Attend The Tale: Using the Seder to Build Resilience

image source: The Animated Haggadah

If you’ve watched a good movie or read a good novel this year, you have experienced the power of the story. A compelling narrative draws our attention, awakens our emotions, and imprints itself in our memory. This, in part, is what the Seder aims to do: dedicate time to harness the power of storytelling, connecting us emotionally to our ancestors and reinforcing in our memories our national story. 

This idea of having a dedicated time for telling our stories has basis in research. Emory psychologists Robyn Fivush and Marshall Duke found that families who shared their stories at holiday gatherings, and on family vacations and get-togethers, alongside traditions and rituals, were more likely to have resilient children. These children had a quality described as “the intergenerational self”; they had a stronger sense of morals and inner strength. 

It’s not just how the family story is shared; it’s the content of the story that matters. Fivush and Duke described three types of family narratives. The ascending (we were destitute and and now we are successful), the descending (we were blessed and now we’re cursed), and the oscillating. The latter - the most likely to be correlated with resilience - acknowledges the many hills and valleys of an enduring family story.

The benefit comes not from merely recounting our victories, nor just our struggles and cautionary tales. The greatest gift we can give the next generation is the full and complex narrative of our lives. This allows our children to really and truly learn from our experiences, to gain strength and hope from our successes, and to glean lessons from our struggles endured during our leaner years. 

Which of these family narratives matches with the Haggadah? It’s tempting to match our Pesach narrative to the resilient outcomes of the oscillating family narrative. But the haggadah more closely matches the ascending narrative. As the Mishna in Pesachim 10:4 says, “We start with disgrace, and we conclude with praise”. We speak of ascension, not oscillation. 

So, nu? What’s so bad about an ascending narrative? 

In my work as a psychotherapist and addictions counselor, I often note how much easier it is to talk about the difficulty of the past than the struggle of the present. We were in dire straits, sure, but now we are ok. It is hard to acknowledge the difficulty that we are currently enduring; it is a lot easier to note our past difficulties, to wait until the current pain is in the rearview before adding it to the story. But the very act of hiding our current struggles makes it more difficult for us to do the work we need to do to leave them behind. 

In this way, in our telling of the Haggadah we can ultimately miss the mark. If we say that we had problems, but now we do not, we are leaving out an important part of what makes this narrative work. But if we acknowledge all of our struggles, including those of the present, we model a healthy and realistic sense of self. We provide hope for our children that they too can address their struggles, when they arise, head-on. 

We can also amplify certain parts of the Haggadah that remind us to not be completely complacent. We say “Next year in Jerusalem!” We were slaves, and then we were freed, yes, but we made it into the Holy Land, built a Temple, and then lost it. In this way, there is some oscillation, some acknowledgement of our current lacunae. 

We use stories to understand who we are. The Haggadah is part of our lore, a powerful story about us as a people. The way that we tell the tale - annually, ritually, with family and community, over food and drink - creates a sense of our intergenerational selves. But the details that we choose to share are just as important, both the ups and the downs of yesterday and today. Let’s go off-script and include our own personal narratives as part of the storytelling. When we acknowledge ourselves as we actually are, faults and strengths, we own our place in the intergenerational survival of the Jewish people. We are strong. We last. We can survive most anything.