Sources For This Episode Include:
Shemot (Exodus) 12:26-27
Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 53b
Cormac McCarthy, The Road

A transcript of this episode will be available soon.

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On TEXTing: IRL – Ideas for Real Life, Elana Stein Hain brings the big dilemmas facing North American Jews into conversation with classic and modern Torah texts.

What Jewish Stories Do We Tell in a Broken World? Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana: Hi everyone. Welcome back to TEXTing IRL: Ideas for Real Life, where we wrestle with the big dilemmas of our time, through the lens of classical and modern tour texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain. We’re recording on January 6th, 2026. 

What stories do we pass down to our children? This is an essential question for Jewish continuity. By stories, I mean how the world works and how we are supposed to work within it, but it’s fraught both because our children often understand the world differently than we do, and because the world itself is changing. Sometimes we ourselves don’t quite know how to make sense of what we see before our eyes and the reality around us undermines the values we hold dear and the values we’re trying to instill in our children. 

We care about education, but there are shootings in our schools and people don’t feel safe. We care about being a good person, but it gets you nowhere in politics. We care about partnering with others and giving people the benefit of the doubt, but violence against Jews is on the rise, despite our best efforts.

This week in synagogues around the world, we are going to be talking about the importance of passing down stories to the next generation. But we need to ask ourselves: What happens when there’s an incoherence in those stories? 

To think about this, I’ve invited a treasured guest of the show, Dr. Tamara Mann Tweel. She’s been on the show talking about gratitude, and now she’s gonna be on the show for three episodes on the book of Shemot, Exodus. She’s a fellow at the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She serves as the Senior Program Director for Civic Initiatives at The Teagle Foundation. In a previous role, she was the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Civic Spirit. It’s a civic organization serving Jewish and Catholic schools across America. She’s an educator and executive, a mother and a daughter who’s shaped by her communities, her family, and her country. 

Welcome back to the show, Tamara. I’m so happy you’re here. 

Tamara: I’m so happy to be here, Elana, thank you so much. 

Elana: Well, you are indeed a treasured guest of this show and I love learning with you, so.

Tamara: I feel the same way. It’s a gift. 

Elana: Thank you. So we’re looking at Parshat Bo. This week’s Torah portion, this week’s parsha. The focus on the ability to pass down narratives is very strong, right? We’re gonna give them a coherent portrait. I’ll just give you one verse of the many that talk about that: “Vehaya ki amru aleichem bneichem,” when your children say to you, “mah avodah hazot lachem,” what exactly is this ritual that you’re doing? “Va-amartem,” you say, “zevach Pesach hu la’Hashem,” this is a Passover sacrifice to God, “asher pasach al batei Bnei Yisrael b’Mitzrayim,” who passed over right, passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, “b’nogpo et Mitzrayim,” when God was actually plaguing the Egyptians with the death of the firstborn, God passed over our houses. “Ve-et bateinu hu hitzil,” God saved our homes, and, “vayikod ha-am vayishtachavu,” and by the way we add here, everyone bowed in homage when they heard this.

But this is amazing because it’s so clear. It’s the allure of having a very clear story to tell when your child asks. 

Tamara: I know, I know we’re gonna spend the majority of this conversation coping with the exact opposite of this, but I do wanna pause and just say how comforting it is to be told what to say when your children—you know, I’m a parent and I get the gift of countless questions. And to say, just to have a moment where you’re anchored in what you’re supposed to say, to have some confidence that like, okay, my job here is to pass down this story to give them this answer is—there’s a, there’s a great comfort and clarity in that that I, I have to say, it feels extremely rare. 

Elana: Okay. But good, let’s go from that very comfortable place to somewhere a little bit uncomfortable. 

Tamara: Okay. I’m ready.

Elana: ‘Cause Jewish tradition does not just give us the smooth version of things. We also have examples where, you know, the next generation looks and says there’s, uh, there’s something that doesn’t really make sense about your story, that, especially the way you’re saying, we’re supposed to walk through the world. 

I don’t really agree with you. Something… something’s off about it.

It reminds me of when my kid said to me at the Pesach Seder one year, this was the COVID Pesach Seder, where we were  having ourselves, and he says, well, what if, what’s the story the Egyptians tell about the exodus from Egypt? And I was like, dun, dun dun. What am I supposed to do now? Right? So I, I wanna give an example—

Tamara: Can I just say that I’m grateful that, that the sources do both? They give us moments as parents, we are supposed to be anchored in clarity and story. And then they also deeply acknowledge that our children are gonna ask us questions that are so true and destabilizing that we will not know what to do well. 

Elana: Yes. Well, so this is the Babylonian Talmud in Eruvin, on 53B. I mean, what’s interesting, it’s Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, and he’s basically saying, there was a time he tells a few stories where he was bested by people he didn’t expect to be bested by. One is about a little girl and it’s not his little girl, but it’s about a little girl, and it goes like this:

“Pa’am achat hayiti maalech al haderech,” once I was walking on the way, “ve-haita derech overet basadeh,” and you know, there was a shortcut that was going through somebody’s field, “vehayiti mehalech bah,” so I walked through the shortcut, meaning, why should I walk on the regular public thoroughfare path if it takes longer, if there’s a shortcut, even if it goes through somebody’s, you know, field, their backyard. Okay, I’m gonna go through it. Right? 

And this little kid is seeing it and says, hmm. So it says, “amar li tinoket achat,” a little girl says to me, Rebbe, my teacher. Right? Yeah. So I just wanna point out, she’s, there’s a, a reverence, right? “Lo sadeh hi poh?” Isn’t this a field? Meaning, isn’t this somebody’s field? This is not the public thoroughfare. Why are you walking through there? Right? Isn’t this a field? 

And I love the fact that it’s a question like, she genuinely perhaps finds it shocking or maybe she can’t…

Tamara: Or judgment.

Elana: Correct. Or maybe she can’t just say it. She can’t just say, hey, you shouldn’t be walking there. She has to do it in a Socratic method, ’cause it’s more reverential in some way. 

Tamara: Yeah, maybe. 

And I mean, he’s been caught red handed here and he needs to offer a justification. So “amarti lah,” he explains to his audience here. “Lo,” no, no, no, no, “derech kevusha hi,” it’s a trodden path already. Some people read this as like continuing the Socratic method, where he says, “lo derech kevusha hi?” Isn’t it already a trodden field? 

Meaning, yes, he is actually trying to justify and say, no, no, no. This is the way it’s done. Like this is a decriminalized thing. When there’s a trodden field, everybody walks through it like, that’s okay. It’s as though you have permission. It’s fine. 

But she says over, “amar li,” she said to me, “listim kamotcha kevoshuha,” actually, thugs like you are the ones who trod that path to begin with. And this is amazing. He went from her teacher to being a thug. Yeah, that’s what she calls him, “listim,” like a bandit. That’s what she calls him. And it’s basically, she’s not buying his story. She’s really not. She’s not buying his story. 

Tamara: I, I love this story so much. To me it’s like, it’s everything right now. 

And I wanna just pause for a minute and see it through the perspective of the rabbi. Just, how do you explain a fraught world to a child? 

Elana: And by the way, in the end, he, he thought it was flimsy himself. 

Tamara: I know, because he said she bested me. 

Elana: He realized it was flimsy. 

Tamara: I know. Because there’s so many components to it. It, he maybe he knows that it’s a lie. Like he sort of admitted that.

Elana: Or knows that it’s not fair that this is the way the world works. She’s right. It shouldn’t be like that. Just ’cause some thug started this, we continue that way?

Tamara: But it also hits for me, like, how do I explain to my child how fearful I am for you and that I’m willing to do moral compromises to protect you. 

Elana: You wanna move from, he’s doing something that’s gonna get him somewhere faster, which that’s just a moral compromise. The world is built on moral compromises. I mean, that’s the… being in the “real world,” and how people say it’s the “real world,” and he realizes when it comes under scrutiny that actually some of those compromises are actually pretty morally flimsy. Like when you actually, when it comes down to it and you’re saying what happens when actually some of the compromises that our children see us making are compromises that we are making to try to protect them. 

And they, they still don’t, they, it’s not just, they still don’t, they’re sort of like, this doesn’t make any sense. This is not a good thing that you’re doing. You’re like, no, no, this is a good thing that I’m doing ’cause I’m protecting you. 

Tamara: Right. And how do you ever explain that? 

Elana: Do you have an example of that in your life that you’re thinking about? 

Tamara: Well, the reason I was actually thinking about it is because of this novel, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I don’t know if you’ve read it yet, but I know you will. I’m sure many of our audience members have read it. It’s like an astounding novel that I just actually should have read it earlier in my life, but I was afraid of it. It’s this post-apocalyptic novel and it takes place in just a, some of the language is so extraordinary. It’s like “a cauterized landscape,” “an ashen scab land.” It’s America after something you don’t even ever understand in the novel what went wrong. 

And it’s a father and a son and it’s just such a profound journey. And there are so many moments in the text where the father really does make moral compromises that are almost… That he can’t explain away.

Have you ever crossed a street to protect a child and you can’t really explain why you just crossed the street or moved a subway car or just any of the small, little things you do that are not, like, wildly aligned with your values or the values you explain to a child? Like to me that’s the, I empathize so much, much with the rabbi. 

Elana: I think there are two ways that you go in those situations. One is you actually say, what I was doing was moral. And the other is you say, what I was doing was the… the… it was immoral, but the morality suspended for the moment, right? 

And by the way, I’m literally sitting in Israel for these two years. And what story do you think people are talking about telling their children when they have to go out to war and they come back and they’ve killed people? So either you say this is a moral action, or you say the morality is suspended in some way, or maybe regular morality is suspended in the way, and this is morality of war and this is not—how do you explain? How do you explain any of that?

Tamara: I think that’s where parenting is for so many of us right now. It’s exactly, like that’s the essential quandary and that moment where the young girl says, you’re a robber/ It’s hard. It’s hard for me. 

Elana: It’s a very hard, yes, but she’ll come back, but she’ll come, she’ll come back from it because he comes back from it and says, you know what? You’re right. I’m not gonna do that. I know, but like if politics is an ugly game, but you have to play it and you have to play it in order to be safe, in order to ensure the safety in the future of your children, then they look at you and they say, well, why are you playing that ugly game? You say, well, I’m playing that ugly game for you. What is that? 

I’d love to hear an excerpt from—

Tamara: Yeah, I wanna, I wanna bring us, I think it would be amazing. If you don’t mind, I’d like to bring us into the text. I’m just gonna bring us into the very opening, which is so intense and I think offers another way for me, like through this quandary of how do we parent in incredibly treacherous times? How do we answer our children in ways that are honest, that can respond to their… what they see in the world. And then, yeah, I feel like it does all this stuff. So let me, let me just get us right into the beginning. 

Elana: Yeah. Although, I do wanna just say it’s, it’s, it’s easy because it’s clear that it’s an apocalypse. I just wanna say. Most of the decisions we have to make are not so—when we’re already in the cauterized landscape. It’s when you’re trying to figure out how not to end up in the cauterized landscape—but please, with all due.

Tamara: Take the other road.

Elana:Uh-huh. Correct. 

Tamara: “When we woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night, he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness, and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world, his hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath.”

And I think, to me, what this does so intensely and starkly is as a parent it almost, like, everything’s wrong. Like there’s the outside world is so bleak and hopeless and unbearable. You have your hand on this precious gift’s body and you can just feel that, like you can feel the precious breath and it is different and still holy and still worthy of all of your attention.

Elana: But you can’t, you can’t actually change the situation.

Tamara: No, not at all, in any sort of transformative way. 

Elana: I really did feel this in the bunkers during the Iran… during the Iran onslaught, I really did feel it. Meaning I was sitting, half my family was stuck in America, because they had gone in for a family thing and then me and one of my kids were in Israel during that time.  

And I mean, they’re playing for keeps. Iran is playing for keeps. They’re not Houthis. They have shoes, they have money, they have bank accounts, they have, like, all of it. And they, they wanna destroy Israel and there we are. We’d have to go back, go down to the bunker, not be able to leave the apartment, really, for days because we weren’t sure when the next attack was going to be. We had a very short amount of time. And I couldn’t really transform the situation in any meaningful way. I mean, I was literally carrying our passports along with us, around with us. They said, carry all your passports, any of your medications, anything like that, ’cause in case your, uh, building gets hit, you won’t be able to get back in. 

So all I could do was like, put my hand on my kid’s shoulder or invent games for us to play. But the point is, his preciousness was no less precious in those moments. It’s just, that’s actually the only, that was the only light during that time. Just actually just being the parent. 

Tamara: Holding him.

Elana: Just holding him. Not I—I’m not changing anything. 

Tamara: Did he ask you questions? 

Elana: Did he, oh my gosh. Talk about narratives. He said to me, oh, I’m gonna have a story to tell my grandchildren. I’m gonna tell my grandchildren this story, what I went through. I’m gonna tell my grandchildren this story. He went straight to narrative as a source of meaning, not as a source of incoherence. It was as a source of meaning. 

Tamara: That’s so incredible and powerful, and that’s so different actually than what happened in On the Road. Do you know why you think he was? I mean, it’s such a, an extraordinary form of strength and hopefulness to be like, not only will I get through this, this will be my story, and I will share this story. Like that level of like, yes, strength in your son is so—

Elana: I actually think that’s what gave him strength, meaning the idea of—there will be a story to tell after this. I will be able to share this story. I’ll be able to pass it down to somebody—that makes me think, I can weather this, I can weather this because there’s gonna be a next… there’s gonna be a next piece where I’m actually holding critical information. I’m actually holding a critical experience that I’m going to give to other people and it makes it worth being able to live through it and not just collapse under its weight, right? There’s something to that. 

Tamara: I also think that is like, honestly, I think that’s like the deepest gift you could give a child in some way. Like in this moment, like you, he knew that he was creating his own narrative, and—

Elana: It was actually remarkable.

Tamara: That was for his children. To me that is so astoundingly beautiful, actually. 

Elana: It’s, it’s, and it, it came out of his heart, meaning, I didn’t feed it to him. It came out of his heart, right? One of the things actually during COVID that I thought was interesting is people would talk about how we want to be able to tell the story of how we were during COVID in a way that would make us proud, meaning tell a story that would make us proud. Not a story that would make us look selfish. Not a story that would make us look, I don’t know, callous towards others. But story where we could say we were, we were proud of the way that we behaved during this time. 

And I think that’s also interesting. It’s a power of the, the motivation that you will have a story to tell actually motivates you in this time. And that’s why I think it’s actually very difficlt when people, when people’s stories fall apart, whether it’s the story of American Jewry telling itself, or the story Israeli Jewry’s telling itself, meaning when it falls apart, you’re sort of like, wait, what am I doing this for? 

If, if my understanding of how the world works and what it’s supposed to be and what I can do in it doesn’t actually make sense?

Tamara: Oh my gosh. I need to—can I give you one other scene that like—

Elana: Yes, I wanna hear it. 

Tamara: And I just imagine it through the lens of the father and then imagine it through the lens of the son. 

Elana: Right, through the lens of the father, he’s paralyzed.

Tamara: So they’re on the road together, and the father is trying to keep them alive and the son is questioning the father constantly. But the hardest moments in the text from me when I’m reading it, is when the father does not let the boy help people, or when the father protects the boy with violence to others. And you can see it as necessary when you’re reading it, and even then, it’s so profoundly difficult. 

Father talking to the son: “My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?” “Yes.” He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up, “Are we still the good guys?” He said, “Yes.” “We’re still the good guys? And we always will be?” “Yes, we always will be.” “Okay.”

Then a little bit later in the text, “You have to talk to me,” he said—this is the father. “I’m talking.” “Are you sure?” “I’m talking now.” “Do you want me to tell you a story?” “No.” “Why not?” The boy looked at him and looked away. “Why not?” “Those stories are not true.” “They don’t have to be true, they’re stories.” “Yes. But in the stories, we’re always helping people, and we don’t help people.” “Why don’t you tell me a story?” “I don’t want to.” “Okay.” “I don’t have any stories to tell.”

Oh my—I like cry reading it now. I find it so profoundly devastating and for me, the father is trying to retain what anchored him in his childhood. He’s trying to tell stories of the world as it once was. He’s trying to give values that have held him together, the values that are completely shaping his parenting and they don’t work. 

It also sounds like they just don’t, they don’t suffice, they don’t explain the world the boy is experiencing, is seeing and, and it’s, and all there is left is absence there. 

Elana: Right, when I look at this, I say, okay, they are in the gap between the story that they had and the new story, and that is a very scary place to be because actually it, it—you know, when people say “there are no words”?

Tamara: Yeah.

Elana: I think when people say “there are no words,” I know, it’s so cliched. It’s actually they’re like, oh, shoot, what I thought I knew I don’t know anymore. Right. And I’m not sure what I know yet, but it is crucial to get words at some point. It is crucial to get words, even if that story is going to have to be finessed again and again and again. It’s actually crucial. We need to be able to have some sort of roadmap that we give ourselves for the world, and so we need to figure out what story will make sense. 

Tamara: I love that and I see it. I completely agree with you. And I also see it like maybe I would just put it in slightly different valence, which is, this story works in such a profound way for the father. Like it’s kept the father alive, it’s kept the son safe. It’s kept them moving, even when they get to places and realize there are no answers. 

And something else has worked for the father. This profound sacredness he experiences in his son in such a deep way. Like it got… it gets, it gets him through something. And I think for, for me, anyway, as a parent, when I’m faced with these stories that are, or questions I can’t answer, or I’m passing on a world I don’t understand and I’m making mistakes, I just have so much, like, emotional connection to like that distinction that these things have really worked for me and I’m at a place where they’re not working for my child. And just living in that a little bit. 

Like, do you know what I mean? Like, I agree with you, we need the next story. But it’s not that his story itself doesn’t work, it’s that it’s not the story that we need to pass down at that moment because it’s not connecting to the reality of the face. 

Elana: Well, you need to actually, there, there’s some way that the story doesn’t work anymore because the world has actually changed. 

Tamara: Yes, yes. 

Elana: But when that’s the case, actually trying to force that same story could be destructive. Meaning if I, I’m gonna give the example of like, you know, the American exceptionalism story for the Jewish people, right? If I keep on that story of like, no, it’s great and this is a blip and this is a—I actually think that could create a kind of destructive naiveté for the next generation. 

I’d actually, I’d rather them turn to me and say, no, mom, you’re nuts. I understand you have your understanding of what it was like in the nineties. The nineties were great. Super golden age. Right now, we have certain challenges and we have to meet those challenges, right? And they have to meet those challenges where they are, right>

Now, the opposite that happens is like, what happens when I’m sort of like, whoa, everything around me has changed. And they don’t see that change at all. They’re like, no, no, no, everything’s fine. It’s just this is a little challenging. And this is—so I, I think this is… I think this is very, very hard, because at one in the same time, my child is actually the source of a tremendous amount of incoherence, and you are telling me that he really, that it, it’s his child’s existence that actually is motivating him to go on, right? It’s an interesting thing. 

I know you have another scene…

Tamara: Well, I know, I just, I just wanna say, yeah, I feel like… I’ll, I’ll tell you where I’ve sort of moved with this a little bit. 

Elana: Okay. 

Tamara: And I, and everything, everything changes every second for me, so I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. 

Elana: I don’t think you’re alone in this.

Tamara: But I feel like I have been doing that to my kids, like that blip, like this is a blip, this is a, this, this is a that and reckoning in such a serious way as someone who is now middle aged, and just being, and, and really with so much humility about the gifts of the world I inherited versus what my children are inheriting, and just with a lot of humility that things are hard for them, that will—or hard for this moment, maybe things will get, you know, God willing, things always get better, but there have been some really hard moments in a way that I didn’t face in my childhood. And not trying to explain that away. And trying to be like… And also not trying to overexplain it. Like I might not be the best interpreter of our moment either. 

And I think, and I just wanna give you the answer that I love for this—

Elana: Okay, let’s it, let’s hear it. 

Tamara: But this is the thing I’ve been like, so the father’s dying, he’s about to die. Andt he scene just stays with me so much:

“He’d stop and lean on the cart and the boy would go on and then stop and look back, and he would raise his weeping eyes and see him standing there in the road, looking back at him, from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste, like a tabernacle.”

And I just, like, imagine the father seeing this treacherous world, and then in the middle of that, he sees this like, profound, holy, glowing beauty of his son, which he connects to a tabernacle. And the idea that you could pass on that sight, like his last vision of the world is his son, in that way, like if I could give that, if you can give over that as a parent, to me, it’s like the way we get to see them no matter how destabilizing and confusing insufficient answers are—can we give over the sight we have towards our children? 

Elana: Wow. Meaning you want actually the story we tell our children to not always be this cosmology of the world, but actually the story of you are it. You know what I mean? Meaning, you’re it. So tabernacle… you can be in the wilderness, you’re still a tabernacle. You can be—what can that allow them to weather? What can that allow them to do? How can that allow them to think?

Meaning, in some ways you’re saying yes, you can tell all the stories you want about the world. Tell the story that you as a parent know better than anyone else, which is you, my child, next generation—you got it. You matter. You’re even holy. You’re holy to me. And how does that allow people to live, even if they can’t transform their reality? How does allow them to live differently, even in the midst of a wilderness, I think is an interesting question. 

You know, you’re reminding me as we close up, you know, I, I just wanna say, for people who are listening, it sounds like we’ve done… We’ve done everything from, you know, try to change your story to let them find their own story. And I love where you’re landing, which is, actually tell them the story that a parent’s supposed to tell to their child, which is, you are great. You know what I mean? Like that’s the story we’re supposed to tell. It actually.

Tamara: Which, for me, like I see such holiness in you. Not like you’re the best—

Elana: No, no, no. 

Tamara: That I get to as your parent. I don’t have to explain—I don’t always have to provide a perfect world for you or a world without challenges or even a safe world. You know what I mean?

Elana: And what it means is, when your parents ask, when the child asks, the fact that you have a child to ask, the fact that there’s a child there, that is, in some ways, the continuation of the story in one way or another. It might not look exactly the way you think. 

Tamara: I also just wanna acknowledge, in that sense, it’s easier for the parent. I just wanna, I, I really wanna make sure to say that, it can be easier for the parent. Because we have that to look, we can look at that. 

Elana: Correct. Yeah. We look at that as our continuity. 

Yeah. Well, Tamara, thank you. Appreciate you so much. I think, you know, this was a more evocative conversation, I think, than some of the ones that we’ve had in the past, like a little, it’s not detached in any way and I think a lot of people are thinking about this. So I wanna thank all of our listeners for joining us and I wanna thank you for joining. 

Tamara: It’s my pleasure, Elana. Thank you.