A story is told of the people who once dwelled in a village called Chelm. Of all things the people of Chelm loved, they loved the moon most of all. When it shone brightly in the night sky, there was joy and celebration in the town. Everything in the town was brighter: Homes would glow with happiness; lovers would walk through the town slowly, staring into each other’s eyes; children would listen to their parents and their teachers; the old, the young, even dogs and cats were kind and considerate to one another. But when the moon waned and disappeared, a gloomy sadness settled over everyone.
We have to do something about this!” proclaimed the town leaders. “We have to find a way to stay joyful even on the dark nights. But how?”
“If only we could capture the moon!” one Chelm genius declared. “Then we could let out a little light on those dark, gloomy nights and bring happiness to the world!”
“But how do you capture the moon?” the townspeople wondered.
“Well,” offered Shmerel the tailor, “once I was eating a bowl of soup. And as I ate, I looked into the bowl. And in the bowl was the light of the moon. If we had a big enough bowl of soup, perhaps we could capture the moon!”
And so it was determined: They would build the world’s biggest bowl, fill it with soup, and capture the moon! In the town square a giant bowl was constructed. And one night as the moon shone brightly in the sky, the whole town came forth with soup – jars of soup, pots of soup, vats of soup, bathtubs full of soup. Soon they had filled the world’s largest bowl. As the bowl filled up, the moon’s brilliant light was reflected in it.
“There it is!” they shouted.
Stealthily they snuck up on the moon. Then, all at once, they slammed the top on the bowl. At that very moment a cloud covered the sky, blotting out the moon’s light. “We own the moon!” they shouted. “It is right here in the world’s biggest bowl of soup. We own the moon!” That night there was dancing and rejoicing all night long in the town of Chelm.
But the next night, as the sun went down and darkness covered the land, the moon rose again, bright as ever, shining high in the sky.
Everyone in Chelm was perplexed. “How can the moon be in the sky? We captured it right here in the town square, in the world’s biggest bowl of soup!”
“Someone must have let it out!” shouted Shoshanah the matchmaker.
“But who? Who would do such a terrible thing?” asked Avrum the butcher.
And so an investigation was launched. Everyone in the town was interrogated. Each person was required to account for his or her whereabouts all during the day. No one was spared. No one except, of course, the rabbi. No one suspected that the rabbi, beloved, wise, and learned, would … No – it couldn’t be, not the rabbi!
But the investigation came up empty. Everyone had an alibi. Everyone was in school, at work, in the fields, in the shops, at home – everyone but the rabbi. And so the townspeople of Chelm timidly approached their beloved rabbi.
“Learned Rabbi, did you let the moon out of the soup?” the designated spokesperson inquired.
“Yes,” he sighed. “It was I.” A shock ran through the town. “But why, dear Rabbi, why?” they persisted. “Why?”
He looked at them through his bushy white eyebrows and stroked his long white beard. “Why? Because there are things we enjoy while we have them. They are ours to own and to hold and to enjoy, and there are other things, things of far greater value, that we enjoy only when we share them. Do you know what things I mean?”
“Love?” someone suggested. “Yes, love,” he answered. “And hugs!” someone else offered. “Yes, hugs,” he answered. “And joy!” they shouted. “Yes, joy,” he responded.
“And the moon!” said Shmerel the tailor sadly. “Yes, the moon as well,” the rabbi responded. “Only when we share it can we really enjoy its light. And so I was the one who let the moon out. And now all the world can share it!”
“But what will we do now, on dark nights, when the moon disappears? We’ll be sad and gloomy and dark,” the people cried. “That’s true, responded the rabbi. “Into every life come times of sadness, darkness, and gloom. That’s part of life. We’ll just have to find something else to share that sustains us when that happens!”
“Like what?” they asked. “Like soup!” declared the rabbi. “We’ll share soup. If you can’t own the moon and share happiness all the time, the next best thing is to share soup.”
And so it was declared a tradition. On nights when the moon disappeared and the night sky grew dark and gloomy, everyone shared soup. And it helped. For soup may not bring happiness – but it helps.
This charming story, which I have adapted from Capturing the Moon, a recent anthology of classic Jewish tales as retold by one of my teachers, Rabbi Edward M. Feinstein, is perhaps my favorite example of a subgenre of hasidic legends, about a fictional Eastern European town called Chelm that is populated by wise fools. In this narrative, the people of Chelm express anxiety. They are anxious about experiencing impending seasons of sadness. Seeking a way to avoid those fearsome times, they convince themselves that it is the moon’s light that causes their joy, since they seem to experience joy at times when the moon shines brightly in the night sky. Therefore, they reason, if they could somehow hold onto the moon in perpetuity, they would never again have to be sad. When they are forced to face the fact that they cannot actually capture the moon, they come to realize that the moon itself does not bring them joy. In fact, they learn, joy does not and cannot come from possessing anything in particular. Rather, it is joining and sharing with others – in relationship and, ultimately, in community – that facilitates joy.
In her essay, “Giants and Grasshoppers: Stories That Frame Congregational Anxiety,” congregational consultant Susan Beaumont observes that congregations experiencing seasons of anxiety, “apprehension and uneasiness of mind…over an impending or anticipated ill,” frequently tell particular kinds of stories “to hold their anxiety and to frame their understanding of the problem.” According to Beaumont, one of the most common types of stories told by anxious congregations is one in which the congregation casts itself as the noble hero battling against a nefarious outside force that is threatening to destroy it and everything it holds dear. Lawrence Peers, another congregational consultant, refers to this as “the problem-saturated story,” one that focuses on “who or what has been going wrong,” usually “a villain, a problem child, an unmensch.” Telling this kind of story, according to Susan Nienaber, a third expert in congregational life, “is one way of trying to reestablish a sense of control” in the face of “larger cultural and social influences” that are much more difficult to identify and overcome. Moreover, as Beaumont points out, as that story is “repeated throughout the congregation,” it shapes “the congregation’s perception and experience of truth.” It becomes the narrative, the explanation, the conventional wisdom.
Drawing from the insights of adaptive leadership, Peers notes that such stories are problematic because they disable a congregation from diagnosing, considering, and addressing their problems as adaptive – the result of complex, interlocking factors, including but not limited to the fact that everyone within the system plays “some role in keeping a problem situation intact.” As Beaumont explains, this type of story “prevents members from grasping the full complexity of the situation,” which can be not only unproductive – as adaptive problems cannot be solved with technical solutions – but also dangerous, allowing the real problem to fester unaddressed, exacerbating it, or adding new problems to an already broken system.
For example, the townspeople of Chelm decide to pin their problem (widespread depression) on a singular, easily identifiable “villain” (the absence of the moon in the sky), and determine that the solution is, simply, to conquer the villain (reestablishing a sense of control over their lives by literally trying to capture the moon). By telling themselves this story, they avoid recognizing that a problem like mass gloom wouldn’t be so pervasive if it didn’t have deep, complex, systemic root causes; and lead themselves to attempt a solution doomed to failure like trying to capture the moon. When their technical solution to their adaptive problem inevitably fails, the very sadness they were trying to keep at bay in the first place is exacerbated.
Something similar happens in Parashat Ki Tissa: the Israelites are anxious when Moses, their leader, does not return from Mt. Sinai when they expected him to. Feeling lost and out of control, they tell themselves that the solution to their problem is having something concrete to look to for direction in Moses’ absence, so they ask Aaron to fashion a calf out of their gold. By telling themselves this story, they avoid the complexity of their situation, other possible explanations for their predicament, and other, more helpful, potential interventions. And when their technical solution, making a golden calf, to their adaptive problem, uncertainty about their leadership, inevitably fails, the very chaos and confusion, desolation and death, they were trying to keep at bay in the first place is exacerbated.
So how do we overcome the problem-saturated story? By deconstructing the narrative, or revealing the untold story. In the Chelm story, the rabbi intervenes by “releasing” the moon, deconstructing the problem-saturated story the townspeople were telling themselves about their sadness problem by naming an alternative, that joy could be experienced even without the moon. And the rabbi reveals the untold story, that joy is experienced through joining and sharing with others in relationship and in community, rather than from possessing the moon, or anything else. By doing this, the rabbi enables the townspeople to construct an alternate story, that joy is the product of relationships, and name an alternative, that they could enhance and sustain their joy by coming together and providing for one another.
What would have happened if, instead of making the calf as requested, Aaron had attempted to deconstruct the Israelites’ narrative, or reveal the untold story? What if he had helped them interrogate the premise of their concerns, or point out the flaws in their proposed solution? We actually have a model for this kind of leadership elsewhere in the parashah: when God, furious about the Israelites’ apostasy, threatens to annihilate them, Moses challenges God’s narrative, asking God whether it was actually true that the people are incorrigably “stiff-necked,” or whether they just needed to be taught differently, or provided with different resources to be led in the right direction? Moses further asks God to consider what the end of the story God is telling God’s self will actually look like — that God’s reputation in the world would be destroyed along with the Israelites; and furthermore, that Moses would demand that his name be removed from the story! By deconstructing God’s narrative, and revealing the untold story, Moses changes God’s mind and Israel’s destiny. What would have happened if Aaron had done the same? What would happen if we could in our contexts?
The challenge is to recognize the problem-saturated narratives we tell ourselves – and then deconstructing them, revealing the untold stories, helping one another identify alternative stories, and proposing a different, better story – one that accounts for the complexity of the situation and that more accurately situates all the characters within it. How can we – as individuals, as a community, as a society – become better at interrogating the stories we tell ourselves about the way things are, enhancing our capacity to see how those stories may not be the only, or the most productive, way of diagnosing or addressing the serious, complex issues confronting us? How can we make space for less commonly told narratives to augment and even complicate the stories we tell ourselves, thus revealing other ways of seeing and dealing with the problems we face?
The story of the Golden Calf in this week’s parashah challenges us to tell different, newer, better stories – ones that enable us to truly see our problems, and how we can work together to resolve them.
Rabbi Michael Rose Knopf 