Rabbi Peretz Chen | How to tell a story at the Seder? Practical tips with Yishbam the storyteller

00:00 Speaker 1 Dear viewers, hello. Pesach is approaching, and I’m happy to welcome here with us, to this... lesson? What should we call it?

00:09 Speaker 2 A conversation.

00:10 Speaker 1 To this special conversation, Rabbi Yishbaam Hillel, who leads ODT team-building workshops throughout the country. If anyone wants to book a workshop with him, do it a few months in advance. One of the special things Rabbi Yishbaam does, besides having worked in education for years, is run a YouTube channel. Every Motzaei Shabbos, shortly after Shabbos ends, he posts a story there: stories of chassidim, stories of tzaddikim, moving stories to open the week. His channel already has close to three hundred stories. So, since Pesach is approaching, and one of the things we do on Pesach is fulfill the mitzvah of “You shall tell your son”—telling stories—I thought Rabbi Yishbaam would be the perfect person to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the power of stories and how to tell a story well. That’s what we’ll do in our short conversation. So let’s get started, Rabbi Yishbaam. First of all, I think the central question is: What is the power of a story? Why are stories so central to our lives? Please.

01:29 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, greetings and blessings to everyone. Stories really are one of the things that accompany us all the time. Whatever happens between us, there’s always a story. I meet you and say good morning; I encounter a story. I meet a person, I encounter something, and stories are always with us. The world moves forward because of stories. Every person has their own story, their own inner story that they carry with them, and that’s what guides them. So stories are very much a part of our lives all the time. More than that, the Torah says in connection with the Exodus from Egypt and Pesach, “So that you may recount in the ears of your son and your grandson how I made a mockery of Egypt.” The Torah wants us to tell the story, to pass that message on through storytelling. And as chassidim, as Chabad chassidim, we know that one of the central things in Chassidus is the story—the chassidic story. Why? One very interesting thing about a story is that it makes me identify with its characters. Take the classic chassidic story: a Jew is mistreated by a landowner, goes to a tzaddik, asks for a blessing, and is saved. The message it gives me is: Know that even if you get into trouble—and there are many kinds of stories, many kinds of trouble—there is a way forward. Go, daven, ask for help through this merit or that connection. So a story conveys a message about what to do and how to act, but in an indirect way. And I gain from that. When I take a good story, tell it, connect with it myself, and manage to connect my listeners to it, they come away with a message, sometimes without it even being stated directly. If I were simply to tell someone, “Do this and this and this,”

03:09 Speaker 2 “and you need to do that and that,” it would feel a bit heavy. But when I come with a story and say, “Look, there was someone just like you. He faced this challenge. He took these steps, and they worked,” the message comes across much, much more powerfully. Now, as we approach Seder night, we want to pass on the message of the Exodus from Egypt, the message of moving forward every day. When I tell the story—“You should know, we were a people in Egypt”—it also gives me a certain pride. We left there, we moved forward, and look where we’ve arrived today. And you must make sure to pass that message on. That makes it something very powerful.

03:45 Speaker 1 In other words, a story brings the whole subject much closer to us.

03:49 Speaker 2 Yes, it brings the message much closer to us, much more powerfully. The Alter Rebbe said that when he studied with the Maggid, they regarded the Maggid’s Torah teachings as the Oral Torah. But when the Maggid told a story, they regarded it as the Written Torah.

04:05 Speaker 1 That takes it to the highest level. Now, you’ve had a YouTube channel of stories for several years, right? What do you hear from people? What responses do you get? I understand that you even meet people in the middle of the week who tell you, “Listen, your story lifted our whole week.” Share a few of those responses with us.

04:25 Speaker 2 It’s very interesting. It really is very interesting. Putting out a story every week is hard and demanding, and it takes a lot of time. Often, finding and preparing the story takes me much longer than telling it. At certain times, I might spend three hours in a week just looking for a story. And that’s interesting. Now, often I find it difficult, and a few times I’ve asked myself, “Listen, maybe this week...”

04:48 Speaker 1 We’ll skip it.

04:48 Speaker 2 Yes. How long can I keep this up? And every week when that happens, when I say to myself, “Come on, I’ll skip it,” I meet someone who says, “Listen, I hear your story every Motzaei Shabbos. Don’t stop, don’t give up. It brings us into the week and opens it with holiness.” Just this week I met a Jew who told me that every Motzaei Shabbos, his whole family sits together and plays the story. He said, “It opens our week with something holier.” I also make a real effort to choose, first of all, a story I connect with, and second, to connect it to some message, a practical message. It might be about being joyful or davening better—whatever fits the story. So it really touches people. They enjoy it and connect with it, and through the story they feel they’re moving forward much more. In other words, it touches them more deeply, and that’s very interesting.

05:38 Speaker 1 Wonderful. So this is also an opportunity for anyone who’s interested to search on YouTube for—

05:43 Speaker 2 Yishbaam Hillel.

05:44 Speaker 1 Yishbaam Hillel, and you’ll find the channel right away. Subscribe. I also watch the new story every week, and it really is moving. Without it, the week is a completely different week. Highly recommended—I warmly recommend it.

05:58 Speaker 2 It’s a segulah.

05:58 Speaker 1 It’s a segulah, right?

05:59 Speaker 2 A segulah for all good things. Yes, stories—

06:01 Speaker 1 A story specifically about the Baal Shem Tov, or any story?

06:03 Speaker 2 Well, there’s a saying that it’s a segulah to hear a story about the Baal Shem Tov on Motzaei Shabbos. The chassidim said there are three mistakes in that statement. First, it’s not only about the Baal Shem Tov, but about any of the tzaddikim. They say that hearing a story about the Baal Shem Tov on Motzaei Shabbos is a segulah for wealth. There are three mistakes: the story need not be only about the Baal Shem Tov, but can be about any of the tzaddikim; it’s not only on Motzaei Shabbos, but throughout the week; and it’s not only for wealth, but for all good things. So stories about tzaddikim in general, and stories about chassidim, really do have that power. Sometimes stories about chassidim even have a particular advantage. Because when I hear a story about a great and holy tzaddik, I might say to myself, “Listen, perhaps he’s a little far beyond me.”

06:41 Speaker 1 A different world.

06:41 Speaker 2 Exactly. He’s not on my level. But when I hear about a chossid who struggled and found things difficult—and these don’t have to be stories from three hundred years ago; they can be stories from our own lives—each person has their challenges. Sometimes a father comes and tells his son, “Listen, today was harder for me. But you know what? I overcame it. I made even more of an effort.” What does hearing that do for a child? What happens when a teacher is willing to share with the class, “I found it hard, but I faced it and overcame it”? My own story as a person can sometimes lift the listener much more.

07:14 Speaker 1 So anyone wondering whether to open the week with a story has now received the perfect explanation of why it’s practically a must. I want to ask you, Rabbi Yishbaam: We were all children, we were teenagers, and we grew up. Each of us has faced life’s challenges, and each of us has had some moment, some turning point, that made an impression—a particular experience that led us to change our behavior and become much better than we had been. Would you be willing to share whether you feel that stories were part of your own personal development?

08:01 Speaker 2 That’s a good question, and a very interesting one. And, a little spoiler: we talked about it a bit beforehand.

08:07 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:08 Speaker 2 And suddenly that took me back a little to yeshiva. One of the central things in yeshiva is farbrengens. That’s often what draws you to a farbrengen. Unlike a class, you’re not sitting down to study, debate, and discuss a particular topic. You want to take what you’ve learned and connect with it on a more personal level.

08:26 Speaker 1 For anyone who isn’t familiar with it, a farbrengen is a gathering.

08:30 Speaker 2 Yes, chassidim sit together, and sometimes they say l’chaim or have something to eat.

08:34 Speaker 1 They talk about life.

08:35 Speaker 2 Yes, they talk about life. And this reminds me of when I was in yeshiva ketana, which was a long time ago now, and Rabbi Peretz was a shliach at our yeshiva. Every Shabbos afternoon, a group of older boys—the shluchim in the yeshiva—would come. They helped us with our studies, with spiritual matters, whatever we needed, and they held a farbrengen every Shabbos afternoon. I remember coming every Shabbos, and it was very, very important to me to be there. First of all, it was fun. There was a good atmosphere, it was pleasant, and maybe even tasty. But more than anything, it was the stories. You’d sit at the farbrengen and suddenly hear a story about a chossid who faced some challenge, or a story about the Rebbe, and suddenly it would connect you to something deeper within yourself. Maybe you’d find a little more strength to overcome something. They’d tell you stories about chassidim in Russia breaking the ice to immerse in a mikveh, and about how they struggled against Soviet Russia and communism. And suddenly I’d say to myself, “Wait a second. I’m here at home. What, I can’t go to the mikveh on Sunday? So I’ll miss out on a good sleep? Nobody’s stopping me.” Look at that—people were ready to give their lives. And these weren’t people we didn’t know. I’m from Kiryat Malachi, Nachlas Har Chabad, and some of them were people we grew up with. Suddenly you’d see the person, hear the story, and say, “Okay, I can take something from this. I can make some progress in my life, even if it’s something small.”

10:01 Speaker 2 That’s the tremendous power of a story—of a good story, one that speaks to us. It’s almost impossible to grasp.

10:10 Speaker 1 Yes, that takes me back in time too. I remember those Shabbos afternoons. The younger boys—Rabbi Yishavam was one of them then—would come back from their Shabbos meal and a nap. A few of us older boys would put together an improvised Shabbos meal for ourselves: some crackers and pitas, rolls, a few store-bought salads. But sitting together at that farbrengen, sharing those stories and experiences, was especially moving. It lifted both the younger boys and us older ones. It really took us to new heights. The power of stories. I wanted to ask you a question—maybe it’s a bit of a pointed question. These days, stories are powerful, but visual media—films, videos, all those things—draw us in much more strongly, especially young people. Is there still room for stories today? Can a story still draw a person, draw children, toward something powerful, despite today’s visual world?

11:26 Speaker 2 Wow, good question. We really do live in a world with so many things stimulating us, and the stimulation is much stronger. Years ago, in different parts of the world, there was a profession called storytelling. Expert storytellers would sit with people and fill the role that screens fill today.

11:42 Speaker 1 [unclear] the storyteller is a figure many people are familiar with.

11:45 Speaker 2 But I’m talking about much, much earlier than that. In Eastern countries and other places, there was a profession where someone’s specialty was simply telling stories. People would come to listen to him as if he were a screen. In other words, it had a very, very powerful effect, and he must have had the ability to hold their attention. So first, as for today and how we deal with our dependence on screens: baruch Hashem, we have Shabbos. When we’re disconnected from screens, we need some kind of alternative. But there’s also a special power in a story that I hear or read. I can share a little something about my own children: sometimes, when they’re going to sleep, they’d rather I tell them a story than play one for them. There’s something in what I’d call the energy that passes between the person telling the story and the people listening. The storyteller can choose how to tell it—what to emphasize, what to describe in greater detail. With children, I’ll describe one part more; with adults, I’ll focus on something else in the story. When I stand before people and tell them a story, I can reach a much deeper, much more powerful place. Something passes between us that no screen can replace. And then—

12:59 Speaker 3 That human, personal touch.

13:01 Speaker 2 And that brings me to this: I never read a story straight from a book. I’ll take a story—maybe we’ll come back to this when we talk about how to build a story—but I never want to just read it out as it is. I want to take the story, connect with it, become part of it, and then tell it. That’s a whole different world.

13:22 Speaker 3 That’s a whole different world. Beautiful. I’m also thinking that Seder night is coming up soon. And on Seder night, as you mentioned at the beginning, we have the mitzvah of “You shall tell your child.”

13:32 Speaker 2 Wow.

13:32 Speaker 3 That’s one of the important mitzvos of the night: to tell our children about the miracles and the history of our people, and that ultimately no one can defeat us. How relevant it is that, in the end, we will prevail—no matter what happens, and no matter how harsh and cruel the enemy is. But here’s the question: we’re sitting at the Seder with our children, and we want to tell them stories—stories from the Aggadah, perhaps, or stories from the history of the Jewish people or our own family. Is there a particular structure that, if we use it, could make the story come across completely differently? After all, sometimes you see two speakers give the same talk, the same Torah thought. They read it in the same book, but one has the audience listening open-mouthed, while the other puts them to sleep. How do you structure a story so you tell it well?

14:23 Speaker 2 Wow, that’s a big question, and a very significant one.

14:27 Speaker 3 A question for the professionals.

14:28 Speaker 2 Yes, and here I want to say something—and I may have mentioned this earlier—that sometimes it takes me a very long time to prepare a story. For example, last week I told a story that had been in my head for half a year, but I hadn’t told it. It wasn’t the right time for it, and only last week did it come out. Really, one of the things I need to do to tell a good story is prepare it. I can’t just show up and tell it off the cuff. I take the story and read it once, then read it a second time. You know, once I even called someone and said, “Listen, I don’t understand what’s going on here. Go through it with me for a minute. I want to understand what’s happening in this story. I couldn’t connect with what’s going on.” We sat for about fifteen minutes and discussed the sequence of events until I had it straight in my head. So the first, most basic thing, if I want to tell a good story—especially if we’re talking about the Seder night—is to prepare the material, to be immersed in it. The second thing is—now let’s assume I know the material one hundred percent and have prepared the story well. I know all the characters. I know who the landowner is, who Mushke is, who the tzaddik is, and exactly who everyone was. Sometimes I also want to learn a little more about that tzaddik and the years in which he lived, perhaps something significant he did, so I have a bit of background. Or I want to know who the landowner or the king was, to get some sense of them. I mean, beyond a story that goes, “There was a Jew, he fell into a pit, asked for a blessing, and got out.”

15:51 Speaker 2 I want to know a little of the broader picture. So that’s the first thing: prepare the story and a bit of its background. If we’re talking about the Seder night, then certainly. Beyond the fact that the Jewish people left Egypt, learn a little about the slavery beforehand and what they went through. Open up some Midrashim and other sources to see. And no less important is deciding what to include: what do I want the children to know, and what may be less important? So prepare the material properly. The second thing is to choose who tells the story. Am I telling it as though I’m watching a film and describing what happened? Sometimes I tell it as though I’m one of the characters. I’m Mushke going to the landowner, and I tell the whole story as something that happened to me, in the first person. I say that the landowner came to me and said this and that, and they did this and that to me. It gives the story a very different perspective, because I enter the story. It’s happening to me, and I know it very well. Something interesting happens, too: my voice, my intonation, begins to follow the story. I can tell you that sometimes, when I tell a story like this while recording it—we always record it in advance—if it’s a story I’ve really connected with, I get goosebumps as I’m telling it. It’s as though I’ve entered the story and I’m experiencing it right now with that person, with that tzaddik, with whatever is happening there. So, to sum up what we’ve just said: first, prepare it properly.

17:18 Speaker 2 Second, decide who tells the story—which character in the story tells it, or whether I describe—

17:22 Speaker 4 I mean, I’m the one telling it. The question is how I tell it.

17:24 Speaker 2 How I tell it, of course. And I want to get into that: to work the story into a form I can tell, with the person I’m telling it to in mind. I want to think about who that person is, roughly how old they are, and sometimes describe exactly what happened, down to the details. That brings them into the experience. For example, let’s take Pesach. I can say that the Jewish people were in Egypt, there were ten plagues, and things were very, very hard for them. So far, nothing in that has moved me. But if I go into the details a little and say to them, “Imagine Shimon, an ordinary Jew at home in Egypt. Suddenly, in the morning, the taskmaster arrives and bangs on his door”—and I bang on the table as I say it—“and he drags him away and beats him, and orders him to do this and that.” I zoom in, so to speak, from the whole story of the Exodus to Shimon being beaten by a cruel Egyptian taskmaster. Suddenly the story speaks to me much more.

18:25 Speaker 4 To you, to me, and to them.

18:27 Speaker 2 And of course, that has an effect too. Rather than taking the entire story as one enormous story, sometimes you need to narrow your focus for a moment and see who the person is that you’re talking about. If it’s a Jew who is suffering, or Moshe Rabbeinu in Pharaoh’s palace, we can describe that too. We shouldn’t just say, “Moshe Rabbeinu entered the palace and said such-and-such to Pharaoh.” Okay, excellent—that’s what it says. But I want to pause and ask: what was Moshe Rabbeinu thinking as he entered the palace? Wasn’t he afraid when he saw what the Midrash describes? And here we return to preparation: all the wild animals there, the lions, the leopards, whatever else there was. Surely Moshe Rabbeinu took every step with great faith and with joy at fulfilling Hashem’s will. But I also believe there was fear there, and something he had to contend with. Moshe Rabbeinu walks on, through gate after gate, moment after moment. When I describe that and enter into it, the whole story becomes—

19:17 Speaker 4 The story becomes something alive.

19:19 Speaker 2 It comes alive. Absolutely.

19:21 Speaker 4 Very nice. The truth is, I’ll put it this way: today there are families where they dress up, where the father actually puts on a costume. And for someone who finds dressing up too much, what we’ve just heard is also a kind of dressing up. Dressing up means connecting with the story, becoming a character in it, really entering the situation as it was, so the children can feel what people felt then. They’ll connect with it in a completely different way. Both of us are educators of students. We once had the same lecture given twice. The first lecturer delivered it very well. But the second told it as though he were the young man who had experienced everything. He may have made that up, but it took on a different meaning, because—

20:04 Speaker 2 When I speak about myself—

20:05 Speaker 4 Exactly. I went through it, I—

20:06 Speaker 2 I tell it from within myself. When I do that, it becomes a different world, and it’s much easier for me to enter into the feelings too. What would I feel if I were a Jew in Egypt right now? What would I feel? That’s what I want to convey. And when my children hear it, I can describe it to each of them according to their age and what suits them. Here we come back again to preparation, because when we open the Midrashim and the stories, we find things that may not all be suitable for very young children, though they may be suitable for older ones. Say I want to talk about what happened on October 7. Some of those experiences may resemble what we went through in Egypt. When we enter into that and tell it in a way that brings it home, we truly gain the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Here’s a small point: “So that you may tell in the ears of your son and your grandson how I made sport of Egypt” doesn’t mean just reading the Haggadah. Sometimes we miss that. We get caught up in the text—

21:00 Speaker 4 We rush through the text, and that’s it.

21:01 Speaker 2 Yes, we rush through the text and feel we have to get it done, get it done. I say this cautiously: I’m not a rabbi or a halachic authority, but maybe we can read the Haggadah a little faster. Give up ten minutes, perhaps skip a deeper explanation that only the adults would understand, and take a moment to focus on the children. Spend ten or fifteen minutes during the Seder going back into the story. Prepare it well, perhaps with another point for them to think about. Every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. We need to know how we got into the story, what happens in it, and how it ends. So if it’s the story of the Exodus from Egypt, we need to know how we went down to Egypt, as the Haggadah begins to tell us, then what happened to us in Egypt and how we got out. Let’s make sure we don’t miss the whole story. Give each part five or six minutes, and that gives us a substantial fifteen or twenty minutes of the Seder focused on the children, telling them the story. Of course, we also want to make the Seder engaging for them. So prepare questions, riddles, and stories; maybe ask questions afterward and reward the children. But really give them that time during the Seder. After all, they asked Mah Nishtanah, “Why is this night different?”

22:05 Speaker 4 They need an answer.

22:06 Speaker 2 They need an answer. Sometimes we rush straight into “We were slaves.” Wait—let’s answer them, and then we can go on to the rest of the Haggadah. And anyone who really wants to delve into explanations of the Haggadah has the whole night afterward.

22:15 Speaker 4 Beautiful. Honestly, I think I personally gained a great deal from this conversation. I think that, with Hashem’s help, my Seder will look a little different because of what we’ve heard, especially at the end: how to prepare properly and present it in a way that suits the children, so they’ll enjoy it and connect with it. I hope you’ll also get the most out of it. And thank you very, very much, Rabbi Yishavam.

22:39 Speaker 2 My pleasure. Shabbos Hagadol.

22:41 Speaker 4 For sharing something so important, so valuable, and so helpful. May we all have a kosher—

22:48 Speaker 2 Kosher and happy Pesach.

22:49 Speaker 4 And happy Pesach, and may we have nachas from our children and merit the complete Geulah.

22:52 Speaker 2 Immediately.

22:53 Speaker 4 Immediately. Amen, may it be so. Thank you very much.

22:56 Speaker 2 A kosher and happy Pesach.

22:56 Speaker 4 Thank you.