what makes jews unique?

if you are hayyim nahman bialik and yehoshua ravnitzky, it's aggadah, often translated as "legend." it was their desire to make this non-legal aspect of rabbinic literature accessible to a new generation that made them go swimming through the rabbinic texts from the first eight hundred years or so of the first century to find their favorites and organize them in a way that moderns could fathom.
i first studied their amazing compilation, sefer ha-aggadah, in a small group at brandeis university hillel led by rabbi al axelrad. the future rabbi amy eilberg was in that class, as well, as we read the hebrew aloud and haltingly translated it into english and tried to understand what the rabbis were trying to say.
thirty years later, i'm approaching the text again. i've been motivated by a group i tripped across on the web (was it serendipity or was there a greater power leading me there?) which is committed to working its way through the text over the course of two years. i've only done daily study once before and that was to work my through the mishnah in memory of my father. i think i'm ready to do it again. the fact that i can do it with an english translation in hand makes it less daunting.
watch this space to see how i'm doing and what i'm thinking about. if you want to join me in this project, checkout bloggadah.blogspot.com. maybe we'll can organize a discussion group at bob and bob. let me know if you're interested.