## Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter

###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 1
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 1](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/1)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
**I. Writing My Own Chapter**
***THE CORE IDEA***
Every culture has its stories. The tradition goes back to the days when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, sharing stories around the campfire at night.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 2
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 2](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/2)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
Storytelling has always been central to the Jewish tradition. But what is truly remarkable is the way in which, in this *parasha*, just before finally leading the Israelites out of Egypt, Moshe tells them three times how they are to tell the story to their children in future generations:


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 3
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 3](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/3)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
1. When your children ask you, “What does this ceremony mean to you?” *then tell them*, “It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when He struck down the Egyptians” (Shemot 12:26–27).


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 4
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 4](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/4)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
2.**** *On that day tell your child*, “I do this because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt” (Shemot 13:8).


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 5
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 5](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/5)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
3.**** In days to come, when your child asks you, “What does this mean?” *say*, “With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Shemot 13:14).


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 6
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 6](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/6)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
The Israelites had not yet left Egypt, and yet already Moshe was telling them how to tell the story. That is an extraordinary fact. Why so? Why this focus on storytelling?


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 7
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 7](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/7)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
The simplest answer is that *we are the story we tell about ourselves*. There is a basic link between narrative (stories) and identity (who we think we are). In the words of the thinker who first brought this to our attention, Alasdair MacIntyre, “Man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal.” We come to know who we are by discovering of which story or stories we are a part.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 8
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 8](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/8)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
**QUESTIONS TO PONDER**


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 9
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 9](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/9)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
*1. Can you think of other examples of storytelling in Judaism and Jewish culture?*


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 10
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 10](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/10)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
*2. What stories have formed your Jewish identity?*


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 11
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 11](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/11)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***IT ONCE HAPPENED…***
On November 28, 1947, member countries voted on the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 12
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 12](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/12)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
The plan proposed creating two states, a Jewish and Arab state side by side. If the plan gained two-thirds of the votes, it would herald the creation of the first Jewish state since biblical times and with it, the realisation of the Zionist dream. But this was by no means a sure verdict. It took much lobbying and convincing on the part of the Zionist movement to persuade other nations to vote for the plan. In his speech to the United Nations, David Ben-Gurion argued the case for the creation of the State of Israel by referring to Pesaḥ and the story told in the Haggada:


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 13
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 13](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/13)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
*“Three hundred years ago, a ship called the Mayflower set sail to the New World. This was a great event in the history of England. Yet I wonder if there is one Englishman who knows at what time the ship set sail? Do the English know how many people embarked on this voyage? What quality of bread did they eat? Yet more than 3,300 years ago, before the Mayflower set sail, the Jews left Egypt. Every Jew in the world, even in America or Soviet Russia, knows on exactly what date they left – the fifteenth of the month of Nisan. Everyone knows what kind of bread they ate. Even today, the Jews worldwide eat matza on the fifteenth of Nisan. They retell the story of the Exodus and all the troubles Jews have endured since being exiled. They conclude this evening with two statements: This year, slaves. Next year, free people. This year here. Next year in Jerusalem, in Zion, in* Eretz Yisrael*. That is the nature of the Jews.”*


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 14
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 14](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/14)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
Jews don’t just remember their history, they live and breathe it, and relive and experience it every year on Pesaḥ, by using the Haggada to tell the story of the Exodus.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 15
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 15](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/15)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
**QUESTIONS TO PONDER**


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 16
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 16](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/16)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
*1. What point was Ben-Gurion making?*


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 17
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 17](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/17)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
*2. Why do you think the Jewish people care so much about learning all the details of the Exodus story?*


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 18
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 18](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/18)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***THINKING MORE DEEPLY***
Jerome Bruner is an American psychologist who has persuasively argued that narrative is central to the construction of meaning, and meaning is what makes the human condition human. No computer needs to be persuaded of its purpose in life before it does what it is supposed to do. Genes need no motivational encouragement. No virus needs a coach. We do not have to enter their mindset to understand what they do and how they do it, because they do not have a mindset to enter.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 19
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 19](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/19)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
But humans do. We act in the present because of things we did, or that happened to us, in the past, and in order to realise a sought-for future. Even minimally to explain what we are doing is already to tell a story. Take three people eating salad in a restaurant, one because he needs to lose weight, the second because she’s a principled vegetarian, the third because of religious dietary laws. These are three outwardly similar acts, but they belong to different stories and they have different meanings for the people involved.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 20
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 20](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/20)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
Even so, why such focus on telling our specific story of the Exodus?


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 21
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 21](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/21)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
One of the most powerful passages I have ever read on the nature of Jewish existence is contained in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s *Considerations on the Government of Poland* (1772). This is an unlikely place to find insight on the Jewish condition, but it is there. Rousseau is talking about the greatest of political leaders. The very first of these, he says, was Moshe, who “formed and executed the astonishing enterprise of instituting as a national body a swarm of wretched fugitives who had no arts, no weapons, no talents, no virtues, no courage, and who, since they had not an inch of territory of their own, were a troop of strangers upon the face of the earth.”


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 22
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 22](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/22)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
Moshe, he says, “dared to make out of this wandering and servile troop a body politic, a free people, and while it wandered in the wilderness without so much as a stone on which to rest its head, gave it the lasting institution, proof against time, fortune, and conquerors, which 5,000 years have not been able to destroy or even to weaken.” This singular nation, he says, so often subjugated and scattered, “has nevertheless maintained itself down to our days, scattered among the other nations without ever merging with them.”


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 23
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 23](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/23)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
Moshe’s genius, he says, lay in the nature of the laws that kept Jews as a people apart. But that is only half the reason. The other half lies in this *parasha*, in the institution of storytelling as a fundamental religious duty, recalling and re-enacting the events of the Exodus every year, and in particular, making children central to the story. Noting that in three of the four storytelling passages (three in our *parasha*, the fourth in *Va’etḥanan*), children are the ones asking questions, the Sages held that the narrative of Seder night should be told in response to a question asked by a child, wherever possible. If we are the story we tell about ourselves, then as long as we never lose the story, we will never lose our identity.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 24
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 24](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/24)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
This idea found expression some years ago in a fascinating encounter. Tibet has been governed by the Chinese since 1950. During the 1959 uprising, the Dalai Lama, his life in danger, fled to Dharamsala in India, where he and many of his followers have lived ever since. Realising that their stay in exile might be prolonged, in 1992 he decided to ask Jews, whom he regarded as the world’s experts in maintaining identity in exile, for advice. What, he wanted to know, was the secret? The story of that week-long encounter has been told by Rodger Kamenetz in his book *The Jew in the Lotus.* One of the things they told him was the importance of memory and storytelling in keeping a people’s culture and identity alive. They spoke about Pesaḥ and the Seder service in particular. In 1997, rabbis and American dignitaries held a special Seder service in Washington, DC with the Dalai Lama. He wrote this to the participants:


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 25
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**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
“In our dialogue with rabbis and Jewish scholars, the Tibetan people have learned about the secrets of Jewish spiritual survival in exile: one secret is the Passover Seder. Through it, for 2,000 years, even in very difficult times, Jewish people remember their liberation from slavery to freedom, and this has brought you hope in times of difficulty. We are grateful to our Jewish brothers and sisters for adding to their celebration of freedom the thought of freedom for the Tibetan people.”


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 26
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 26](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/26)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
Cultures are shaped by the range of stories to which they give rise. Some of these have a special role in shaping the self-understanding of those who tell them. We call them *master-narratives*. They are about large, ongoing groups of people: the tribe, the nation, the civilisation. They hold the group together horizontally across space and vertically across time, giving it a shared identity handed on across the generations.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 27
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**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
No narrative has been more powerful than the Exodus story, whose frame and context is set out in our *parasha*. It gave Jews the most tenacious identity ever held by a nation. In the eras of oppression, it gave hope of freedom. At times of exile, it promised return. It told two hundred generations of Jewish children who they were and of what story they were a part. It became the world’s master-narrative of liberty, adopted by an astonishing variety of groups, from Puritans in the seventeenth century to African Americans in the nineteenth and to Tibetan Buddhists today.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 28
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 28](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/28)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
**I believe that I am a character in our people’s story, with my own chapter to write, and so are we all. To be a Jew is to see yourself as part of that story, to make it live in our time, and to do your best to hand it on to those who will come after us.**


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 29
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 29](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/29)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
**QUESTION TO PONDER**


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 30
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 30](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/30)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
*What do you think it is about storytelling that makes it such a powerful factor in building our identity?*


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 31
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 31](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/31)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***FROM THE THOUGHT OF RABBI SACKS***
Jews will never own buildings like Windsor Castle. We are not that kind of people. But we own something that is, in its way, no less majestic and even more consecrated by time. The Jewish castle is built not of bricks or stone, but of words. But it too has been preserved across the centuries, handed on by one generation to the next, added to and enhanced in age after age, lovingly cherished and sustained. As a child I knew that one day I would inherit it from my parents, as they had inherited it from theirs. It is not a building but it is, nonetheless, a home, a place in which to live. More than it belongs to us, we belong to it; and it too is part of the heritage of mankind. What we have is not a physical construction but something else – a story.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 32
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 32](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/32)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
It was given to me by my parents when I was a child. I received it on the festival of Passover. It is an exceptionally moving story. It tells of how our ancestors were once slaves who, through a succession of wondrous events, were given their freedom. They then began a journey across the desert for forty years, and later through a wilderness of dispersion for two thousand years, in search of a home, a promised land, a place of grace and justice and freedom and dignity. Though at times the destination seemed to lie beyond the furthest horizon of hope, they did not give up. They never ceased to travel. And I am part of that journey. I did not choose to be, any more than the member of a royal family chooses to be born into royalty; but this is my legacy, my heritage. It defines who I am. I know, just as does the heir to a castle, that I am a link in the chain of generations, and that I owe a duty of loyalty to the past and to the future.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 33
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 33](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/33)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***The Jonathan Sacks Haggada*, The Story of Stories, 10–11**


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 34
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 34](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/34)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***AROUND THE SHABBAT TABLE***
Why do you think Jews have a reputation of being a people who tell stories?


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 35
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 35](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/35)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
Why is it particularly important in Jewish tradition to tell stories to children?


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 36
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 36](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/36)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
What is it about the Exodus story that makes it so critical that the Jewish people remember and retell it?


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 37
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 37](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/37)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
**EDUCATIONAL COMPANION TO THE QUESTIONS**


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 38
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 38](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/38)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***IN A NUTSHELL***
We tell this story every year on Seder night by reciting the Haggada. But the Haggada is just an aid to the real storytelling, which must be experiential. It must involve a re-enactment and re-experiencing of the story. We do this through eating matza and *maror*, through reclining and feeling like liberated royalty. This is the best way to tell a story – in a way that the listener feels they are actually experiencing the story.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 39
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 39](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/39)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***THE CORE IDEA***
Storytelling is central to Jewish culture. The foundational text of the Jewish people – the Tanakh – is largely a narration of ancient Jewish history. Our other classical texts such as the Talmud and Midrash are full of stories. Education is a core value of Judaism, and storytelling is a fundamental tool of the educator. While rabbis and teachers have always told stories, the more modern Jewish movement of *Ḥasidut* has elevated storytelling to new spiritual levels. The hasidic Rebbe enraptures his Hasidim with tales of *tzaddikim* and miracles. Jews have always been passionate about Jewish history, and every parent and educator invests time in telling the next generation the tales of their people’s history.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 40
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 40](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/40)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
While this is a personal question, no doubt every Jewish child can name the biblical stories and other stories from Jewish history that have formed the foundation of their Jewish identity. Childhood experiences of Seder night in particular will likely give them life-long memories and associations that will accompany most Jews into adulthood.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 41
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 41](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/41)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***IT ONCE HAPPENED…***
The point Ben-Gurion was urging the United Nations delegates to understand was that Jews have always felt connected to the land of Israel, to the extent that they know, in minute detail, the history that took them there at the dawn of their existence as a nation. Because of the Jewish commitment to ritual and historical Judaism throughout their four-thousand-year history, especially in the form of the Seder night rituals and telling of the Exodus story, every Jew knows every single detail of the story, because it is an intrinsic part of their identity. And central to that national identity is their connection to their ancestral homeland.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 42
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 42](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/42)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
Perhaps without this obsessive attention to every detail, Jews would have lost their national narrative and with it their national identity. The fact that two thousand years after exile from the land of Israel there was still a strong connection to our homeland, even though it had not had a significant Jewish presence in all that time, is indicative of the national narrative created by the storytelling Jews do.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 43
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 43](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/43)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***THINKING MORE DEEPLY***
Rabbi Sacks quotes several thinkers who explain that humans are a “storytelling animal,” and that there is an intrinsic connection between narrative and identity. We come to know who we are by discovering of which stories we are a part. Narrative is central to the construction of meaning, and meaning is what makes the human condition human.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 44
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 44](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/44)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
***AROUND THE SHABBAT TABLE***
Jewish classical texts are replete with narrative, such as the Tanakh, which presents ancient Jewish history, and the rabbinic texts of the Talmud and Midrash, which explore the doctrines and theology of Judaism through stories and legends. There are also core mitzvot that revolve around storytelling, such as Seder night and the weekly public reading of the Torah. This has led to Jews becoming known as a people who tell stories. This has also led to the modern Jewish movement of *Ḥasidut*, where the telling of the legends of *tzaddikim* is a central tenet.


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 45
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 45](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/45)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
Judaism has always focused on educating the next generation as a way to ensure Jewish continuity. Storytelling is a powerful way to build identity and socialise young Jews into the adult community and into the norms and beliefs of their nation. This is why the ritual of the Passover Seder has become so central and widely observed (even by Jews who in general are not ritually observant).


###### Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 46
[Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Bo, I; Writing My Own Chapter 46](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Covenant%20and%20Conversation%20Family%20Edition/s/Bo,_I%3B%20Writing%20My%20Own%20Chapter/r/46)

**Covenant and Conversation Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:**
The Exodus story teaches us about the creation of the Jewish people as a nation. It is the beginning of a long story where we are the most recent chapters. To understand the rest of Jewish history, you have to understand the beginning of Jewish history. More than a way to understand Jewish history, the core values of Judaism were born in the experience of slavery in Egypt and the story of liberation. Fundamental Jewish beliefs and values, such as God acting in history to protect the weak and vulnerable, and the responsibility to learn from our experience in Egypt to protect the weak in society today, were all formed in the collective memory of the Exodus narrative and passed on with the transmission of the Exodus story.