[Avodah] Fables and Lies

[T613K at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/5/2007 8:58:26 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
ilanasober at gmail.com writes:

>>I imagine people would have no problem understanding a that a  reference to 
George Washington, the American Revolution, etc as "myth" does  not imply 
that the speaker doubts whether GW really existed or considers  himself superior 
to Americans......We can have a true myth while other nations  have false 
myths, just like we can have a true G-d while other nations have  false gods.<<

Chanukah  Sameach,
Ilana



>>>>
The word myth simply is never used to describe straightforward  history.  
Whenever a writer speaks of the "Foundational Myth of America" he  means that our 
myth is that we were heroic against the Brits and the  Indians, and that we 
founded a wonderful free country BUT the reality is  something far darker, we 
really committed genocide against the Indians and our  Constitution was a farce 
because we had slavery.  When they speak of "myth"  in connection with George 
Washington, they mean that the story of him chopping  down the cherry tree -- 
"It was I, Father, who chopped down the tree, I cannot  tell a lie" -- is not 
true.  
 
There was a time when the story was taught as true; a later time when  
teachers knew it was false, but told it to children as true, in order to  inculcate 
the wonderful character trait of honesty; and today we have reached a  point 
where teachers tell schoolkids that in the dark past, people THOUGHT the  
Founding Fathers of America were heroes, but here, kids, is the real  scoop:  they 
were horrible people and founded a Nation of Injustice
 
In normal, common English, there is no such thing as a "true myth."   You can 
instead use some such locution as "our founding narrative."  
 
"Ma'aseh avos siman labanim" -- which someone mentioned on avodah as our  
founding "myth" -- is a myth only if the avos are taken as archetypal  
personalities who never actually lived.  In a work of fiction you can point  to elements 
of the narrative which foreshadow later action.  But the Torah,  although it 
is magnificent as literature, is not a work of fiction.   It says something 
different:  not that the Author foreshadowed the  later course of Jewish history 
in a literary form, but that He actually  created and placed into the world 
actual people, whose actual lives foreshadowed  the later course of Jewish 
history.
 

--Toby  Katz
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