עוצמה של מילים

The Power of Words

Translated from Hebrew by Claude AI. The original Hebrew text is preserved on the same page.

In our sources — there are many stories. All the stories about our holy forefathers and foremothers and the other figures in the Tanach, as well as about Chazal [our Sages, of blessed memory], teach us — beyond the observance of mitzvot — guidance for interpersonal behavior and for relationships between one person and another, as Chazal said: “The conversation of the servants of the Patriarchs is more pleasing than the Torah of their sons”…

In the psychological literature there is a renewed interest in stories in general, as tools for transmitting therapeutic lessons and various skills.

Stories, parables, and their morals, serve as tools that teach us, as it were, on a subconscious level. In other words, we experience the story on one level — we hear it and/or read it, enjoy the story for its plain meaning, but at the same time, on the subconscious level, there is a different kind of “hearing.” This internalization has more power to change us and teach us than the story does on its plain level.

The story, when used this way, is meant to convey ideas indirectly, and at the same time more meaningfully. The special spirit of the story has also been recognized by parents and grandparents who, knowing the characteristics of a young child, sought a way to nurture and encourage that very experience to which the child can relate intuitively.

If we understand the “subconscious” components in a story, we will be able to build more and more stories carrying the many “moral lessons” we try to convey to our children.

The goal of the story — is to develop a sense of identification with the characters and with everything they go through. The child needs to bridge between his own reality and parts of the story. A story that “speaks” to a child is one that lets him feel that he is not alone.

When a child identifies with the story — for example, the feeling that he is alone and isolated and that “no one has a problem like mine” — this will be replaced by the feeling that “someone else had a problem like mine,” and he will “return” to daily life carrying parts of the story with him.

How can we create a state of identification that can affect the listener so deeply?

First of all, we need to examine the stories with a “magnifying glass.” We need to analyze these stories and understand what the common denominator is in the “skeletons” of the stories that makes them such powerful therapeutic learning tools.

From Horim Choshvim [“Thinking Parents”], issue no. 11