suggests, be ready to put it down. Listen instead to their voice. Welcome surprises. Resist the temptation to use your first story to confirm or deny.
When I travel to Guatemala with AJWS for a week at the end of January, I will take with me the stories about Guatemala I’ve already learned: stories of economic and environmental disasters, stories about land and labor organizers who were “disappeared” into mass graves, stories about gender-based violence. I will take with me stories of local champions of human rights who are working hard to build better conditions for themselves and their communities. But I will also look for first-person voices to tell me about the stories in Guatemala that don’t fit these narratives. I will do my best to pare away my own confirmation bias and to listen with open ears and an open heart. I will do my best to bear these stories back to you, in all their complexity, because I know that, as a community, we are able to hear and value that kind of complexity.
We are so blessed to be here in community with each other, friends, where we approach one another’s experiences with open ears and open hearts. Let this winter call more of our stories into the open, so that they can beautifully and productively complicate the stories we already tell about ourselves. As we sow stories this winter, and learn from them, how much richer this year’s harvest will be.
L’shalom,
Cantor Vera
January/February 2020
January and February—Teiveit and Sh’vat—are a time for sitting still. If a fireplace is easily accessible to you, it may be a time for countering the sedentary dark and cold with the warmth and movement of flame. (My practice of staring at the fire includes hot chocolate.) And what do we do when we don’t want to move, when it’s hard to ford our way through snowdrifts, and the nights are long and the TV and work are equally unsatisfying? We tell each other stories.
As Jews, of course, storytelling is nothing new. We tell stories all the time—most notably, each time the Torah comes out. We center our religion around this one great story. The weight and gravity of the Torah story are unparalleled. It’s a story that has it all: strong narrative arc, compelling foundation in our people’s history, vivid scenes, emotional tie-ins to issues and situations that feel personal to us. Our personal stories in relationship to Torah appear to me like yarn twisting around the end of my knitting needle: following their own, often disorderly, paths, but always touching that strong eitz chayyim, that guide and pointer around which they’re wound. The story of Torah helps shape the way we experience and tell our own stories, even when they’re not exactly parallel.
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie asserts, in an extraordinary TED talk, that the power of a single story—one overarching narrative, deeply believed, whether true or fictitious—is great. It can shape our perceptions through hardwired confirmation bias: if we are persuaded that a story is true, we are more likely to try and use it to organize future information we learn and to explain away or discard new information that doesn’t neatly fit that story. “How vulnerable we are, in the face of a story,” she reminds us. I think of the injunction in the Talmud against calling someone by an insulting nickname, which is prohibited even if the person has become used to it. (Talmud Bavli, Bava Metzia 58b, emphasis mine.) Torah knows: a person can be told they are worthless so many times that they come to believe it. A single story about a person, or a group of people, can overwhelm competing truths until all that is left of a complex, rich reality is that one story.
When we tell great stories, therefore, we hold great responsibility. We must ask: what other stories might be pushed to the margins by the single story on which we focus? Adichie does not say that the solution to the single story’s potential for carrying all before it is to make sure it’s a good story, or even the right story. Rather, she pushes us to push back against the single story’s juggernaut by seeking out and listening to competing stories. Similarly, the oral Torah, the Mishnah and Talmud, always preserves the dissenting voices to halachic (legal) rulings. They model the crucial Jewish practice of listening attentively to what you are not disposed to agree with. If you’re telling a story about someone else, Adichie suggests, be ready to put it down. Listen instead to their voice. Welcome surprises. Resist the temptation to use your first story to confirm or deny.
When I travel to Guatemala with AJWS for a week at the end of January, I will take with me the stories about Guatemala I’ve already learned: stories of economic and environmental disasters, stories about land and labor organizers who were “disappeared” into mass graves, stories about gender-based violence. I will take with me stories of local champions of human rights who are working hard to build better conditions for themselves and their communities. But I will also look for first-person voices to tell me about the stories in Guatemala that don’t fit these narratives. I will do my best to pare away my own confirmation bias and to listen with open ears and an open heart. I will do my best to bear these stories back to you, in all their complexity, because I know that, as a community, we are able to hear and value that kind of complexity.
We are so blessed to be here in community with each other, friends, where we approach one another’s experiences with open ears and open hearts. Let this winter call more of our stories into the open, so that they can beautifully and productively complicate the stories we already tell about ourselves. As we sow stories this winter, and learn from them, how much richer this year’s harvest will be.
L’shalom,
Cantor Vera
Cantor Vera's Writings
"Practicing Failure, Cultivating Resilience," d'var for Yom Kippur 5780/2019
D'var for Kol Nidrei 5780/2019
"Israeli and American Jewish Identity," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5780/2019
"The Geir Without and Within," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5779/2018
"Ki Hinei Kachomeir: Desiring our Yeitzer," for Kol Nidrei 5779/2018
Cantor Vera's Report on Trip to San Diego and Tijuana with T'ruah in July 2018
D'var for Kol Nidrei 5780/2019
"Israeli and American Jewish Identity," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5780/2019
"The Geir Without and Within," d'var for 1st Day of Rosh Hashanah 5779/2018
"Ki Hinei Kachomeir: Desiring our Yeitzer," for Kol Nidrei 5779/2018
Cantor Vera's Report on Trip to San Diego and Tijuana with T'ruah in July 2018