It is a fundamental principle of Torah interpretation that every word of Scripture is meaningful, and not even one letter is there in vain. Over the millennia, our Sages have derived tremendous meaning from even the most seemingly insignificant turn of phrase or tiny grammatical hint.

Some of the Torah’s best-known stories and laws are delivered in an incredibly terse style — employing the barest number of words and leaving us with huge, unanswered questions: “What did Sarah say when Abraham took their son to sacrifice?” “Who exactly was Jacob wrestling with all night long?” And, “Could you be a bit more explicit about whether the whole boiling a kid in its mother’s milk thing really means I can’t have chicken parmigiana?”

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So, when we start the Book of Deuteronomy this week, we might be slightly surprised. The Torah, which begins in Genesis by telling the story of the creation of, well, everything in just 34 verses, will now spend 34 chapters retelling us stories that we’ve already heard before. 

Yet, as the Rabbis liked to say: “Why did God create humanity? Because God loves stories.” Storytelling is one of the most primal and profound things that our species does. From the first myths spun around ancient fires to the never-ending torrent of content coming at us 24/7 today, there’s nothing more human than taking our experiences and weaving them into tales to be shared again and again.

We all know that the ability to capture and tell a story is central to the work of interfacing with the philanthropic sector. Even in our data-driven world, when donors (rightly) demand that the impact of their dollars be described using objective metrics of success, there’s still no substitute for a story that gets to the heart of why a project truly matters.

For the past 10 years, I ran the Miller Introduction to Judaism Program, based at American Jewish University in Los Angeles. We were the largest program in North America helping people on the journey to becoming Jewish. When I spoke about our work to philanthropists or other community stakeholders, it was never all about the numbers. I always returned to the stories of our students: the gay man kicked out of church as a teenager who told me that he discovered his Jewish soul on a visit to Oskar Schindler’s factory; the African American college student who had once been homeless and was sheltered by his high school best friend’s family, whose father happened to be a rabbi; the Persian Muslim family who had admired Jews since childhood in Iran before deciding together to all become Jewish; the woman who learned that the father she had never met was the child of Holocaust survivors, one of whom attended her conversion ceremony.

These were the stories that captured imaginations and invited supporters to invest in our students’ Jewish journeys. Data is valuable, but stories speak to the soul.

When Moses begins his book-length recap this week, he is standing before a new generation of Israelites — born in the desert — who didn’t personally know the sting of slavery. His final task before passing the mantle of leadership to his successor is to get this ragtag bunch of desert wanderers to buy into a shared vision they could realize together. They had to know where they came from, what lessons they had learned along the way and what they might build together in a Promised Land. And, so, Moses begins his pitch to the Children of Israel: “Let me tell you a story of when we set out from Horeb…” (Deuteronomy 1:5).

It might seem like a repetition, but not a word is wasted. In fact, it’s in the magic of stories, told again and again, that we convey what matters most.

Rabbi Adam Greenwald is senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai Israel in Orange County, Calif. Prior to that, he served as vice president for Jewish Engagement at American Jewish University, where he directed the Miller Introduction to Judaism Program and the Maas Center for Jewish Journeys. He is a former Revson Rabbinic Fellow of IKAR, led the inaugural Honeymoon Israel trip and speaks and teaches nationally on issues of Jewish inclusion and engagement.