From chaos to cosmogeny.

Illness narratives are informed by grand metanarratives in any society. This paper compares and contrasts understandings of stories relating to illness among Western academics and Hasidic Jews. While not arguing for any historical continuity, both cultures are informed by core metanarratives of progress and ascendance. Contemporary Western society emphasizes coherence, success, progress, and movement. In Hasidism the universe is slowly progressing to a state of perfection. Storytelling in both cultures results in a process of restitution. In narrative theory it is the self which is repaired. In Hasidism it is the soul which is repaired through storytelling. How have narratives of misfortune changed since the atrocities of the Holocaust?