The Paradigm of the Self - Parashat Bo
This D'var Torah was given to Herzl-Ner Tamid Synagogue, WA, for Parashat Bo, by Rabbinic Intern Natasha Mann. The Paradigm of the Self I used to have a great answer for the question, ‘So why do you want to be a rabbi?’ None of you have ever heard that answer, but I promise you, it was a good one. It was funny, and it was polished; it had a story about my home rabbi, and a story about my college friends, and it was always met with a smile. And somewhere between my beginning to craft that response and making it so good, it stopped being true. Because I changed, and the response didn’t. That’s why, when any of you have asked why I want to be a rabbi, I stumble through a response that I refuse to prepare in advance. It turns out that my slow, frowning response filled with ‘um’s and ‘wait, let me say that a different way’ is much more true to reality. So why did it take me so many years of retelling the same story to realise that it wasn’t true? The human brain loves narrat