Remember and Keep: The Challenge of Remembrance

by Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

Do you recall the lead up to the year 2000? – All that planning for Millennium celebrations; and, also, all the anxiety?  Millennial fever:   The year 2000 had been there hovering on the horizon for the whole of the Twentieth Century; and now it was almost upon us.  In the chaos and turmoil of Twentieth Century events – the catalogue of genocide and exile and massive global changes – technology had emerged both, as the deadliest of human creations and the greatest life-giver and liberator; as the year 2000 approached, it seemed that humanity’s greatest fear was that all those amazing computers, large and small, that we had become increasingly dependent upon in every sphere of our existence, were going to crash at midnight, as the digits turned irrevocably to Two Zero Zero Zero…  

Don’t worry if you didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about at the time – and you don’t really understand now.  Whether or not what the computer experts and geeks were predicting made any sense to less technically-inclined folk – like me, incidentally – it was difficult to avoid the mood of trepidation:  Like the horizon itself, it was very hard to see beyond 2000; to imagine life on the other side… 

And yet, of course, once the great moment had happened and was over, it has been as if we have always lived in the 21st Century – especially after September 11th 2001.  We have become completely absorbed in the problems and challenges and technological marvels of our new eternal present – and the Twentieth Century has been relegated to ‘the past’.   And so, even the year 1997 – which at the time seemed so very close to we-did-not-know-what – has now joined all the other anniversaries of the Twentieth Century:  Yes, 1997 – the year that the Labour Party came to power after eighteen years of Conservative rule; the year that Hong Kong went back to China; the year that Princess Diana died in that infamous car-crash…

For most of us 1997 isn’t just another year of anniversaries, it evokes memories.  Indeed, as we go back in time, commemorating anniversary after anniversary, we are actually remembering what happened then; bringing past experiences and events to mind.  But this is not an endless process.  Only for so long as the oldest person amongst us remembers can it really be said that we remember:  Tomorrow it will be Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday; a date that recalls the First World War coming to an end at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month eighty-nine years ago, in 1918.  Only someone who was born at least two or three years before 1918 has any memory of that day.  And, of course, if we are talking about actually remembering the Great War, one would have to have been at least six or seven in 1914 to remember that terrible time.  So, our oldest member, Cissie Luper – who celebrated her Centenary on September 22nd – will have those childhood memories.  But only her – and other Centenarians – and the very few who are older than 100 years old…  A whole generation of young men were killed on the battlefields of that terrible so-called ‘war to end all wars’ – and now, even the soldiers who survived, have all died – most of them, at least a couple of decades ago; even the very few who, caught up in the excitement of the time, were under-age when they ran to take up Lord Kitchener’s call:  All gone now.

So, the 90th Anniversary next year – unlike the 80th – will see no veterans leading the commemorations.  And the Centenary – what then?   How will we remember?   How will the younger generations remember? – And the generations to come?   Just as in 1999, the Millennium hovered before us, the unknown future, beyond the horizon; so now, the Great War, lies behind us, no longer a living memory.  And soon, the Shoah, too, will meet the same fate:  Kristallnacht, ‘the night of the broken glass’ – November 9th and 10th 1938; the night that marked the beginning of the violent persecution of the Jews of Europe by the Nazis; next year we will commemorate the 70th Anniversary – so the people sharing their memories with us are now in their late 70s, 80s and 90s.  Yesterday evening, one of our older members, Rose Cannan, now 85, read movingly from her memoir about her own experiences of Kristallnacht.   And on other occasions, Hans Levy, aged 80, has spoken about the Kindertransport and what is was like for him to be a child refugee from Germany.

So, how will we remember the Shoah when we reach the 90th anniversary of Kristallnacht?  Of course, we Jews are a remembering people; we do it all the time; we remember our ancestors, the Exodus – events that happened thousands of years ago.  Of course, we will remember the Shoah.  But how is it that we remember our ancestors and the Exodus?   How is it possible?  We remember because we maintain the mechanisms for remembering that the teachers of our people put in place for us:   We read the Torah scroll each year; each year, we recall again the ancient stories, recorded in the ‘Five Books of Moses’, reminding ourselves of our ancestors and the events that shaped the Jewish people.  We celebrate Shabbat each week, and recite the prayers that remind us that Shabbat is zeicher litzi’at mitzrayim – ‘a memorial of the Exodus from Egypt’.  We commemorate the Exodus each year with the rituals of the festival of Pesach. 

And now, to ensure that the Shoah also takes its place in the annual cycle of remembrance, after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, a day was set aside as Yom Ha-Shoah – literally, ‘the day of the Shoah’.  After considerable debate across the Jewish world, the date agreed was 27th Nisan, which connects with the period of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that began on April 19th 1943, and falls within the Omer period between Pesach and Shavuot – traditionally a time of mourning.

The exhortation to remember rings loud and clear – but without a framework in place for the practice of remembrance remembering cannot be guaranteed:  What happens if we don’t read the Torah or celebrate Shabbat and Pesach?   In the Torah, in the Book of Exodus, chapter 20, the 4th commandment, the commandment concerning Shabbat, begins with the word Zachor!– Remember!   Grammatically-speaking, an Infinitive Absolute, Zachor functions like an Imperative:  Zachor!  Remember!   We read:  Zachor et-Yom ha-Shabbat l’kad’sho – ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to sanctify it’ (Exodus 20:8).  Interestingly, the second version of the Ten Commandments in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 5 (:12), begins with another verb:  Shamor et-Yom ha-Shabbat l’kad’sho – ‘Keep the Sabbath Day to sanctify it’.  Concerned that the two versions of what was considered by tradition a single Revelation should differ, the sages taught that the Eternal One uttered both at the same time:  Shamor v’Zachor b’dibbur echad – ‘Keep and Remember in one word’ – indeed, that is how L’cha Dodi, the mediaeval poem (Solomon Alkabetz, c. 1505-76; Safed) we sing on Erev Shabbat expresses the sentiment.

Unlike those who consider the whole of the Torah to be min-ha-shamayim – ‘from heaven’, as progressive Jews we are not troubled by the fact that there are two versions of the Shabbat commandment.  Indeed, even in the middle ages, one commentator, Abraham Ibn Ezra, who was born in Spain in 1092, offered a simple and utterly rational explanation:  Since the second version in Deuteronomy, represented Moses repeating the commandments to the people who did not stand at Sinai, forty years later, it was bound to differ slightly – you wouldn’t expect Moses to manage 100% recall after so much time had elapsed.  So, yes, for us it seems that is not necessary to say, Shamor v’Zachor b’dibbur echad – ‘Keep and Remember in one word’.  And yet, there is a sense in which this phrase has something very profound to teach us:  what does it mean to say, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it’?   How do we remember Shabbat?  We remember Shabbat by keeping Shabbat; by observing Shabbat; by making Shabbat; by doing Shabbat – all these various verbs basically express the same idea, remembering Shabbat involves putting the idea of Shabbat into practice.

This is not to say that the way we ‘keep Shabbat’ as progressive Jews should in any way be determined by the way orthodox Jews keep Shabbat.  We keep Shabbat in our own way; the point is that whatever our way is; whatever ways individual progressive Jews choose; we have to do something; remembering Shabbat is not something that goes on in our heads; it is expressed in our actions.  And what is true of Shabbat, is also true of every other key aspect of our Jewish inheritance.  Jews aren’t just a remembering people; we are also a doing people.  Being a Jew involves engaging in Jewish acts.

But there is a problem here:   Remembering may imply keeping – but in order to be a rememberer/keeper you have to know what to remember-and-keep – and that involves learning. From the perspective of Biblical scholarship, the Book of Deuteronomy isn’t just removed by forty years from the events it describes; it was written over 600 years later during the reign of King Josiah of Judah, as part of his attempts to reform the life of the people at that time.  And so, it isn’t surprising that Deuteronomy not only re-tells the story of the Exodus, and repeats earlier teachings, it also addresses the issue of teaching and learning directly.  We read in the Sh’ma in Deuteronomy chapter 6 (:7), concerning the words of the Eternal One:  V’shinnantam l’vanecha, ‘and you shall teach them diligently to your children’.  So, in order to remember-and-keep, each individual Jew has to learn to remember-and-keep.  And it is clear, from the Sh’ma that it is parents, who bear the primary responsibility for transmitting the Jewish inheritance from one generation to the next.

But not only, parents, of course.   There are, after all, plenty of Jews who don’t have children who are involved in this vital process of transmission.  Also: parents need others around them – a community.   In this week’s parashah, Tol’dot, the Torah narrative shifts from the second generation of our ancestors to the third, as, after an initial period of infertility, Rebecca, becomes pregnant with twins, and then gives birth to Jacob and Esau.  Perhaps, Rebecca and Isaac may have been better parents to both their children if their family had not been so isolated.   The process of transmitting the Jewish inheritance is communal – L’dor Vador – ‘from generation to generation’.   We are all responsible – each one of us – together.  

Three years ago, following the 40th anniversary of the arrival at Westminster Synagogue of the Czech Torah scrolls that survived the Shoah, we began to become more actively involved in remembering the former Jewish community of Frydek-Mistek in Eastern Rumania, one of whose scrolls has been entrusted to our care.   Like so many other Jewish communities across Europe, the Jews of Frydek-Mistek were rounded up and killed by the Nazis.  Every time we take their scroll out from the ark, and read from it, we remember them – and all the millions, who were murdered in the Shoah, in the midst of the century that has now become ‘the past’.  And that’s not all:  Every time we do this, we also participate in the Jewish task of remembering-and-keeping, and so act to recreate Jewish life in the present and for the future.   May we continue to engage in this sacred work.  And let us say:  Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut

10th November 2007 – 29th Cheshvan 5768