The Art of Retelling Your Story
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The Art of Retelling Your Story
There is a story that has been circulating for many years in the name of Charlie Chaplin, although it is not certain that it ever actually happened with him. Charlie Chaplin once told a joke to an audience. Everyone laughed. He told the same joke again. Only a few people laughed. He told it a third time. Almost nobody laughed. Then he said something like: “If you can’t laugh at the same joke again and again… why do you keep crying about the same problem?” How do we answer this psychological question from Charlie Chaplin? And why does this have to do with us, right now?
When R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was eight years old, he visited R’ Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld together with his father, R’ Chaim Auerbach. R’ Sonnenfeld asked the young Shlomo Zalman, “Did you ask this year on the night of the Seder the Four Questions?” He answered yes. “What did your father answer?” “Avadim Hayinu LePharoah BeMitzrayim.” “Did you ask the Four Questions last year?” He said yes. “What did your father answer you last year?” R’ Shlomo Zalman was quiet, knowing full well that his father had answered the Four Questions with the same answer the year before. R’ Yosef then asked him: “If you already forgot what he answered last year, why did you ask him again this year?” This is a very good question. Why do we ask the same questions every year, and say the same answer, telling the same story each year? If I called you once a year and told you the exact same story that happened to me, the same story I had told you every year for the past three years, you would probably hang up the phone on me, or mark me as spam! In all mitzvot we must overcome the test of not allowing them to become routine. מצוות אנשים מלומדה But specifically this mitzvah, where we must tell a story that everyone already knows, again and again, with the same excitement, that is no easy task.
Another question must be addressed. The Talmud (Berachot 13a) quotes the verse in Yeshayahu: אַל־תִּזְכְּרוּ רִאשֹׁנוֹת וְקַדְמֹנִיּוֹת אַל־תִּתְבֹּנָנוּ — “Do not remember the former things, and do not contemplate the ancient things” (Yeshayahu 43:18). The prophet tells us that in the times of Mashiach, in the era of Gog and Magog, we will no longer mention the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The miracles of the End of Days will be so great that they will make the miracles of the Exodus appear small in comparison. The Rabbis ask: how could it be that a prophet, or the Talmud, would uproot the mitzvah of the Torah of recounting the Exodus from Egypt? After all, no prophet can uproot one of the 613 mitzvot of the Torah. R’ Isser Zalman Meltzer answers that the main mitzvah is not the historical account of leaving Egypt. Rather, the heart of the mitzvah is the story of Hashem’s Hashgacha — that He watches over us — and that ה’ מלך ה’ מלך ה’ ימלוך לעולם ועד. Hashem is King, He was King, and He will be King forever and ever. In the days of Mashiach, the story of the Exodus will encompass all the exiles, on a national level and on a personal level, and it will still be the fulfillment of the same mitzvah of telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Your personal redemption is part of the mitzvah of the Haggadah just as much as the national redemption. Notice that this is the very meaning of the blessing we recite at the end of the Haggadah: אשר גאלנו וגאל את אבותינו ממצרים — Who redeemed us and redeemed our forefathers from Egypt.
The hardest mitzvah of the night is not only to לראות, to see ourselves as if we ourselves were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. We must also להראות, to show ourselves as if we just emerged from Egypt (Rambam, Chametz U’Matzah 7:6). How is this possible? The mitzvah is to tell one’s family, or whoever is willing to listen, that I was a slave, just like this slave or that maidservant — כמו שפחה זו או כמו עבד זה (Rambam, Chametz U’Matzah 7:2). But today we do not have slaves or maidservants to show our children who we once were like. Or do we? Hold on, I will explain what I mean. The Alshich offers a fascinating insight: the reason Moshe’s name does not appear in the entire Seder Haggadah (except for the verse “ויאמינו בה’ ובמשה עבדו”) is because the first person in the world who told the story of the Haggadah to his son was Moshe Rabbeinu himself. Since Moshe’s own sons were the first Jewish children who had not been in Egypt, Moshe told them the Haggadah. Because he was telling the story from his own perspective, he did not mention his own name. The real mitzvah of telling the story of the Exodus is telling your own story.
There is another interesting point. Have you ever noticed that most of the Haggadah is not actually about the miracles of Egypt? Much of it consists of laws, introductions, discussions about the night, and explanations surrounding the story, but only a relatively small portion of the Haggadah actually describes what Egyptian slavery and the Exodus looked like. This is striking. The mitzvah of recounting the miracles and the redemption is your mitzvah of the night, one you are meant to prepare for. It is a once-a-year opportunity where every word you research and speak about the miracles of Egypt fulfills another positive commandment from the Torah. People invest great effort in preparing the other mitzvot of the holiday for many days: matzah, maror, charoset, removing chametz, clothes for Yom Tov, and the joy of the holiday… But for some reason many people arrive at the night of the Seder and rely on a good Haggadah sefer to carry them through, without having prepared the retelling itself beforehand.
And this is where Charlie Chaplin’s point comes to light. Why do people cry when they repeat their problem again and again? Because everyone carries a story they cry about, a story they carry their whole life. Whenever something triggers that story, the pain returns, because they have just relived it. Try to think about the story you carry, the most painful one, the one that surfaces in your mind whenever you feel stuck in life.
People laugh less each time they hear the same joke because the brain already knows the surprise. A joke works because of novelty. But pain works differently. Pain intensifies when we replay it. Every time we retell ourselves the story, the brain experiences it again. We are not remembering the pain, we are reliving it. That is why some people carry the same story their entire life.
The Torah understands something very deep about human nature. If people naturally repeat painful stories, the Torah teaches us to repeat a different story, the story of redemption. Now let us understand what the real story of the Haggadah is. It is different from the version we often tell ourselves. The real story is that Hashem is the King. He always was, and He always will be. Have you ever noticed how strange it is that we say at the end of Avadim Hayinu that if G-d had not freed us from Pharaoh, we would still be slaves in Egypt? Pharaoh died, didn’t he? Of course, Pharaoh died. But the mindset of slavery, the idea that we are trapped by circumstances, by the powers that seem to govern our lives, would have persisted forever had Hashem not taken us out of that mindset. At the time of Pharaoh, Hashem showed us that no matter how the story of our lives appears to us, Hashem is really the true King. He always was, He always will be, and He will reign forever and ever.
The real slavery was not only the chains. The real slavery was believing that Pharaoh controlled reality. The Exodus was the moment when Hashem showed the Jewish people that no human power controls history.
