GENERATIONS OF STORIES ARE JEWISH LEGACY.

Byline: Jonathan Dobrer Local View

EACH year at Passover, Jews tell the story of our birth from slavery to freedom. We are reminded by the stories of slavery and liberation that our journey never ends. Neither slavery nor freedom is a permanent condition - and if we are not freeing ourselves, we should be about the business of carrying the message of freedom to others.

In repeating stories and songs, in eating the same foods, we are not in danger of becoming bored. There are plenty of new interpretations and over 2,000 years of past commentary to, well, comment on.

As all works of intellectual and moral complexity, the biblical narrative is never finished. We see our lives in each story. We see the concerns of each generation projected onto the sacred texts.

Let me give a concrete example, though not from Exodus.

When I was a young boy studying for my bar mitzvah, I read the Psalms. They meant very little to me. What did I know of the great joys of David or his terrible despair? I was 12.

When I was studying at the Graduate Theological Union with Rabbi David Winston and reread the Psalms, I saw them completely differently. I knew something of life, and King David began to (as the Quakers say,) ``Speak to my condition.''

Now, as a man of maturity, at least in years, David's joys and sorrows convey to me both wisdom and solace. His excitement is contagious and his despair comforting in that it indicates that faith is not even and unquestioning; faith is, as Rabbi Harold Schulweis observed, better understood as ``faithfulness.''

So too, in wrestling faithfully with the escape from Egypt and the wandering in the desert, I have come to many understandings - not simply one ``right'' interpretation.

Arguably one of the greatest factors that is keeping Judaism alive, against all odds, is our lively discussion. Stories do not mean just one thing. They are read, reread, held up at different angles and meanings are mined from their rich ore. The truths of our history are not completely contingent on facts or history.

The story of the Exodus is the Jewish salvation story - an endless journey toward a promised land. We never arrive. We are always arriving.

On one level, this is about freedom for a people. On another, it is about all peoples and how we all yearn to escape what holds us captive.

It has been a centerpiece of American Black Christian religiosity. They knew what it was to be slaves in the west and to long for a journey eastward, cross the Jordan River and be home. Their Jordan River was the Atlantic and Africa their promised land.

The Exodus also has resonance in the rest of the Christian world. After all, the Last Supper was a Passover Seder. The bread of affliction, matzo, is the bread of communion. The blood of the lambs that marked the Jewish homes for the Angel of Death to Passover is the origin of Christian Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God.

There is another metaphorical meaning, another truth, in our common narrative.

Egypt is in the west, a land of the setting sun, of slavery, and darkness. The Jewish people went from darkness to light, from the living death of slavery to new life. We were birthed by passing through the narrow birth canal of the Red Sea. We were reborn into the light of Sinai.

As newly born, we complained, and didn't like the food provided. ``Manna from heaven'' was received without joy. ``Manna'' comes from the Hebrew word, ``What is it?'' It did not become delicious until the people were mature enough to receive and follow the law. This made it sweet with honey and cardamom.

This is our human story. We are born, taken care of, rebel, revolt and then finally start to grow up. We find our mates, begin to pass our experiences and values from generation to generation and then we come to another river, a river we cannot ourselves cross.

Perhaps like Moses, we can get a glimpse. Like Martin Luther King, we can picture our children living across the river. But we will have done our jobs, run our portion and passed on our values, beliefs and traditions to a new generation. They, too, must question, rebel and make our stories their own. They take thousands of years of eating, singing, discussing and living with them. A precious legacy. Not too much to carry.

They take the knowledge that all our stories began before our birth and continue after our death. When they remember our stories, they remember us.