Narratives

Contents

KEY IDEAS

PESAH IN CAIRO

THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NARRATIVE

Individual and Communal Narratives

"Truth" and "Fact"

The "Truth" of the Mercator Map

"TRUTH" AND DOMINANT AMERICAN NARRATIVES

"Truth," 9/11, and Iraq

"Truth," Obama, and Racial Identities

Other American "Truths": Ross, Parks, and Robinson

American Dominants and Subordinates

"TRUTH" AND DOMINANT JEWISH NARRATIVES

A Common Jewish Narrative

Ashkenazi Jewish Ascendancy

SPECIAL TOPIC 1.1: Ashkenazi-ness and Being White

ASHKENAZI/NON-ASHKENAZI: THE DICHOTOMIZATION OF JEWS

What Is Dichotomization?

Sephardi Jews

Case Example: Moroccan Jews

Sephardi, Mizrahi, or Non-Ashkenazi?

PESAH IN CAIRO

NARRATIVES AND RITUALS

Dominant Narratives and Dominant Rituals

Lesser-Known Narratives and Lesser-Known Rituals

An Orange on the Seder Plate

The Tribe vs. Diaspora

PESAH IN CAIRO

Key Ideas

• Communities have dominant and subordinated narratives, stories that are "true" but not necessarily "factual." These narratives are never fixed but shift over time. "Truth," an operating system of ostensibly historical facts that serves to explain a people's worldview, gives a group both legitimacy and credibility, and often describes the reasons behind a group's practices and beliefs.

• Communal "truths," or narratives, are reaffirmed through rituals.

• Dominant communal narratives — communal "truths" — often overlook subordinated ones. Just as the dominant American narrative can be said to be based in the "white" experience, the dominant Jewish narratives tend to be expressed through dominant Ashkenazi experiences. In point of fact, however, Jewish communal narratives are incredibly heterogeneous — culturally, ethnically, and racially.

Pesah in Cairo

I was wearing one slightly torn, sunflower-patterned oven mitt when Cairo's March evening began to descend. In a pitiful attempt to counter the urban desert heat, a fan held together with a bent metal fork was channeling occasional waves of unbelievably hot air on me, a complement to the snail-paced breeze coming in through my windows. Before I'd moved to Egypt, the phrase "120°F in the shade" didn't mean much to me.

Now rounding out my tenth month in what locals lovingly call 'um al-dunya (mother of the world), I had adjusted to many of the city's unique flavors. One-time oddities had become normal, such as daily walks through Cairo's now world-famous Midan al-Tahrir (Liberation Square), a metropolitan epicenter bustling with echoes of the city's twenty million-plus occupants; bumper car–esque taxi rides on highways close enough to skyscrapers that one could literally step from a car into someone's living room; a 24/7 energy and intensity that put New York City to shame.

This was a special night. Friends were on their way over to celebrate Pesah (Passover), a Jewish holiday commemorating the biblical Hebrews' miraculous journey from slavery to freedom. Spending the year in Egypt, or Mitzrayim as it's known in the Hebrew Bible, I was excited to observe this holiday in the same ancient land from which, ironically, my ancestors had purportedly fled with such little time for preparation that they had no food for the road, an image seared into my brain by family and teachers alike since my earliest days of childhood. More specifically, the biblical Hebrews couldn't wait for their bread to rise, hence the flat, crunchy cracker central to the holiday called matzah.

From as far back as I could remember, celebrating Passover with a Seder meal was one of my favorite Jewish rituals. But to have the opportunity to sing songs about Pharaoh a few miles away from the pyramids; to chant poems about swarms of frogs a few feet away from the Nile River; to be living less than one hundred miles from the Red Sea, the waterway that Moses wondrously parted to allow the biblical Hebrews to escape from their slave-owners and Pharoah's soldiers: this was something the child within considered unimaginable. Even though Jews have been living in Egypt for centuries, spending Passover in the "wilderness" (one rabbinic interpretation of "Egypt") was exciting, even bizarre — all the more so for an American Jew who traces his Jewish bona fides back to Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia rather than the Middle East.

Over the next few minutes, my friends — Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and unaffiliated — arrived at my humble apartment. And after figuring out how to jam fifteen people into a room that could comfortably seat eight at most, we began the Seder's first formal ritual. Using a makeshift Haggadah (Pesah prayer book; pl. Haggadot) that three of us had cobbled together, we recited a version of "Kadesh, Orhatz ...," an introductory song that lays out the table of contents for the night's festivities. The epic story of slaves voyaging to freedom had begun.

The Construction of a Narrative

I begin this book with an experience involving Passover because this Jewish holiday is the quintessential embodiment of the Jewish story: it is central to the Jewish collective identity. This is one reason why the Pesah Seder, the ritualized meal held the first night(s) of the holiday, is among the most widely observed traditions for Jews around the world. Every spring Jews of all stripes and colors come together to recount the "Exodus from Egypt," the account of Moses and the biblical Hebrews journeying to the Promised Land. Haggadot commonly include the phrase, "In every generation one is obligated to see oneself as if s/he went out from Egypt," reminding participants that they are not only supposed to retell the Exodus story but must also make this ancient account personal, embracing it as if it is their own journey as well.

Individual and Communal Narratives

One of the ways a community's collective memory survives — especially over the course of tens of generations — is through the telling and retelling of a master narrative (or narratives), what scholar Ilana Pardes calls a "national biography." In the case of Jews, in recounting their story this group has reinforced its self- understanding while also shaping how the 99.8 percent of the world that is not Jewish sees them.

Storytelling in and of itself is not unique. Virtually all communities engage in this practice. In fact, all of us are storytellers — narrators — in our own right. As individuals we engage in this activity through daily routines, whether at work, school, or someplace else. We do it when meeting someone...