Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove
December 1, 2007

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being escorted by my seven year old daughter to shul.  As we were walking hand-in-hand, I was struck by the power of our time together and the memories it evoked and I turned to her saying, “You know what Lucy, here we are walking to shul together,  and when I was a little boy, I remember walking to shul with your grandpa, my daddy.  And you want to know what is even more interesting, when Grandpa was a little boy, he used to walk to shul with his daddy.”  And, just as I was totally confident that she was totally uninterested in what I found to be so fascinating, she gave me a response which was as pure and delightful as it was unexpected. She looked at me and asked: “Daddy, did Moses walk to shul with his children?”  It was a wonderful question and I was touched by it, so much so, that I could simply respond with: “Yes.  Yes, Lucy, Moses walked to shul with his children.”

What are the Jewish memories that you carry around?  The activities, the rituals, the walks to shul, the teachers, the music, the trips, the tastes and smells that make up your Jewish past?  Is there a tablecloth you use from a previous generation?  A recipe, a tallis, a Kiddush cup that has been passed down?   When I start a sermon, I often think of Mr. Gendon, the man who I sat next to in shul growing up who used to hand me a peppermint candy whenever the Rabbi began to speak.  Maybe for you it is a blessing at the Friday night table, or a prayer when you went to sleep at night, or a bad joke that an uncle said year in and year out at the Passover Seder.  You may be new to Judaism and your memories are more recent.  The moment when you were immersed in the mikvah, emerging as a member of the Jewish people.  New or old, we all have these memories.  They are the fabric of who we are as Jews, and consciously or unconsciously, it is Jewish memory that drives our Jewish identity, and in some cases, if we dig deep enough, our memories go way back to before we were born, sometimes even as far as Moses.

This fall marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the most important books on Jewish memory. Based on a series of lectures, Professor Yosef Yerushalmi of Columbia University published a short but provocative book entitled Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory.  The book continues to generate discussion today, and the anniversary of its publication is being marked with conferences and retrospectives reexamining the book and, in some cases, challenging its claims.  The book is striking both for its insights and readability and I recommend it to all.  This Shabbat, we have made available copies of the book that I encourage you to take after services, and if we run out, we have printed bookmarks for you on how to order the book.  Make it your winter vacation reading and be ready a month from now for a one time book discussion on Monday night, January 7th.

The thesis of the book is rather straightforward.  Yerushalmi makes the case that “History” and “Memory” are two entirely different projects.  History is the account of past events, personalities and institutions. To the extent that one is able, the historian seeks to separate fact from fiction and objectively reconstruct and record “what actually happened.”  History is the effort to describe and explain the past.

For Jews, however, our natural reflex, our “go-to place” is not history, but memory.  According to Yerushalmi, and this point is debated amongst scholars, Jewish history as a discipline is a relatively new phenomenon.  History is not indigenous to our people; in fact Jews only learned how to do history from their non-Jewish counterparts.  Memory, on the other hand is part our people’s DNA.  The Hebrew word for memory or “to remember”, “Zakhor”, appears in the Bible no less than one hundred and sixty-nine times. Over and over again, Israel is commanded to remember and not forget; remember the promise to Abraham, remember that we were once slaves in Egypt, remember the Sabbath day, remember what Amalek did to us.  The command to remember is absolute, persistent and extends well beyond the Bible.  Just think about all of the rituals and recitals of our people.  The Passover Haggadah, “My father was a wandering Aramean,” “Dayenu” – an account of everything God did for us.  These are all ritualized exercises aimed at the formation of collective memory. (Zakhor p.5 ff)

Yerushalmi explains that memory, unlike history, involves far more than just an account of the past.  Memory means that you see yourself as part of a link in a chain, extending to the past, but also into your future.  The story you are telling is not just any story, but it is your story.  At the Passover Seder, when we say that we see ourselves as if we went out of Egypt, or on Shavuot that each of us were present at the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, these are not historical claims but claims of memory.  Or, better yet, in just a few nights from now on Hanukah, we will thank God for miracles and deliverance “Bayamim Hahem, Bazman Hazeh,” “in the past and in the present.”  What we are saying is that the same God who was present for the Maccabees is the God to whom we turn today. We can debate the particulars of history, but our vitality as a people is found in memory. We are a people of Zakhor.

And while there is a lot more to say about the book, I do want you to come to the class, so I will leave it at that. But this morning I want to suggest to you that while Yerushalmi’s book is a fine piece of scholarship worthy on its own merits, twenty-five years later, it reads like a prophetic comment on the Jewish community of today.   Because if I had to diagnose the challenge of our Jewish moment, it is that our reserves of Jewish memory are running dangerously low.  We, who live in an information age, with more knowledge and more access to our past than any other generation, are paradoxically, less and less connected to it.  We may know history, but when it comes to our Jewish memory, our bond with our past has grown increasingly tenuous.

In a sense, you need look no further than the hero of our Torah reading Joseph to understand our present predicament.  Joseph’s distinction, amongst others, is that unlike Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he is the first Jew who has to create Jewish identity on his own terms removed from a one-on-one dialogue with God.  And without this connection, his vision is skewed entirely in one direction, towards the future.  Just think about how our parsha begins – Joseph is full of dreams, eagerly anticipating his destiny. But his sense of self is painfully one dimensional; he has absolutely no awareness of his past.  For Joseph, “any dream will do,” just don’t call on him to remember.  There is no indication whatsoever that Joseph knew of his predecessors.  It is not so much that Joseph lost his memory, it may not even be his fault; he never had a memory to begin with. He is a tabula rasa, born with no innate or built in Jewish context.  It is what makes him so intriguing, it is what makes him so reckless, and it is what makes him so relevant for us today.

We are, it would seem, “the Joseph generation,” the regrettable fulfillment of Yerushalmi’s observations.  It would take a sociologist far more learned than me to explain why this rupture or lapse in memory has occurred, but we can observe its effects everywhere.  When Israelis define themselves as Israelis first and Jews second, it means that their identities don’t extend to Abraham, but only to Ben Gurion or if we are lucky Herzl.  So too, as many observers of Orthodoxy have noted, the recent rightward shift in Orthodoxy is also attributable to a lack of memory.  When one learns how to be Jewish not by way of parents, but by way of right-wing publications filled with stringent lists of “do’s and don’ts,” it is inevitable that Orthodoxy should become more “by the book,” and less open to any give and take.  So too in matters of philanthropy. When the Federation world faces a diminishing pool of contributors, it means, amongst other things, that fewer Jews feel an instinctual solidarity and connection with the institutions that have made North American Jewry what it is.

And while I can point to the effects of living in the “Joseph generation” around the Jewish world, I see its effects every day here in our community.  When our children understand their connection to Israel by way of CNN and not as part of their intrinsic DNA, then our Zionism is only as strong as the last news-cycle. If we say the words “Never Again” with the Shoah being a mere point of historical reference and not a deeply felt emotional connection, a permanent scar on the Jewish soul, the words risk becoming trite and trivial.   So too with Jewish observance.   We can talk all we want about Theology and Mitzvot, but without memory, theology becomes an empty exercise. Jewish education is more complex than a Rorschach test. You can’t flash a text or ritual in front of someone and expect them to respond meaningfully. Without giving our children points of reference for observance in their kishkes, in other words, memories, they are starting from scratch, and to start from the very beginning, actually, is a very difficult place to start.

Let me be clear, I am not asking any of us to wax nostalgically about the past.  Solomon Schechter once wrote that “Every generation must write its own love letters.”  We can’t be satisfied reading those of previous generations.  We are not museum curators; we are stakeholders in the future of Judaism.    But what I am asking you to consider is that the most powerful Jewish muscle we have is our Jewish memory.  It is our core strength, from it everything else emerges.  And as parents and grandparents committed to Jewish education, the most important gift you can give your children is a steady stream of Jewish memories.  You light candles at a Friday night table, not as a workshop in theology, but because you are impressing on your children the power of the Sabbath.  You don’t take your child to Israel to make them experts in the geopolitics of the Middle-East; you take them now so when they grow up they will have a reflexive attachment to the land of our people.  And when you drag your child to the JUF “phone-athon,” years from now I guarantee your child will not remember the specifics of the day, but he will remember where your priorities were.   And when you take your children to shul and you sit there next to them, it is an investment that will yield dividends for years to come.  Our primary educational task in a Joseph Generation is to engender a feeling that Jewish commitments begin long before we are born and extend long after we are here on this earth.  It sounds strange to say, but it is true: the key to building a Jewish future is the formation of Jewish memory.

Being a dreamer and having memory are not mutually exclusive, in fact they are interdependent.  Martin Buber, the most passionate spokesman for Jewish renewal in the 20th century, explained that renewal “must originate in the deeper regions of the people’s spirit.”  As sure as I am that memory without innovation is exhausted nostalgia, I am doubly sure that innovation without memory is superficial faddishness.  Real Jewish renewal only happens when you are able to turn to the riches of tradition, the accomplishments of the past and ask the necessary and relevant and pressing questions for this generation and the generations to come.  It should not be lost on us, that the central pivot, the redemptive turning point of the Joseph story will come next week when Joseph does what he was unable to do in the first half of his life: He remembers: “Vayizkor Yosef Et Hahalmot asher Halam” “And Joseph remembered his dreams that he dreamt.” (Gen 42:9)  The challenge and opportunity of our moment is to be able to do the same, to know that in order to go forward as Jews we always remember our past.

Since that walk to shul a few weeks ago, I have often wished that I had a slightly more thoughtful answer for my daughter.  And while in retrospect I wouldn’t change a thing about that exchange, I have considered a slightly different response.  Because now I realize my daughter wasn’t seeking history, she was seeking memory.    And our moment is begging for the same. If we really want a vital future, we need to understand the charge of Jewish education in our schools, shuls and especially in our homes to be the formation of Jewish memory. If we want to dream, then, like Joseph, we must learn to remember.  So my answer for my daughter, my answer for the Joseph generation, is: “Yes, Moses did walk his children to shul.  And when we walk to shul together, Moses and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and even Joseph are still walking their children to shul.  Right here, right now, they are escorting us.  And you know what, in years to come, when you take your children to shul, they will be still be walking right there next to you.”

Shabbat Shalom.