JTS Torah Commentary

Motivations for Storytelling

By Paula Mack Drill | Devarim

When our family gathers for celebrations, one refrain consistently punctuates every conversation: “That’s not the way it happened!” One of my adult children will then retell the story of how my youngest’s wrist was broken or the first time one of the daughters-in-law came for Shabbat dinner. Everyone has a different motivation for shaping our iconic family stories according to their own remembrance – to make themselves the heroes (or at least less culpable) or to uplift a favorite way of recalling the incident.

Stranger still is the way I find myself telling old stories in a great variety of ways depending on my emotions or my audience in the moment. I might be the victim or the hero; sometimes in the telling, “I was shocked” or “I knew all along”! Memory is a tricky thing.

So it seems to be with Moshe here in Devarim, as he recalls what happened when the tribal leaders were sent to reconnoiter the land; an event we first learned about back in Parashat Shelah Lekha in the Book of Bemidbar. It is fair to assume that the all-knowing narrator in Bemidbar was sharing an account of what happened close in time to the event, and Moshe is now remembering it in Devarim at a later time, as an iconic story of his own. If we try to imagine Moshe’s motivation (conscious or unconscious) for telling the story in the way that he does, we can begin to understand why he says (and doesn’t say) the things he does.