Since Your Humble Blogger got provoked by Benjamin Rosenbaum into writing acres of drivel (unlike the usual acres of drivel off my own bat), there has been a good deal of fascinating discussion in various corners about what I perhaps wrongly called core stories. As I said here, I think religion is the core story, the story we cling to that provides the frame for everything else. I tried to give a few examples of what I mean, but my fondness for brevity (no, stop laughing, OK, you, stop it, you know what I mean) led me to attempt to distill these stories into one-sentence emblems of themselves. Which is, I think, a tremendously useful and powerful task, as I tried to explain, but on the other hand, it’s also a tremendously wasteful and distracting one. As a result, some of the conversation about “core stories” (including, bye-the-bye, a lovely shiur<\/I> over at the Chrononautic Log) has gone to my mind a trifle astray. When I talk about core stories, I really am talking about stories, and when I say that my core story is that we were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord brought us out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, I am using ritual language to tell, in brief, the whole story of the Exodus from Egypt, plagues and parting seas and the miraculous staff and Miriam singing on the far shore. And, yes, that sentence does highlight (I almost wrote it privileges<\/I>) some aspects of the story over others, which is how I like it, and that’s where the useful and powerful comes in, don’t you know.\n
Another problem with the discussion was pointed out, astutely, by Gentle Reader Dan P, who observed that the whole thing had become, or had even started as, a bit of a pissing contest between a bunch of guys, with the clear if unintended consequence of making it effectively impossible to hear any female core stories. This is, in part, simply a function of Mr. Duncan, Mr. Rosenbaum, Mr. Moles, Mr. Hartman, and Mr. HumbleBlogger being guys, for which decision we ought not be penalized. On the other hand, this sort of thing happens conspicuously often, and is one of those things that should really convince us of the evil of the patriarchy; whether we intended to or not, we engaged in actions that blinded us to what the universe is like to women, who are different one to another as well as to men (who are different one to another our own poor selves), and if there’s anything that makes the world interesting and fun, that is it.\n