[Avodah] Fables and Lies

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R"n Chana Luntz wrote:
> It may be, therefore that the word myth has become too
> difficult to use (in the same way that one cannot, today, use
> the word "gay" instead of the word "happy", particularly when
> teaching children).  But if we have no other words, then we
> may have to, in a discussion like this one, revert to using
> such words and explaining what we mean by them, or what was
> meant to be be meant by them, instead of what modern parlance
> tells us we are supposed to understand by them.

I agree. Like the children who have only one understanding of the word "gay", I have only one understanding of the word "myth", and really have difficulty following RCL's usage. Perhaps the words "poetry", "allegory", or "parable" might be closer to what RCL means?

> ... note that this is precisely what happened, in effect, to
> RAM. He believed (and may still believe) the modern understanding
> that truth is contained fully in historical fact (and felt
> Judaism was superior to Xtianity based on this).  Then he
> realised that the Asarah Harugei Malchus, as set out in the Yom
> Kippur davening, did not meet this criteria, and it caused him
> great pain.  If he had never been set up for the fall in this
> way, by assuming that the modern chronological understanding was
> the only true way of understanding things, he would not now be
> finding himself in the position of criticising the Yom Kippur
> liturgy and those who put it together - when he discovers that
> the formulation as there written does not correspond with
> chronological fact as demanded by modernity.

I think it is now a good time to explain my views a little better.

It does not bother me at all that children are taught about a race between a tortoise and a hare. Even the youngest of children understand that such animals do not talk, and never could have actually set up such a race. They understand the story for the message it teaches, and the historical inaccuracy is irrelevant.

Was there ever a boy who actually cried "Wolf"? Did someone invent the story from thin air, or did the story actually occur and was then used as a teaching model? I don't know, and I don't care, because the boy is anonymous and has no historical relevance.

Betsy Ross, on the other hand, starts to get into the grey areas. For non-Americans who are unfamiliar with the story, Betsy Ross is said to have sewn the first American flag during the War Of Independence, and her story is often used to get people into a patriotic mood. Unfortunately, little or no evidence exists to support this story, and some have claimed that it was someone else entirely who created that first flag. Yet the story of Betsy Ross persists, and I think that this might be the sort of thing which RCL is calling a "myth" -- a story whose main value is the lessons it teaches, regardless of its historical accuracy. And because the *lessons* are true, the myth is considered "true" even if modern people who are hung up about history might call it false or questionable.

I don't have much of a problem with this sort of story either. But that is specifically because Betsy Ross was mostly obscure and unknown except for this one point.

That is the critical point in my eyes: Does the subject of this myth appear elsewhere? If not, then all is fine, and the myth can teach its message. But if the subject appears in other contexts as well, then the author of the myth must realize that it is natural for people to compare the character's appearance here, with the same character's appearance there. And if they are inconsistent, then woe to the author for confusing his audience and leading them to falsehood.

If Ayleh Ezk'ra would have been a story about the death of ten gedolim, and it would have been written to give the impression that it was a single event, even though it actually stretched out over a few generations, that would not bother me much, because the Roman oppression DID last for a very long time. The poet can talk about the ten murders in a single context, because it WAS a single context, and that can provide the emotionalism and rhetoric that the myth needs for its impact.

A careful author or poet can - and should - accomplish this without bringing blatant falsehoods into the story, and that is where I feel that Ayleh Ezk'ra went over the line. One example might be how Rabi Yishmael Kohen Gadol picked up the severed head of Rabban Shimon, but perhaps he actually did do this (as some recent posters have written). The part that really bothers me is how the author portrays what happened BEFORE the murders: The ruler got the ten of them together, he made up the story about the shoes, the ten of them sent Rabi Yishmael on a mission to find out what's happening in Shamayim, and they agreed to docilely go to their deaths.

THAT's the part of the story that I'm claiming to be like Santa Claus. We know from elsewhere that Rabbi Akiva's skin was torn off with rakes, and the poet uses that emotion to build a myth about being moser ourselves to the non-Jewish government. Did the Ten Martyrs go like sheep to their slaughter, even trying to go first rather than see a colleague die? Or did they put up some sort of resistance?

But please don't bother trying to answer that question. Because if you tell me that they did put up a resistance, well, thank you, but a few words of information now don't do much to overcome years of disinformation. And if you tell me that they did go like sheep, I have to wonder why the poet had to fictionalize the story.

Hmm... Maybe that's the whole point that RCN is making... Maybe they did go like sheep, but it was NOT a fiction. Maybe that's the point of the virtuous myth, that it does not fictionalize, only poeticize. Could it be that the Ten Martyrs did go willingly, and that the only distortion of the truth was that they each made this decision individually, rather than collectively? If that is indeed the case, then I can see the distortions as minor and benign.

Akiva Miller