Dan Yashinsky is a storyteller and writer.听 He worked for many years as the storyteller-in-residence at Baycrest.听 His most recent book is a grief memoir, "I Am Full - Stories for Jacob."
My people are better at storytelling than we are at listening. We like jokes, but we鈥檙e quick to tell the joketeller we鈥檝e already heard it, and that鈥檚 not how it goes. Still, the wish to listen better is part of Jewish DNA. One of our earliest stories tells us that when King Solomon was young, he had a dream. In the dream he heard a voice: 鈥淪olomon, I will give you a gift. What do you choose: power, wealth, or a long life?鈥 Solomon answered: 鈥淚 choose to have the gift of a listening heart.鈥 Good choice, Solly! You became our wisest ruler, at least in the stories we tell about you.
There are of course many ways and traditions of being Jewish. Here, I focus on one aspect 鈥 the practice of listening. And听we could use some good listening these days, but where to begin? Israelis and Palestinians? Ukrainians and Russians? Republicans and Democrats? Stories are like wisdom鈥檚 pollen, crossing borders, floating through checkpoints, traversing generations and cultures, somehow taking root in our hearts and imaginations. An old Jewish proverb says, 鈥淭he more stories you know, the more ways you have of telling the truth.鈥 (Actually, I made that up, but I鈥檓 an old Jew so I think it should count.) Can a new story of wisdom coalesce even in the midst of this polarizing chaos?
About my own people, when the Almighty began to explain that Jews were to be a special people, we heard the first syllable 鈥Ch听鈥︹ 鈥 but then we bolted out full of pride because we assumed God was about to say 鈥chosen鈥 people. (There鈥檚 a joke about this, of course. After listing Haman, Hitler, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc. an old Jew looks up and asks, 鈥淥 Creator of the Universe, can you choose someone else for a change?鈥) But we left too soon. The Divine Voice intended to tell us that we were to be the ”choosing”听people of human history, the ones who ask dangerous questions, seek knowledge, wrestle with angels.听Chosen听or听choosing听鈥 that slip of the ear, that originary game of broken telephone, has haunted us ever since.
As of this writing, we know there are听听and we know there are听. We know how many Israelis were viciously murdered and captured on Oct. 7, and we know of the Gazan children obliterated in Guernica-like bombardments. We know about our people attacking the inhabitants of the West Bank (a ghastly new Jew Klux Klan?), and we know of the unending terror attacks by the Palestinians. We know听a beautiful baby named Kfir came back to Israel in a tiny coffin, like a lost Messiah we failed to ransom. How can we, knowing these things, even dream of the gift of a listening heart?听
Yet we still gathered to celebrate a seder this spring. We lit the candles, set a glass for Elijah, and recounted our ancient story of oppression and freedom. We also heard about the time my mother was saved by a Jewish officer of the Red Army in the chaotic days after the Nazis fled Bucharest. We heard about the Mayor and Bishop of Zakynthos who, ordered by the Gestapo to prepare a list of all the Jews on the island, returned with a list that had only two names on it: their own. Meanwhile, all the Jews were taken up into the mountains and saved by their fellow-islanders. We heard about my oldest son鈥檚 encounter with Nelson Mandela when he came to Toronto. We heard how a Micmac woman preserved her language in residential school by sneaking out to the nearby fields and telling Micmac stories to the ladybugs. We passed around a soul-chilling bill of sale from the 1830s for a young, enslaved man named Solomon. We told about Sulaiman Khatib, a Palestinian jailed for 10 years at the age of 14 who read Anne Frank, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, renounced violence, and came out to co-found Nobel Peace Prize nominee . Story by story, we remembered our connections to the events in Egypt, and that the need for liberation remains as urgent and difficult today as it was then.听
So, what will my choosing people choose next? Is a new story of wisdom possible? Will our leaders remember that once upon a time a Jewish king named Solomon refused power, wealth, and even a long life and asked, instead, for the gift of a listening heart? The story tells us that the gift was granted.
Dan Yashinsky is a storyteller and writer.听 He worked for many years as the storyteller-in-residence at Baycrest.听 His most recent book is a grief memoir, “I Am Full - Stories for Jacob.”
Opinion articles are based on the author鈥檚 interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
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