Spirit in Action
A Land Twice Promised - Noa Baum, Storyteller/Peacemaker
Noa Baum is an Israeli-born woman now living in the USA who has found her avocation in telling stories, who came to my attention through her one-woman story-telling show called A Land Twice Promised, about the personal stories of people vying for or sharing the land variously called Israel or Palestine. Stories can change hearts and find a way forward in places where argument is powerless or counterproductive, so Noa's very personal sharing may light for us a more peaceful way forward in a very troubled world.
- Broadcast on:
- 22 Jul 2012
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Today, our Spirit in Action guest is a storyteller. Noah Baum is an Israeli-born woman now living in the USA who has found her avocation in telling stories. She came to my attention because she's scheduled to present her one woman storytelling show to the Friends General Conference gathering this evening. The show is called "A Land Twice Promised" about the personal stories of people vying for or sharing the land variously called Israel or Palestine. Stories can change hearts and find a way forward in places where argument is powerless or even counterproductive. So Noah's very personal sharing of the story of her family and friends made light for us a more peaceful way forward in a very troubled world. Noah Baum joins us before our live audience at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island. Noah, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to have you here at the Friends General Conference gathering here in Rhode Island, Kingston, where the University of Rhode Island is. How did you end up getting connected with us Quakerly type? Oh, I bribed my way in. I was contacted by Debbie Vlock, who is in charge of the programming. Her husband Bill Harley is a phenomenal storyteller and I'm part of the storytelling community and he saw my show. I performed it at Brown University a couple years ago and he knows my work through the storytelling community and so I guess that's how she heard about it. And so she contacted me saying that my show fit the theme this year and if I would be willing to perform it here. Well, the theme this year is "All God's Critters Got a Place in the Choir." So what is your show that it matches with Critter Talk? Nothing whatsoever. My show is my personal story of my friendship with a Palestinian woman. I grew up in Jerusalem in Israel. I met a Palestinian woman when I came to this country in 1990. And the show is my story and her story and the stories of our mothers. And I think it's a way of giving a personal insight into the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A look behind the rhetoric, a look behind the headlines. And in a way, I'm thinking the message of "All God's Critters Have a Place." It's a way of giving place for listening to all voices and to saying, "You know, there's many narratives here and we need to start hearing them." That's my interpretation of how I fit into the theme. And I saw via your website, which is knowabomb.com. On that site you have links to some videos, stories you've told and so on. I understand in fifth grade for a while you lived in the U.S. and then you were back in Israel where you had grown up. What age did you finally leave Israel to move to the U.S. definitively, I guess, 1990? Yeah, well, my love affair with America has three phases. So the first time I came here was in fifth grade. And I came with no English whatsoever and that's when I learned English. So fifth and sixth grade my father was on sabbatical at Stanford. And then I came again in 1984. I came to study acting with the Utahagan at the HB Studio in New York City. I was an actress in Israel and I studied acting at Tel Aviv University. I was an actress at the Han Theater and then I went to study with Utahagan and somehow realized that I don't want to finish my life being a waitress waiting for auditions. And so I enrolled at NYU at their master's program in educational theater. And then I came back to Israel and worked in special ed schools, taught at teachers' colleges using creative drama with emotionally disturbed children and teaching at teachers' colleges. And parallel to this I always told stories and did my storytelling. And then in 1990 I came to America for the third time with my husband who came to do his PhD in Davis, California. And so we lived for 11 years in student housing. 11 years? And then plant biology, you know, they do a PhD, then they do a postdoc. It's a long process. And then we came to the East Coast, to the Washington DC area in three weeks before 9/11, actually in 2001. So you make your living telling stories. My recollection of my childhood is that my parents believed almost none of the stories that I told them. How did you get into storytelling? You were an actress. Well, I wouldn't say I'm making a living, but I am making a life. It is a life that I love very, very much. And I'm very fortunate to be able to do it. I became a storyteller by complete chance. There's actually a story on my website chronicling that. I was an actress, as I said, at the Chan Theatre. And then at the tender, ambitious age of 23, I was smitten by a disaster. And I wasn't cast in the new play. And my life was over as I knew it. And I felt that the world has ended. And I was very, very humiliated and depressed. But to make ends meet, the theatre started doing the story hour things for families and children. And I had to somehow make a living. And I got a job at a community center in the south end of Tel Aviv in one of the deprived neighborhoods doing story hour. And of course, I didn't know that I was a storyteller. I didn't call myself a storyteller. I was a humiliated and failed actress. But they hired me, because unlike my predecessor, who sat and read from a book, I acted out the stories and I twirled around between the characters. And I invited the children to act out after the story. And so I was hired. And on the second day on the job, I was getting ready to tell the stories. And the door opened. And three counselors walked in with six kids. And one of them was a very burly eight or nine-year-old with long hair and didn't know if it was a boy or a girl. Walked to the front of the room, kind of kicked some of the kids that were sitting on the floor, climbed on the chair from the chair to the table from the table to the window so on. Sat on the window so and said, "I'm here, you could start." I looked at the counselor's disappointed girl. I had no idea. And they said, "This is Lila." So it's a girl. I said, "Lila, would you like, 'Oh, you don't tell me what to do, you know? Nobody." I knew I couldn't mess with Lila. So I started telling the story. I prepared Hans Christian Andersen the tinderbox, which is a story that has a princess that doesn't do a thing. She sleeps through the entire story and during her sleep the hero, who is the soldier, kisses her, and then in the end they get married, you know, one of those stories. And all through the story, the kids were listening every now and again from the window sill "Lila would be allowed." "Whoa! Look at that man! Whoa!" You know, things like that. But it was all within the story, so it wasn't really disruptive. And then when the story ended, she jumped off the window sill, stood right in my face and said, "I'm the princess." And I said, "Okay." And I started choosing all the other kids and dividing the scenes. And meanwhile I saw from the corner of my eye, she took two chairs, just like, you know, these folding chairs that we have here. And she put them facing each other to make like a bed. And then she sat down, but she more glided down. And then she folded her hands under her lap and she tilted her head just so and she closed her eyes. And her entire being was just soft and gentle. And she kind of had a whiff of a smile. And she was the princess ready for the story to begin. And I told the story, the kids acted out all the scenes. And all the time she just sat there very majestically with her eyes closed. She opened them once when it was time for the soldier to kiss the princess. And she looked at me, "No real kissing, oh!" And I said, "No, no, no, it's all make-belief, that's okay." And it was time to marry the princess. The kid was blushing and giggling hysterically, but she just rose like a queen. And she put out her hand and they walked forward. And everybody said, and they all lived happily ever after. And all the kids ran out and I was gathering my things. And out in the parking lot, the three counselors were waiting for me. And one of them with tears in her eyes said to me, "Look, I don't know if you noticed, but the kids that we brought in late, they're the kids from the special education club." And we are never allowed to bring them into any activity because they ruin everything that is being brought to the center, so they're banned from everything. But because you are new, we decided we're just not going to tell you. And that's why all three of us came and we thought, you know, if they start breaking the chairs, we're all three there, we'll take them out. But we've never seen them participate like this and sit for so long. And we've never seen Lila like this. Today, we were reminded that she's just a little eight-year-old girl. And it would be wonderful to say that that was the moment my life changed and I became a storyteller. But I always say, you know, that's not the way life happens because more often than not, living the story when you're inside the story, you don't know that it's a story yet. The story is the way that we look back and create meaning. All I knew that day when I drove home was that for the first time in weeks, I didn't feel so depressed, and I felt like I just witnessed something really powerful and I had no name for it. But I remember thinking, this is what I want. Today, I can tell you that that was the moment when one door closed in my faith and an eight-year-old gangster girl from the south of Tel Aviv opened the door for me to become a storyteller. And I thought I became a storyteller. I think you've heard the saying that for every door that closes, there's another door that opens, but that the time in the hallway is a real bitch. Yes. You didn't evidently have too long out in the hallway. It opened to you pretty clearly. As this door opened to you, did you see it as an opportunity to have a different kind of a job? Or did you see it as an opportunity to have the kind of effect that you had in mixing with Lilaq? Well, that's what I came back to do. So when I say that she opened the door to me, it doesn't mean that, you know, there was a long hallway when that door opened. So I didn't become a storyteller overnight. I first went to New York after that, and I studied acting, and then I went to NYU, and I studied drama therapy and theater and education, and I came back to Israel. And I kept telling stories, but then I was working in the special ed school. So I was always incorporating my work with creative drama and story and working with disadvantaged kids. And I was also teaching at Teachers Colleges. I was working with special ed teachers. But then in 1990, when I came to America, I knew that I wanted a family, and I had my two children. I couldn't really get a job job, and I was always looking for ways to tell stories. But I was telling stories to children. In Davis, I discovered that there's actually this thing called the National Storytelling Network at the time. It was a different name, but people are actually telling stories for adults. And it was this huge movement. We started going to storytelling festivals, and I remember watching Laura Sims and Milber Birch and Bill Harley, and these master storytellers on stage telling stories for adults, not just children. And I said to my husband, "This is what I want to be when I grow up." And so a whole new world opened up for me when I came to this country, and that's when I started actually calling myself a storyteller. You mentioned one of the things that you studied was drama therapy. And as soon as you said that, I thought of something, experience I've had with men's work, which I've been very involved with for over 20 years now, the mankind project has something that they do. It's sometimes called gut's work, or it's sometimes called psychodrama. Is that related to drama therapy, or what's drama therapy about? Drama therapy is a larger and broader umbrella name that encompasses within it also psychodrama. Psychodrama is like a branch of drama therapy. I think drama therapy is a discipline, it's just a wider term. So storytelling as a healing modality is part of drama therapy. Puppetry is part of drama therapy. Any type of role playing is part of drama therapy. Any type of theater making, playback theater, these are all forms of drama therapy. So drama therapy is just a larger term of any use of theatrical models or drama for healing. So Leelach is one case of someone who was, I think, maybe moved along on the road towards healing. Because of the experience with you, she could be a new person, I think, because of what you did there. Are there other cases? Can you give us examples of how this works for other folks? Well, I wouldn't go so far as saying that this was just one thing for healing to take place. You have to have consistency, and it takes over time. If I had worked with that child for a longer period of time, maybe we could see something that goes towards healing. But it was a glimpse into the potential, it was a glimpse into the principle into what it is that storytelling does or that drama does in the sense that it allows us to take a step back. It allows us to be not us. So it's a distancing technique, and it allows us to look at what's happening either inwardly or in our life and give it pattern and shape it. So that we can look at it, we can give it meaning, and we can have some control over it. So if I think about the Leelach example, this is a child who life had made her into a very tough bully, into a very, very tough gangster girl, because this is who she had to be to survive. But there's another part of her that could never come out. And when she can play a role of a princess, then the tenderness and the gracefulness and the softness of her can be expressed. And so the premise of drama therapy is that, and in that sense, storytelling as well, is that we all are not just one thing, that we have different roles inside of us, we have different aspects of who we are. And one of the reasons that stories can resonate so deeply wasn't one of the reasons that fairy tales and folk tales have survived it for thousands and thousands of years, because they are the map of the soul in the sense. And the characters represent, it's a very Jungian approach, obviously, but the characters in stories always represent parts of ourselves. And so part of healing is finding wholeness, finding integration, and when you can start hearing yourself and seeing yourself and expressing the different parts of yourself, that's the path to becoming more whole and becoming healed, hopefully. It's my suspicion that whenever you tell a story, whatever it does for the audience, it's also possible that that story is part of healing for yourself. I know you're the storyteller here, Noah, it's not me, but I'm going to give you a abbreviated one about a role that I played, I found I could play in my mid teens that totally changed my life. I'm part of a very large family, there's 12 kids and there's brothers and sisters and step sisters and brothers and half sisters and I have a stepmother or I have a stepmother. And there are real problems in our family, alcoholism and many other major issues, so it was a pretty messed up situation. My sister's got, I think, driven away from home by my stepmother who was dealing with tremendous frustrations herself. After my older sister was gone, she turned on me and she started badgering me in the way she had my sister. And first time I broke down and cried, the second time she tried to do it, I had been involved in debate. And I learned that there was another way to react when someone was coming at me and so she started attacking me and saying I was irresponsible and thoughtless. And I said, "Could you provide some documentation?" And that evidence is outdated, you have more recent evidence and that's not a prima facie case. And she got very upset with me, told me to go to bed, I said, "That's fine, good night, mother and father, dear." And I went out as being a totally smart jerk and she called me back, you're not getting away that easy. And eventually she went to bed and she never attacked me again. Now, I wasn't nice to her and she, God knows, needed help. But I know that by going into that alternate persona that it saved me and so I have one of my sisters who now refers to me as the white sheep of the family. There's 11 others. So my question is for you, what's your story? What's the one that you tell which is really about your healing, your transformation? Is there anything that you can share that way? I don't know that there is one. I don't know that there is one story. Well, I want to hear all of them as the point. We have all day, right? I think the reason why storytelling has become my path and my life is because it offers, for me, an intersection of everything that I love and I'm interested in. And also, one of my teachers Laura Sim says, you know, you don't choose the stories, the stories choose you. So the stories that have chosen me in my life have been a path for me. It's been part of my journey to become a better person, I hope, more aware person. It has offered me comfort and healing. The first personal story I created, which I was terrified of because I was only telling folk stories, was a little anecdote about my grandmother. And it was two years after she passed away and she passed away when I was already in America. And I realized I was so angry about the way she died. I was so angry about that I wasn't there because she was very, very close to me and away from me to bring her back into my life was to start telling stories about her. It's been tremendously healing for me to start creating stories about my mother, about my grandmother. A land twice promised has been a complete transformative experience in my relationship with my mother because I tell her story as part of it. And my mother and I had a very volatile relationship most of her life. She just passed away two years ago. She was a very, very difficult person and like a lot of people who have suffered severe trauma of a generation, very wounded, she had a way of telling the story that was very, very calcified, very specific. You know, she told it in her words and her intonation. Anytime you tried to ask her a question that put her out of the way that she arranged the story for herself, she would get very angry. So when somebody is so wounded, they have a way of creating meaning from their life or creating the story in a way that they can deal with it in the way that they can live with it. And often it holds the pain in the place somewhere there. What I did when I had to tell the story, I was telling it in first person and I had to kind of get into the mindset of imagining what would it feel like being a 19 year old experiencing these things that my mother experienced. And I think that act of compassion that I had to find, and I did it also for my Palestinian friend, for her mother, but with my mother for some ironic reason, it was even harder because of our closeness and our volatile relationship. But what happened was that the first time she saw it, she came to visit in America and then the next day, I felt something. It's like something has changed. And I didn't know what it was, but something in the energy between us has changed, and it was like this shift, and it was very clear to me that this was not conscious. It was very clear to me that this is not something she's doing, but something shifted and took me three days. I couldn't figure out what it was. Finally, I called my friend, Gail Rosen, who works a lot with bereavement and through story, and I said, you know, something's going on, I don't get it. And she said to me, no, your mother felt heard, and it clicked. And I realized, because I told the story from the inside, for the first time in her life, that level of anxiety, that level of combativeness with me calmed down, because she felt understood and she felt heard. So that experience was just a huge, huge part of my healing and my relationship with her. And I'm so glad that she had a chance to see this, and that I had a chance to experience this in my relationship with her before she died. So that's one example. I've had many stories that have offered comfort and healing for me. There was the time when I came to this country. I just had a baby. I was very isolated. I wasn't doing any work. This is a politically correct environment we're in right now. You were doing work. You just weren't getting paid for it. We want to recognize your worth. Okay, Noah. I didn't feel like I was doing work because I wasn't telling stories. But I remember sitting on this futon that we had in student housing and hearing, I don't know where I heard it. It was on either the radio, or I saw a synopsis of a little story called the lion's whisker. And usually, because English is my second language, for me to tell a story is a very long process. You know, I have to really learn it, and I have to find the exact words in English, and I have to practice it. And it's not, you know, the language doesn't come to me on the level that I wanted to come to me the way it comes in Hebrew. And that story, I saw it, and then I just called a friend, and I told it the next day. And I've been telling it ever since. And that story just offered me, I don't know how to describe it, but it was like a turning point for me. And it's a story about a woman who wants a magic potion to create change in her life. And the healer she goes to tells her, "I can help you, but you need to bring a whisker from a live lion." And of course, she has no idea how in the world she's going to do something like that. She's terrified of the lions, but she really wants things to change. So she goes out into the mountains, and she finds a place by the water where she's hoping that maybe if there is a lion up in the mountains, he'll come to drink from the water. And she waits there, and sure enough, towards the sunset, she hears a roar, and she sees a lion coming down the path, and she throws a piece of meat as far as she can, and she runs back home. And then the next day, she takes another piece of meat, and she goes to that place, and she waits again until the lion comes, and this time she forces herself to stand there and watch as he's devouring it. And she does this day after day after day for six months, until by the end of six months, the lion is so used to her present that he's eating out of her open hand, and she plucks a whisker and runs to the healer. And the whisker asks her, "Well, how did you? I'm giving you the abbreviated version here. How did you obtain this?" She tells him, he throws it into the fire. She's screaming, "What are you doing? My magic potion that you promised?" And he looks at her and says, "A woman who has the strength to tame a lion has no need for a magic potion." And that image just pulled me out of the funk that I was in, and has been like a little light for me. You mentioned your grandmother in telling stories about her, learning that I would like to know a little bit about your grandmother, too. I think that for me, my mother died when I was nine. That connection with my grandmother made such a difference to me. I want to know your grandmother because of that. My grandmother, she was a character. She practically raised me. I was her shyness. I was the goldenest shyness I made. Exactly. I was going to say that. I was the beautiful golden, sweet, perfect little girl for her. I was the oldest granddaughter. There was one cousin who was older than me. He was the oldest grandson. I was the queen. And she, every holiday, every school vacation, I was always with her. I grew up in Jerusalem. She was in Tel Aviv. I was always with her. We didn't have phone when I grew up. So she would just show up, you know, get on the bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. She would just show up and be at our house until she couldn't stand my mother anymore and they would fight. And then she would go to her other daughter. She came. She grew up in Poland. She came from a pretty wealthy middle-class family. Her father was a grain merchant. And she was one of those rare girls who were sent to school to study accounting. She was an accomplished accountant. Married off through matchmaking, which was the way it was done, to a very wealthy German Jew who nobody ever talks about. My grandfather is the complete taboo. I have one tiny memory of him when I was, I think, four years old. It was poor him in Tel Aviv. And he owned all the whole land that today is the design of center or anybody who knows Tel Aviv. It's like the center, the heart of Tel Aviv was land that he bought, that he owned. And he lost everything. And I think he was mentally ill. There was this little shack that he lived in. My mother told me to stand by the lamppost and not move. She wouldn't let me go in there. And she and my father went in there. I heard yelling and my mother was taking out a mattress and carpet and cleaning it outside. That's my memory of the dust flying. And I was standing there. And since it was poor him, this Jewish holiday, all I could imagine was that this is the house where Haman lived. And that's where I was imagining these stories. I've never seen his face. I just heard his voice from the inside of that shack. Nobody talks about him. Apparently, he was very abusive towards my grandmother. He had lost everything. She had to go to work. She cleaned floors. She planted all the public parks and gardens in Tel Aviv. She worked three or four jobs because she had four little children to feed. So they came to Israel in 1936. And her entire family was killed in the Holocaust. So she had nobody except two distant cousins that came to Israel before the 30s. And her husband's family, which she was not very close to, but like one cousin of her husband was very nice to her and helped her. So that's some of the stories about her past, which she never talked about. She had four children. Her son was killed in the 1948 war. And then her daughter, again, her youngest daughter, we were always told that she died of some lung disease. But about seven or eight years ago, I found out that she actually overdosed, that she was also ever since the brother was killed. She was in this very deep depression and suffered anxiety attacks and depression and was never just couldn't cope with it. My mother's brother died when he was 22 and her sister died when she was 23. And my grandmother was this very lively and energetic person she never, ever, ever left the house without bright, bright red, very, very cheap lipstick. And a hat, always had to be a hat. She never spent money on herself. She never used electricity or hot water. She would take showers out in the public showers in the beach. But the money was spent on us, on me, you know, shoes and hats and ribbons for my hair and dresses and freshly squeezed juice and the vendors on the street. And we would go, we'll still, we'll still do you want this, you want this, name, name, take, take. Anything I wanted, anything I wanted, fresh rolls, cakes, anything I wanted, name, name, name. That's my grandmother. Did she get you bright red lipstick too? Oh no, no, that she didn't get me. When I hear stories of people like that makes it so personal. And I mean, I know that's part of the power story telling. When you know people in their stories, there's no longer the gulf between you, Republicans and Democrats. If we could sit down and listen to one another's stories I recently had on Parker Palmer and he was talking about folks doing that. When you get down to that level, I see it as the real hope for peacemaking consists of that. Now I know your program tonight deals with the whole tensions in the area of Israel, Palestine, the Palestinians and deals with that by talking about the personal stories. Now you grew up in Israel, you came to this country in 1990 for definitively I guess. So you've learned to see the, you certainly know the Israeli story from the inside. Do you see it differently now that you live here? I guess my question really is, if you know the stories from both sides, maybe you see an opening towards peace or the possibility of peace, because this world is so thirsty for some resolution. I think there are many people in Israel that see both narratives and are forging their maps for peace. We don't have the kind of leadership that can help us overcome the fear to get there, which is very, very tragic. But I think, yes, seeing both sides, you know, I feel it would be, you know, I am Israeli and I am Jewish, it would be hypocritical to say that, you know, I can see both sides, I'm always going to be who I am. But I think part of what it means to me to be human and part of what it means to have the gift of story is that you are able to open your heart for compassion and you are able to listen to the other. And I really, really think that is the only path. I mean, to me, at least, it's the only path that I can see. And that's what happened to me when I was talking with my Palestinian friend, and that's what propelled me to create this peace. I mean, I didn't set out to create the storytelling performance. I was having a relationship with this woman, and the compassion that we had for each other, because we had trust build between us, because we heard each other's stories, was so powerful that I wanted to create something that will create that level of compassion or invoke or invite people into that kind of listening and that kind of heart opening that the stories open for us. And what you said is really what I believe, and that's why one of the things that I do other than performing is I lead a lot of workshops. And I lead workshops where story is the model to learn to listen to each other and to build bridges. And I use it in many forms. I do it for interfaith workshops. I do a lot of workshops where Jews, Muslims, and Christians start listening to each other. I do it with Israeli and Palestinian students. I do it within the Jewish community and not necessarily around the topic of the Middle East, just community building. I do it in businesses for team building, and any form of diversity awareness and conflict transformation is built on this seed model of just finding a place to look at the other human being and listen to their stories. And it's on the one hand, it's very, very simple. And on the other hand, it's very, very difficult, because you have to create the kind of framework you have to invite the people to come in and want to listen to each other, which is, of course, the hardest part. But I think once people really start doing that, and I remember as I was working on this show with my with my friend, as I was listening to her stories and recording them and writing them, it wasn't always easy. And I remember I actually wrote a letter to a friend, my friend who helped me create this piece. Lauren, I wrote him a letter saying the temptation to put her in the them box is ever present. And it's so huge, because sometimes the things that she would say were hard to hear. And so it was really easy to just put it. Oh, those Palestinian and just put it in the them box. And we all do that. And it's so much easier. Those Republicans. Oh, those religious people. Oh, you know, and we do that. But to keep the heart open and to keep seeing her humanity and to keep seeing that human connection and to keep opening up to it needs a conscious decision. It's a choice you make. You know, so it's almost like the default is to go to the them box. And then we have a choice. Do we go to the default? Or do we go and work a little harder? And so that's what I want to do. You know, that's what I want to do. That's what I try to do. And that's what I try to offer in my workshops as a path to how to do that. Hold that thought while I play you a little transition music on the theme of this interview with Storyteller Noah Baum. John McCutchen is one of my perennial favorites. And this is his song, The Greatest Story Never Told. I was the eyes for Columbus. I was the hand at the weave. I mined the coal for Carnegie. I made his fortune and steel. I was the guide light for Lewis and Clark. I saw them safe to the sea. At Monticello, I was a fellow who built everything that you see. I was John Henry's partner without me to never have one. I lay the tracks from the ocean. I forged the gold spike when it was done. The first on the beach is at Normandy. I was the first one to fall. Though you may look in your history book, you'll not find me mentioned at all. They remember my name in the evening. When the fires fade to embers and coals, all the D's I have done. If I be the one, will my life be the greatest story never told? When Harriet Tubman came knocking, I hit her safe in my barn. When the Nazis were rounding up Jews in our town, my loft kept them sheltered from high. When Martin marched into Montgomery, I was right there by his side. When the battle was mounted, I stood to be counted. A part of that great rising tide. Will they remember my name in the evening? When the fires fade to embers and coals, recall the D's I have done. If I be the one, will my life be the greatest story never told? Rage upon it, it's recorded. The story is always the same when our children are charting the future. Who are the heroes they'll name? And when history comes calling for blood and for bone and we each take our place in the depths, between the famous and few, and the people like you is just a sliver of fortune and chance. When they speak her that first Christmas morning, they remember the virgin and child. The shepherds who worshipped in wonder. The kings and the animals mind. I accepted my place in the bargain, though the questions were constantly near. I live my whole life for my child and my wife, another father of fire and fear. Will they remember my name in the evening? When the fires fade to embers and coals, recall the D's I have done. Will I be the one, will my life be the greatest story never told? Will they remember our names in the evenings? When the fires fade to embers and coals, recall the D's we have done. Will we be the ones, will our life be the greatest story never told? Remember my name. Remember my name. Remember my name. Remember my name. The Greatest Story Never Told by John McCutchen, obviously closely related to the topic of this week's Spirit and Action Program Storytelling. You're listening to Spirit in Action. I'm your host for Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet and this is a Northern Spirit Radio Production. Our website is northernspiritradio.org. On the site you'll find seven years of archives. You can listen to anything for free. You'll also find us via iTunes and other sources. You'll also find a place to drop comments. We love to hear from you because we can create this story best together. Likewise, you can make donations. Again, the website is northernspiritradio.org. Today is Noah Baum, or maybe I want to say Baum. Oh no, don't say that. Noah Baum is my guest raised in Israel, a storyteller here in the U.S. She would have been a tremendous actress if only they'd made the right choice for that. I wouldn't trade my life as a storyteller for a life as an actress, not anymore. And it's our good fortune as well. Again, her first name, Noah, N.O.A. That's awfully similar to this guy who did some boating in the Jewish scriptures. Not the same. That's my question. Is it the same? Is it a different person? Is there a connection? Well, it's because of American malfunction, American pronunciation malfunction that they even sound the same because in Hebrew, they're completely different. They don't sound the same. They come from opposite roots. So the man is Noah. It comes from the root nach, which means to rest. My name is Noah, or in the Biblical way to pronounce it, Noah. It comes from the root nunrine, which means movement. Do you see how opposite they are? Not only is it the name of a man, and this is the name of a woman, but one comes from the root rest, and one comes from the root movement, and they do not sound at all remotely the same in Hebrew. However, Americans don't have. So, there you go. Are you saying we don't have hutzpah? You do not have for Noah. So, Noah and Noah, and Noah become all the same. But my name is from the Book of Numbers, chapter 27, one of the five daughters of SLFRAAD. There's a story about it. If you go to YouTube, there's a story about how I got my name, story of my name. It's really a fun story, also about my relationship with my mother. You were talking about telling the stories with Jews and Muslims and Christians together. My assumption is that it's more acceptable, less threatening maybe, to tell those stories together in the USA than it would be on site in Israel. Is that true? I mean, when the danger is so present and life could so easily tip in a different direction, is there the room to do the storytelling there? Is it done? It is done. It's much harder to find the opportunities and the frameworks to bring people together. So, it's much harder to do there, especially if Palestinian is from the West Bank and Gaza. But it is done. There are people who do things. There are people who risk their lives to continue to maintain dialogue and maintain relationships. There's a fantastic organization called the Parent Circle, which is started by an Israeli religious man, Jewish man, whose son was killed by the Hamas, and he created a group for bereaved parents, and then he reached out to a man in Gaza who also lost his son and his daughter, actually. And today, there's over 400 or maybe even 700 families of people who've lost their siblings, their children, their parents, and they talk to each other, and they conduct seminars and they conduct conferences, and they go on the road together, telling their stories together. A couple years ago, I had this project where over 10,000 people could pick up the telephone and talk to somebody from the other side, so they create these platforms for these things. So, they've been doing some holy, holy, holy work, and they're my heroes. It seems to me that your work is holy. I'm wondering if it's all connected with religion for you. I'm assuming you were raised in Jewish families, all the Jewish practices. You don't observe Purim if you're a Christian in this country, so I experience a large part of the Jewish scriptures as storytelling, very vivid. There are things you carry forward because of that. How much of that was influential or is influential today? Some people view religion as the problem. I'm not a religious observing Jew. I was not raised religious. My grandmother was. My mother comes from a religious family. I was raised Israeli. I was, you know, the new Israeli. So, it's part of your culture. It's part of who you are. It's part of your heritage. We study the Bible. I mean, I didn't go to a religious school. I went to a secular school, but you still study the Bible from 1st grade to 12th grade. It's one of the subjects, so you know it. For me, it was always my favorite subject. It's a connection to my heritage, my mythology, my stories. It's where I wrestle. It's the stories that I argue with. Some I raise, some I argue with, so it's where I come from. But I would say I don't look at my work in storytelling as wholly necessarily, definitely not religious. Like I said, it's not how I make a living. It's how I make a life. So it is my life's vocation. It is my path. And the only story that I can tell you that describes it best for me is there was a man, a thadik, a righteous man, who was going around from village to village and town to town, beating his drum and calling out for people to mend their way. You know, stop the stealing, stop the lying, stop the killing. Village to village, town to town, day after day, week after week, year after year, the man just kept on going. And the years went by and he's an old man and he comes to the same places year after year. People already know him. And so folks say to him, what are you doing? I mean, can't you see the world is still full of deceit and murder and anger and lying and all these bad things that you're preaching against, it's still there. Relax, stop, rest. You know, you're not doing anything. You're not making a difference. Why are you continuing with this? And he smiled and he said, you're right, you know, in the beginning, I went around really thinking I'm going to change them. But you know, now I know that I'm just doing this because I don't want them to change me. Which brings me to area of politics. I think you mentioned the Israeli mythology, if you will, the mythology were raised with, Jewish mythology were raised with. I think that everywhere in the world we have our stories that we tell about ourselves and occasionally someone comes along that tells a story in a way that catches our imagination, our inspiration. So in 2008, Barack Obama, yes, we can and hope. Those are the words we have with it, but it's his story, the story of his father and his coming that was so inspirational to so many people being transferred into the possibilities for this nation. Are there any political stories that you particularly value that you've been inspired for where you see people doing what you're trying to do to help the world? Well, like I mentioned the parent circle, what they're doing is my inspiration. I always feel that, you know, people who have lost so much that can still talk to each other, who are we not to? So for me, they're an inspiration. Oh, there's a lot of people whose work is an inspiration to me. I wouldn't, I don't know if I would necessarily describe it as a political story. I mean, you know, the word story is so problematic because people relate to everything as a story. So to me, yes, we can. It's not a story. Yes, we can. It's a sound bite that evokes a variety of stories. I think, you know, the work of Karen Armstrong, who's to me an inspiration, she's created the Charter for Compassion and all the comparative religion work that she's done to really bring light into what connects us all. A huge inspiration for me. The work of many storytellers in my community who work to bring out the stories of the marginalized and just the humans around us so that we can start acknowledging the diversity and the richness and the nuances that are around everywhere. So those are the things that inspire me. I don't know if I'm answering your question, but that's what comes to mind right now. It probably would have been helpful if I'd given you a couple examples of the people who I think do tell stories or did tell stories. I think Gandhi told a story about possibilities. I also think Adolf Hitler told a story and it was extremely damaging. Certainly the people who are looking to move to Zion, the Zionist movement, were telling a story that has tremendous political import as well as religious personal spiritual import. So I was looking for those kind of stories. Well, you know, the Israeli narrative is part of how I grew up. You know, it's part of my making, but I also grew to start seeing it as what it is. It is the Israeli narrative. You know, there's another narrative there. And until we start listening to the other narrative and until we start acknowledging the validity of the other narrative, we have no way forward. Just because it's our narrative doesn't mean that it's the only truth or it's the truth. So in that sense, I believe that Gandhi was, of course, I didn't even think about him because he's like, oh, of course. But I tend to look at my world in a smaller way. Maybe, you know, I need to look at it in bigger, but I really believe change happens on many, many levels. It can't just happen in one way. So there's the political. There's the big waves. And then there's the grassroots. And I believe that change, real change, doesn't happen through sound by and through the big slogan. I believe that real change is little drops of connection, human connections, relationships and stories, you know, the stories that we start hearing and we start acknowledging. And just that all these, this work of all these little drops that make a little rivulet that drops into a river and then becomes a tide that can create change. So I see my place somewhere that's contributing to those little droplets. So I don't think about it in like big, huge political terms, but really in terms of what I believe real change consists of because I believe that real change is hard. It's very hard. We form our, what we call, opinions, which is our way of looking at the world because we need to, because we need to make sense and we need to comfort and we need to feel safe. And to change that is hard. And you can't go there through debates. You can't go there through arguing against your opinion because all it will make me do is become more defensive of my opinion because I need my opinion to make my world stable. And so the only way that I see that we can create change is going through the heart and that's what stories do. I'm so thankful Noah that you've got the faucet open to let the stories come through you to share this. I'm looking forward tremendously to seeing a land twice promised and I'm really thankful that you joined us here today for spirit and action. Thank you so much for this privilege. Thank you. That was Noah Baum, spelled N-O-A-B-A-U-M website, Noah Baum.com or just follow the link from nordancebeareradio.org. We'll finish off today's spirit and action program with a tune from Fred Small, a singer songwriter who does with his songs, the kind of world changing storytelling that Noah Baum does without music. This story song is about two boys from the Middle East finding peace through their personal stories, The Hills of Iolon by Fred Small. In The Hills of Iolon, above the broken earth, Two boys shout and play with a ball on a field of sharpened earth, Divided sons of Abraham, exhausted and braced. Prince of this long bride of joy, know each other's face. If we met on the sands of Sinai under a molten sky, If you held me in your sights and looked me in the eye, what would you do? If we met on the sands of Sinai under a molten sky, If I held you in my sights and looked you in the eye, I would shoot you dead. In The Hills of Iolon, on one swirl of man's land, Shepherds chased their wandering sheep and eat them home again. My grandfather died at Dental, Never will I forget, The British set fire to my grandfather's village, Left twelve miles long dead. If we met on the cliffs of Adomor, You stunned by the rocket splash. If you found my heart exposed and a pistol in your grasp, what would you do? If we met on the cliffs of Adomor, You stunned by the rocket splash. If I found your heart exposed and a pistol in my grasp, I would take you prisoner, hide you away, and set you free. In The Hills of Iolon, on one's play a game, Toss an orange in the air and call each other's names. Ricky, she won't shall own death, Don't catch it before it falls. You sent a son, a mamma, mira, tear down. If we met on the river of joy, under a rain of news. If you raised your rifle up and your aim could not fail, what would you do? If we met on the river of joy, under a rain of news. If I raised my rifle up and my aim could not fail, I would put down my gun, open my arms. And leave. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.