winston churchill said that “those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” to this, one must ask “what is history?”
author yosef hayim yerushalmi’s zahhor, jewish history & jewish memory tackles the challenges to history writing. given history’s value, the writings must be instructive. contemporary jewish history is also viewed within the lens of memory. are those who fail to maintain an institutional memory, doomed to fail?
after reading mr. yerushalmi’s zakhor, one can appreciate how memory plays a role in interpreting events and calls for action. mr. yerushalmi illustrates this concept by breaking jewish historical scholarship into distinct periods. the second temple’s destruction, along with the diaspora, essentially created a closed book as far as jewish history scholarship. post catastrophe, the focus was on religious based scholarship. arguably, the second temple’s destruction was history repeating itself. another cycle of history completed. what was there to historically write about? it was the end.
as such, rather than history, memory played a role with the jewish communities in the diaspora. the bible, holidays, customs and liturgy replaced the need for historical scholarship to analyze and process events. decision making could be made in accordance with memory.
mr. yerushalmi’s zakhor points to the expulsion from spain as an event spurring jewish history scholarship. this would later be followed by the enlightenment and the rise of academics. he notes that “modern jewish historiography cannot replace an eroded group memory which, as we have seen throughout, never depended upon historians in the first place. the collective memories of the jewish people were a function of the shared faith, cohesiveness, and will of the group itself, transmitting and recreating its past through an entire complex of interlocking social and religious institutions that functioned organically to achieve this.”
he notes “memory and modern historiography stand, by their very nature, in radically different relations to the past. the latter represents, not an attempt at a restoration of memory, but a truly new kind of recollection. ”
with all this in mind, one must question as to what memories the present jewish institutions are transmitting. these institutions are diverse. some appear all too willing to supplant jewish memory with non-jewish ideology to satisfy their desire to match the ideologies of their neighbors or allies.
in the end, one must wonder what are the fruit of these new memories. do they offer the wisdom, or do they cast a generation off to either repeat history or become history [as in extinction].
be well!!
if you enjoyed this post, please “like”
if you would like to read more posts, click here
if you find this post meaningful, please share
The Ten Commandments Project 