Parashat Devarim and why the most powerful battles are fought over the stories we choose to tell. 

Every family tells stories. Some are hilarious. Some are embarrassing. Some have become so polished through decades of repetition that no one remembers whether they actually happened quite that way anymore. There is the joke that has not been funny for twenty years but is still told at every holiday dinner. The legendary family tale that has achieved the status of folklore. The memory everyone shares, although each person remembers it differently. Families are held together not only by blood, but by stories and stories, over time, become memory.

Long before psychologists studied memory, before neuroscientists discovered how recollection changes each time we retrieve it, and long before politicians learned to manufacture alternative realities through repetition, Moses understood a profound truth: History is not only lived. It is narrated. The Book of Deuteronomy opens with one of the most extraordinary speeches in world literature. Moses stands at the edge of the Promised Land, fully aware that he will never enter it. This is his final opportunity to shape the identity of the people he has led for forty years. One might expect a precise historical chronicle. Instead, Moses gives something far more sophisticated.

Some of Israel’s greatest failures are barely mentioned. The Golden Calf-the........

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