The Jewish calendar, like Jewish life, pulsates. It has a metabolism of its own, unlike any other calendar, unlike any other community.
The cycle of the Jewish year heaves and sighs, from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. There are moments of intense introspection, such as Yom Kippur, and moments of pure happiness, like Purim and Hanukkah. The year is punctuated by the three pilgrimage holidays that celebrate the centrality of Jerusalem.
In days of yore, on these holidays, Jews worldwide would travel to Jerusalem and offer their sacrifices at the holy Temple. Jerusalem was more than a symbol of centrality, much more.
It was the very center of Jewish life, the one place, where three times a year, Jews would gather to pay tribute and to celebrate the blessing of being Jewish.
Then there are times, moments, of national mourning and overwhelming sadness. Times when we commemorate the destruction of the Temple and days when we fast, forcing us to connect and relate to the destruction of Jerusalem and her Temples.
That devastation, first in 586 BCE, was perpetrated by the Babylonians. Then again in 70 CE, this time perpetrated by the Romans, were devastations that shaped Jewish life – shaped our celebratory moments, and our memorials.
We Jews are a funny, complicated lot. At one of the happiest moments of our lives, under the wedding canopy, we break a glass to commemorate the destruction of the Jerusalem Temples.
Our history, however, is not frozen in time. And now, right now, we enter a season of modern remembrance. Yom Hazikaron (Remembrance Day), the day on which we memorialize those who died in defense of Israel and in terror attacks, and Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), memorializing the over six million who perished simply because they were Jews, are days of modern memory and of Jewish memory.
From Passover through Yom Ha’atzma’ut (Independence Day), the Jewish calendar is filled with memory devices. These special days are dedicated to historical events of which many Jews have first-hand memory. Each one is planned with activities that stimulate memory and that can, at the same time, transmit those memories to younger and then future generations.
The Jewish people must 'Zachor' - remember
Jews need to think about memory. We Jews need to remember. The expression borne out of the Holocaust commands us so: Zachor – Remember.
Over Passover, we remembered that we were once slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. We recounted the 10 plagues that God brought upon Egypt and that let us out of Pharaoh’s reign of terror, that brought us out of Egypt and eventually into Israel. And we remember that God gave the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai.
Similarly, on Yom Hashoah, we remember not only the horrors of the Holocaust but also the brave revolts and the resistance that took place in the face of horrific atrocities.
On Yom Hazikaron, we remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice fighting for Israel and the victims of terror attacks perpetrated by those who want to erase Israel and to wipe us off the map.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi famously wrote a spectacular, tiny book titled Zakhor, in which he explains that Jews revere memory, not history. Every year I reread his book. To my mind, Zakhor should be a staple on every Jewish bookshelf and taught in every Jewish school. Zakhor keeps me honest.
The gift of memory – of collective memory – is not to be underestimated. As Yerushalmi teaches us, history and memory are not one and the same. We transmit memory to our children, not history. Historians are constantly tweaking what happened and when – but the memories that we transmit stay the same.
Our memories are not concerned about which Pharaoh enslaved or freed the Israelites, but rather that “we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.”
When history is in sync with Jewish memory, that is all the better. But even when it isn’t, Jewish memory does not change to accommodate the new historical approaches to events.
Like individual family traditions, communal Jewish traditions have continued for generations and will continue for generations. It does not change – but it can be modified.
And one day soon, I believe that Jews around the world will have a codified, community-wide way to commemorate and to mourn – to remember, generation after generation, the monstrous events that changed the lives of so many beginning on October 7.
The writer is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Watch Thinking Out Loud, his TV show on the Jewish Broadcasting Syndicate.