This Shabbat, consider following the guidance of the RaM”A, the great Ashkenazi halachic commentator. Before Pesach, there is a custom to recite, at Shabbat mincha time, a segment of the Haggadah: from the beginning of the portion “Avadim Hayinu”—we were slaves—until “lekhaper al kol avonotenu”—to forgive all of our sins.

Recently, I reread some of this text with a group of our Hillel Germany student leaders in the city of Leipzig. The context for our conversation was about how telling our own stories can be a valuable way to establish oneself as a leader, gather empathy and support, and bring people toward a new vision. Many of our students don’t typically tell their stories in public, let alone reveal their Jewish identity at all while on campus or in their place of work. Personal storytelling, an act that can feel so intuitively baked into one of the most important and widely practiced Jewish rituals of the year, is in fact an extremely vulnerable and countercultural proposition for our students here in Germany.

The lines we focused on:

וַאֲפִילוּ כֻּלָּנוּ חֲכָמִים כֻּלָּנוּ נְבוֹנִים כֻּלָּנוּ זְקֵנִים כֻּלָּנוּ יוֹדְעִים אֶת הַתּוֹרָה 

מִצְוָה עָלֵינוּ לְסַפֵּר בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם

וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה לְסַפֵּר בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם הֲרֵי זֶה מְשֻׁבָּח

And even were we all wise, all intelligent, all aged and all knowledgeable in the Torah,

still the command would be upon us to tell of the coming out of Egypt;

and the more one tells of the coming out of Egypt, the more admirable it is.

Together with that, we studied an excerpt of the Me’or Einayim, a major Chasidic work composed of teachings by the 18th century Ukrainian Rebbe Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl. The Chernobyler Rebbe opens the excerpt with a rhetorical question: Why is the Torah full of stories? If the purpose of the Torah is to tell us Jews how to live and what to do, why bother with such narratives as the creation of the world, the family sagas of our matriarchs and patriarchs, the plagues, and the dramatic exit from Egypt? All of that is nice, but it’s not the clear instructions we’d need, theoretically, for our day-to-day lives. 

In other words: What is the value of storytelling?

The Chernobyler Rebbe answers his own question: 

It is certainly impossible to always speak of Torah, and one must [also] speak of regular things… And there are some souls that can be more elevated with “regular talk” than with Torah study. And this is the idea of yetziyat mitzrayim (the exodus from Egypt). It is from the expression, meitzar yam (the border of the sea)—that is to say that it is close to the shore of the sea of true wisdom. Therefore, the commandment to always talk about yetziyat mitzrayim…is not only on Passover, but even all the time.

The message: Our stories—the ones we inherit and the ones we live today—contain as much wisdom, value, and meaning as the laws that guide our daily lives. We must always engage in storytelling, even beyond the tale of the Exodus. As has been known for generations—from the writers of the Midrash, to Chasidic storytellers, to parents putting their children to bed each night—stories have the potential to move us more profoundly, perhaps more than a list of laws ever could.

So what are we to do with this minhag, this Shabbat, at a time when telling our stories seems to require more courage and emotional preparedness than we’ve grown used to? What are we to do at a time that seems to be evermore defined by ongoing war, violence against Jewish institutions, and perpetual uncertainty as to the security of Jews in Israel and around the world? Do we tell our stories, even as they take on a darker tone? Or do we remain quiet, seeking to spare our families, our peers and ourselves the discomfort of hearing something unpleasant?

If the answer of the RaM”A is not enough, take the language of the Mishna, brought down in the Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 116a, which assigns us not only the task of storytelling during Leil haSeder but also suggests a a technique for doing so: “matchil big’nut um’sayem b’shevach—We begin with disgrace and conclude with glory.

Perhaps it’s needless to say, but the long arc of Jewish history makes no assumption that our stories will radiate positivity. In every generation, storytelling is not just a ritual reserved for this Shabbat and for Leil haSeder next week: It’s also an expression of hope. The Torah is full of stories because these are what the Jewish people turn to in times of uncertainty; our stories provide as many answers about how to live as do the generations of our halachic texts. Our esteemed teachers at Yeshivat Maharat know this well: As poskot halacha in training, we learn to listen to the story of the questioner in full, as every answer we give depends not only on the letter of the law as written but also on the specific situation, the specific time, and the specific need we are sought to address. The halachic process needs both. We need both; the stories of our past are the guides to our future.

And so this Shabbat, I invite you to begin with disgrace and conclude with glory, and even if there’s little glory to be found in the story you’re telling now, to see the very act of telling as an expression of hope for those who are listening.