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March 5, 2004/Adar 12 5764, Vol. 56, No. 24
Recall through storytelling
Torah study
RABBI NEIL GILLMAN
Shabbat Zachor; Tetzave/Exodus 27:20-30:10
The older we get, the more we realize how tricky memory can be. There are events in my earlier life experience and barely decades ago - significant, life-shaping events - that I am now convinced I do not remember with any degree of accuracy. I am aware that the event did not happen precisely the way I now recall it. Sometimes I confuse two events; at other times, I conflate them.
This Shabbat, we are commanded to remember Amalek. To fulfill this mitzvah, we read, as the maftir portion at the close of our Torah reading, the selection from Deuteronomy 25:17-19. It instructs us to remember what Amalek did to us on our way out of Egypt, how Amalek cut down our stragglers when we were famished and weary. When we are safely established in our own land, we are to blot out the name of Amalek from under the heavens and never to forget this instruction.
In the later tradition, Haman, the villain of the Purim story, is identified as having stemmed from Amalek. Hence, the Shabbat before Purim is named Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of Remembering - recalling Amalek.
Actually, Amalek is one of six biblical episodes that the Bible commands us to remember. Some traditional prayer books list these six episodes under the rubric "The Six Remembrances."
In each, the Torah uses the word zachor, "remember." Can we be commanded to remember? What we are really commanded to do is to remind ourselves. To do this, we structure our liturgical year with all kinds of reminders, such as calling this Shabbat, Shabbat Zachor, and reading the passage from Deuteronomy each year. These reminders are like "post-it" notes. Reminding ourselves is an easier mitzvah to fulfill than remembering. If we continue to remind ourselves, then maybe we will remember.
Forgetting is easy, which is why the extra Torah portion concludes with the exhortation, "Do not forget!" In the fourth chapter of Deuteronomy, arguably the theological heart of the entire chumash, Moses exhorts the Israelites to "take utmost care - so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes - and make them known to your children and to your children's children." (Deuteronomy 4:9)
But if it is possible to forget what our own eyes have seen, how much easier is it to forget events that we have never seen, or events that occurred long before we were born. I am struck by the fact that my undergraduates stare at me with totally blank faces when I refer to the Vietnam War. And if they forget this painful chapter in American history, how can we expect them to remember the Holocaust?
History shapes identity. My personal identity is shaped by my personal history. Our communal identity is shaped by our communal history. And history depends on the capacity to remember. The ultimate tragedy confronting those of us who are afflicted with diseases of memory is that we lose our identity, our sense of who we are. No loss is more tragic than this one.
So we must tell our stories, both our personal stories and our collective stories. We must tell them not only to our children and our children's children, but to ourselves as well. We tell our stories in order to remind ourselves. There is wisdom in the Passover mitzvah to tell the story of our redemption from slavery, even to ourselves alone, even if there is no one else to hear it from our lips. If we don't tell our stories, we will forget them, and then we will also forget who we are. Then we will be truly bereft.
Rabbi Neil Gillman is professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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