The Power of a Narrative

It seems to me that the narrative we tell ourselves signifies who we are as people. Nothing seems so evident than the story of the Bikkurim, choice first fruit brought to the Beit Hamikdash.

I thought about that message this week as I got a hitchhike back home from Hashmonaim, a few kilometers from the Maccabim-Reut Junction, where earlier that day an Israeli soldier from Ukraine had been murdered in a gory terror ramming attack. 

The person who kindly stopped had just come back from Nepal, and India. He gladly told me about his adventures; he himself had been a full-time soldier in the Yahalom, Special Operations Engineering Unit, when he decided that it was too much, he wanted to start a family, and so he took 9 months to travel abroad, hoping to gain clarity about what to do next in his life. 

The conversation took us to Everest; I mentioned what happened recently on K2, world-class mountaineers walking right over the body of their Sherpa guide, who had aided them in the hike, but who, on the verge of unconsciousness, was left to die, discarded. In the words of Austrian climber, Wilhelm Steindl, “If he had been a Westerner, he would have been rescued immediately. No one felt responsible for him. What happened there is a disgrace. A living human was left lying so that records could be set.” 

The person who picked me up, Uriyah, responded: "Something like that happened on Everest with an Israeli hiker, and the hiker, very close to the summit" - I, held my breath - "immediately turned back and carried the Sherpa down." 

I was curious, so I looked up the story online, assuming it was recent. It really could be that a similar story did happen, but in the one I found, which happened in 2012, indeed an Israeli, about to reach a world record, turned back, not to help a Sherpa, but rather a fellow Arab climber, a man he befriended the previous day. A very powerful story. 

What's the difference between the two? The answer seems to be in this week's parsha, the narrative we tell ourselves. The teams of climbers who passed by the Sherpa just a few weeks ago, told themselves a different story, than Nadav Ben-Yehuda, the Israeli hiker who forwent a life-long goal, just a decade ago. For them, the story was prestige, the record, egocentrism, and even hubris; for Nadav, it was the value of human life, friendship, and meaningfulness in relationships. When the Jewish farmer, sacrifices his first crops, he tells a story ever so palpably clear; what I have and I cherish most is a positive relationship with my Creator, my ancestors, my parents and my children; for that I'm willing to put aside personal benefit, gain that only is worthwhile because of the message I can use it to convey.