This is the fourth and final post in a series. Here's the first post, On Fear, the second, On Religion, and the third, On Text.
One time on an airplane
A few years ago, I was in one of those never ending delayed flight situations that makes you question whether reality has shifted into the realm of Kafka's dreams. We were delayed boarding a half hour, then two hours, then five hours. We boarded and sat on the plane for two hours. We were told to deplane (what a word) and to bring all our belongings, because we might get a new plane. We waited another hour at the gate. We planed again (the same one), deplaned a second time, planed a third time.
It was a small jet, just window and aisle seats, and I was in a window seat. After the third boarding of the flight, bored and tired and in my occasional fiction-writing-induced habit of snooping on people around me, I let my eyes glance over to read the text messages of the tall man seated next to me. It was clear he'd been texting someone in real time the details of our collective nightmare—which would eventually come to almost eleven hours of delay before we took off the next day.
"We've deplaned twice already," he wrote, "and somehow there's not room for my bag in the bin anymore, so I had to stick it under the seat in front of me. No leg room!!" As I mentioned, this man was quite tall, so you can imagine the extra annoyance of no longer having leg room, especially when previously he had been able to find space for his luggage overhead. But here's the thing: his bag did fit in the overhead bin, there was no bag under the seat in front of him. As he typed out that message with the piece-de-resistance detail to indicate how utterly infuriating this whole situation was—No leg room!!—his legs were stretched long and relaxed well into the open space under the seat in front of him.
It's a small story, but I've puzzled over it for years. The man could have written, "but at least I was able to stow my bag," which was the actual truth and would have indicated to the person he was texting that, at least in a small way, there was a saving grace to this whole sad, sorry saga of dashed expectation. But I imagine that's not at all how he felt. I imagine he felt the whole ordeal had been unbearably frustrating and any detail that might undermine that essential feeling would do harm to the story he was telling. Maybe the story wasn't factual as he told it, but for him, it felt more true to add the detail about his bag. And you know what? I agree with him. The story he told was a more accurate rendering of the feelings of that long delayed flight.
I continue to puzzle over my understanding of this little tale. Do I condone the portrayal of fiction as nonfiction? Generally no. I tend to believe that trust can be fickle, its breakage extremely challenging to repair, and its alarming erosion among people (with so much paranoia taking its place) a net negative for society. And yet, I also believe Hemingway was correct when he wrote in "A Farewell to Arms"—
"A writer's job is to tell the truth. His standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be."
On that note, time for my admission: above, I wrote that the flight was delayed a total of eleven hours. The factual truth is that I don't remember how long it was delayed, only that we left the next day. It might have only been eight hours. Or even just six. Does the detail of eleven help the story in a way that better illustrates its point? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I'll leave that for some puzzling of your own.
Where does that leave us now? Ready, I hope, to discuss the powers, joys, and potential dangers of what I've been calling Myth.
The origins of Myth: an overview
There are individual Myths we each tell of our own pasts, family Myths we hear and tell of our roots and lineages, and the societal Myths that spread to create the webbings of cultures. While the content of Myths are imagined, dreamt, invented or designed for effect, I believe their genesis largely comes from three core sources:
Felt truth diverging from fact, as illustrated in the plane story above.
Engagement with, and seeing gaps in, sacred Text, wherein the space between ancient stories becomes the ground upon which to build new narratives about old characters.
Our own svara/moral intuition compelling a need for new Myth, because something in the stories or Myths as offered offends our evolving sense of what is moral and what is not.
These sources often overlap, and Myth generated from them often moves through cycles of becoming Text to study and interpret as approximations of the unspeakably real. The closer we draw to that reality, the more we're provoked to generate new Myth.
We might imagine a cycle of ever-expanding, never-complete understanding of our relationship to being. Out of the mystery of True Reality, Myth is born. That Myth becomes sanctified in Text, which we study to draw ourselves nearer to the mystery once again.
Of course let me add an important caveat: such a cycle is a simplified model of the far messier truth of how these three arenas organically live together. It is itself a Myth.
Myth from Text
The Kabbalists of the 13th and 14th centuries understood the importance of searching for new Myth between the lines of Text. They developed a four-part framework for reading Text with one explicit purpose of drawing out new stories. They called it PaRDeS—an acronym for four levels of reading:
Peshat (simple): What does the Text say on its surface?
Remez (hint): What does it point toward symbolically?
Drash (interpretation): What other stories live within it, as yet unspoken?
Sod (secret): What ultimate truth pulses beneath it all?
When we read for peshat and remez, then allow ourselves to create drash from the core sod we sense, we generate new story, living drash—Myth. This is one of the most important ways to keep Text study from becoming academic exegesis and remaining sacred conversation. Ancient stories provoke new ones within us, allowing inherited wisdom to inspire fresh Myths for our time.
Example: A new story of Yehuda HaNasi
The Talmud—foundation text of Rabbinic Judaism in which is preserved the teachings and debates of sages over centuries—is comprised of two parts; the Mishnah, which is the earlier compilation, and the Gemara, which is a commentary and discussion on the Mishnah. The editor/s of the Gemera are unknown, but of the Mishnah, tradition gives us a clear indication who gets the credit: Yehuda HaNasi, who lived two generations after the Temple's destruction. It’s a resonant generational span, a timing that echoes forward and backward. Roughly two generations after the Exodus, the Israelites entered and settled Canaan. Today, two generations after the Holocaust and Israel’s founding, we too are at an inflection point in our story.
The Text says almost nothing about how he compiled this foundational work, and I've found myself imagining him and what his process might have been. He understood that the written Torah alone could no longer provide sufficient coherence, he knew that the generations since the destruction were developing something new in parallel but disparate ways. And so he took on a task, a wildly chutzpadik one at that, to compile something—but what?—that could hold together an exiled people scattered across many lands.
Here’s how I imagine it might have happened.
After meditating and studying and taking counsel from trusted advisors, Yehuda HaNasi, grandson of the famous Rabban Gamliel, took to the road. He traveled from village to village, seeking out the wisest elders, listening to their debates and recording their teachings. Years passed. He accumulated scrolls of wisdom but felt further than ever from understanding what form this new Text should take. The disagreements were overwhelming—not just opposing views, but entirely different approaches to the same questions.
One day, exhausted and confused, he stopped beside an orchard and fell asleep under a carob tree. In his dream, a woman appeared to him. He recognized her at once: the prophet Deborah. He seized his opportunity to request help.
"Deborah, my teacher,” he said, “How can I possibly know who among all these brilliant minds is right?"
She rested her hand on his shoulder. "What is a divine song but a harmony of story,” she replied, “and what is story but the preservation of many sides?"
At this, Yehuda HaNasi awoke and finally understood his task. He rode home and when he arrived back to his study, he began to weave together the stories: the schools of Hillel and Shammai, Yochanan ben Zakkai and his students, Rabban Gamliel and the Sanhedrin he led, Rabbi Akiva and the brilliance and moderation of his temperament, the prodigy Rabbi Meir and his loyalty to the apostate Elisha ben Abuya. He recorded their arguments, shared all their opinions, including his own, and let the composite stand.
Myth from svara
The Gemara speaks of svara as our ability to reason. To qualify as a sage, it says multiple times, a person should be g'mirna/learned in Text and s'virna/learned in reasoning. According to Benay Lappe, the fact that the two concepts are treated as separate suggests that becoming s'virna—that is, growing your svara—is something that happens adjacent to and also beyond textual learning.
This idea helped inspire Benay to found SVARA, the queer "traditionally radical" yeshiva. If our svara, which she defines not merely as reasoning but moral intuition, can transform and evolve, her reasoning goes, then we must bring that transforming svara to the Text; the Text itself requests us to.
Thus svara becomes another source for the genesis of new Myth. When we encounter something in our collective story that offends our moral sensibility, it is incumbent upon us to imagine a new story that can rectify this fissure.
Example: An addition to the Tower of Babel
I have long struggled with the Tower of Babel story. Here's the brief tale in full as it appears in the written Torah’s book of Bereishit/Genesis:
וַיְהִ֥י כׇל־הָאָ֖רֶץ שָׂפָ֣ה אֶחָ֑ת וּדְבָרִ֖ים אֲחָדִֽים׃ Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. וַיְהִ֖י בְּנׇסְעָ֣ם מִקֶּ֑דֶם וַֽיִּמְצְא֥וּ בִקְעָ֛ה בְּאֶ֥רֶץ שִׁנְעָ֖ר וַיֵּ֥שְׁבוּ שָֽׁם׃ And as they migrated from the east (*DS note: this can also be translated as "from the earlier times"), they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. וַיֹּאמְר֞וּ אִ֣ישׁ אֶל־רֵעֵ֗הוּ הָ֚בָה נִלְבְּנָ֣ה לְבֵנִ֔ים וְנִשְׂרְפָ֖ה לִשְׂרֵפָ֑ה וַתְּהִ֨י לָהֶ֤ם הַלְּבֵנָה֙ לְאָ֔בֶן וְהַ֣חֵמָ֔ר הָיָ֥ה לָהֶ֖ם לַחֹֽמֶר׃ They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard.”—Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar.— וַיֹּאמְר֞וּ הָ֣בָה ׀ נִבְנֶה־לָּ֣נוּ עִ֗יר וּמִגְדָּל֙ וְרֹאשׁ֣וֹ בַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וְנַֽעֲשֶׂה־לָּ֖נוּ שֵׁ֑ם פֶּן־נָפ֖וּץ עַל־פְּנֵ֥י כׇל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.” וַיֵּ֣רֶד יְהֹוָ֔ה לִרְאֹ֥ת אֶת־הָעִ֖יר וְאֶת־הַמִּגְדָּ֑ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר בָּנ֖וּ בְּנֵ֥י הָאָדָֽם׃ יהוה came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built, וַיֹּ֣אמֶר יְהֹוָ֗ה הֵ֣ן עַ֤ם אֶחָד֙ וְשָׂפָ֤ה אַחַת֙ לְכֻלָּ֔ם וְזֶ֖ה הַחִלָּ֣ם לַעֲשׂ֑וֹת וְעַתָּה֙ לֹֽא־יִבָּצֵ֣ר מֵהֶ֔ם כֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָזְמ֖וּ לַֽעֲשֽׂוֹת׃ and יהוה said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. הָ֚בָה נֵֽרְדָ֔ה וְנָבְלָ֥ה שָׁ֖ם שְׂפָתָ֑ם אֲשֶׁר֙ לֹ֣א יִשְׁמְע֔וּ אִ֖ישׁ שְׂפַ֥ת רֵעֵֽהוּ׃ Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” וַיָּ֨פֶץ יְהֹוָ֥ה אֹתָ֛ם מִשָּׁ֖ם עַל־פְּנֵ֣י כׇל־הָאָ֑רֶץ וַֽיַּחְדְּל֖וּ לִבְנֹ֥ת הָעִֽיר׃ Thus יהוה scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. עַל־כֵּ֞ן קָרָ֤א שְׁמָהּ֙ בָּבֶ֔ל כִּי־שָׁ֛ם בָּלַ֥ל יְהֹוָ֖ה שְׂפַ֣ת כׇּל־הָאָ֑רֶץ וּמִשָּׁם֙ הֱפִיצָ֣ם יְהֹוָ֔ה עַל־פְּנֵ֖י כׇּל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ {פ} That is why it was called Babel, because there יהוה confounded the speech of the whole earth; and from there יהוה scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
What troubles me? These are people two generations after the Great Flood (another echo of this common timeline), seeking to protect themselves through collective action, unity, and mutual care. Their cooperation should be praised, not punished, right? Yet the Divine seems threatened and destroys their effort.
Many read this as an ancient explanation for linguistic diversity and of the perils of human hubris. But if I read it morally, take the offense to my svara to heart, what sense can I make of it?
Perhaps this tale omits crucial context. What if this wasn't the Divine's first attempt at creation, but the third? or the seventh? What if, in the previous iteration of creation making it this far, the Divine had celebrated the Tower's construction for the same reasons we might—as a paragon of cooperation and foresight.
Alas, I can imagine too the pain of the Divine at seeing what happened to that earlier Tower.
In that world, as I conceive it now, the Tower's success became its downfall. Hierarchy emerged between those living at the top and bottom. The designers above commanded the laborers below. Resentment and abuse flourished far more than cooperation and unity. And when the endless work became unbearable, some of the laborers turned to a dark magic; they created golems—creatures formed from the clay of the Earth by human hands, and therefore without souls—to complete the work for them.
What happened next feels all too relatable: these artificial beings became single-minded in their pursuit of constructing the tower higher and higher. Ultimately, such soulless ambition made live with power became destructive. In a culture of toxicity where people were already divided by the Tower’s hierarchy, the bonds of care broke down. Humanity couldn't stop the golem army. When war came, humanity perished.
Can the people be blamed for not knowing what they had unleashed? Maybe if they had been, the Divine would not have even bothered to start creation again. And yet, knowing this history, the Divine had mercy, scattering the people before they could repeat their fatal pattern, confounding their tongues so they might flourish in diversity rather than perish in unity.
The potential danger of Myth
In the Tao chapter 11, Lao Tzu reminds us that we make a bowl from clay, but it is the emptiness inside that makes the bowl useful; we build a house with walls and windows, but it is the empty space within that we live in; we build a door with wood, but it is the space it encloses that creates a portal.
So I think it may be with religion and Myth. The forms and structures of religious tradition—the rituals, the calendar, the Texts, the inherited stories, the core values—create the container. But the sacred space they enclose, the living emptiness that emerges because of their existence, is where Myth is born, and this is the heart of the essential use of religion as framework.
And yet, we shouldn't discount the potential danger of Myth overwhelming the container. When Myth takes the place of shared facts, of common history, when mythic tales of religion or religious zealotry of any kind become the substance from which the bowl is made, we're in trouble. A strong bowl is made of both shared reality—and perhaps that's a shared humility before a Reality we cannot know—and shared values like kindness, compassion, joy, and justice. This feels core to our troubles as a society at this moment. Right now, who doesn't feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of people asserting a whole variety of Myth as truth? Our collective bowl is shattering and we are drowning in competing narratives, each claiming to capture the essential nature of our experience, too many demanding allegiance to its particular version of reality.
So we find ourselves caught between necessity and peril. We need the continuous invention and unfolding of new Myth to make meaning of our experience, to bridge the gap between facts and feelings, to help us navigate complexity with wisdom rather than mere information. But we also need shared truth and values, common ground, agreed-upon facts that can serve as the container within which healthy Myth can flourish.
Myth and faith
So how might we strengthen the bowl so that it isn't overrun by dangerous Myth but conducive to the Myths we need?
When it comes to the danger, I believe we're called to action. We speak out for shared truth, for respectful disagreement, for fidelity to sound processes. We march for fairness and against tyranny and the abuses of power.
When it comes to nurturing life-giving Myth, I turn to faith.
Today is the second day of Shavuot, the Jewish holiday celebrating the revelation at Mount Sinai. In the ancient narrative, the Israelites have been called to receive the instructions of their purpose. This is the introduction of Torah.
What if we see this holiday now as a reminder to turn our attention to Torah's ongoing revelation? Rather than a commemoration of something that happened millennia ago, what if we put our faith in the miracle that is the ongoing generation of Myth?
Consider that in all of us flow streams of consciousness that never cease. Most of the time, we're swept along by internal currents—thoughts, memories, half-formed ideas tumbling endlessly through our minds. Sometimes we can step back and become aware of this flow, watching our own thinking like observers of our inner weather.
But occasionally—and this is where the miracle happens, the one to which I leap in faith—something interrupts the rushing water. A moment of beauty stops us short. A flash of fear clarifies what matters. An encounter with awe dissolves our certainties. The touch of love reorganizes our being from the center out. In these moments, if we're willing to struggle with what we're experiencing, something remarkable can happen: the streams within us begin to harmonize.
What emerges is not just another thought in the flow, but something coherent enough to share with others. A story that illuminates. An insight that connects seemingly separate truths. A way of seeing that transforms confusion into clarity. When we speak these stories and insights to others—to loved ones, friends, even strangers on the Internet—we give them opportunity to exist beyond us, to become Myth.
This kind of Myth emerges from play far more than labor. It springs from delight and imagination more than analysis or legal reasoning. When we approach the great questions of existence with the curiosity of children, when we allow ourselves to wonder "what if?" instead of immediately asking "what should?", we create the conditions where streams of consciousness can dance together into new patterns.
William Blake was talking about Myth when he wrote that "every man has within him the eternal man." Blake insisted that visions are not the privilege of ancient prophets or mystical elites, but the birthright of anyone willing to struggle toward understanding—and crucially, anyone willing to approach that struggle with the openness and creativity of imaginative play. This capacity for revelation is built into the very structure of human consciousness—though not everyone chooses to cultivate it, and not everyone who struggles is guaranteed success.
My faith, ultimately, is that enough new Myth will translate from human hearts to human tongues to push our world forward. The persistence of such small miracles over human history bolsters me in this faith. If we act to assert that we have shared truth and then play and struggle within it, I think we will live up to our inheritance and our responsibility—we will be vessels for the ongoing revelation of what it means to be human. We will be Mythmakers.
A note on future posts
I’ve been trying (and less or more succeeding) to post once a week since I started this Substack in mid-January. For the next few weeks however, I’m going to take a brief hiatus, but I will be back! In the meantime, take a read through the archive so far, comment (I’ll respond to all comments), and share whatever you find interesting with people you know. Or people you don’t know. Let’s keep the Mythmaking going!