By Michael Reneau & David Wolpe
Sunday, October 06, 2024
In 582 BCE, the governor of Judea was assassinated. The
Temple had already been destroyed. More than 2,500 years later, observant Jews
still fast from sundown to sunset to recall the fate of Gedaliah, and the end
for a time of all sovereignty in Judea.
Do we need to fast for the death of someone who was
killed 600 years before the death of Caesar? Is this admirable or pathological?
I recall when traveling in Vietnam being amazed at the almost marginal place
that the memory of the Vietnam War held in society there. The war museum was a
mandatory visit and a powerful and solemn experience. Yet war did not dominate
the conversation or the daily life of Vietnamese. I wondered at the time: What
are the relative values of remembering versus pigeonholing one’s recollections?
Is it sometimes healthier to forget? In Judaism God is called Zochair kol
Hanishkachot—the one who remembers all things forgotten. Perhaps forgetting
is an essential function? Can it be that forgetfulness enables us to heal?
These questions arise with particular poignancy on
the anniversary of October 7. I’ve spoken with people who lost family in the
war—both soldiers and captives. Just like survivors of the Holocaust they are
haunted both by the experience and the prospect of forgetting. “Unsung, the
noblest deed will die,” wrote the Greek poet Pindar, and what is true of
actions is true of people. We honor pain through memory and we know that people
die twice—the second time when no one on earth still speaks their name. But that
is now, in the freshness of pain. What purpose is served by the durability of
memory?
I was brought back to Gedaliah and the fast in his name
because of an extraordinary experience on one of my visits to Israel this past
year. In Jerusalem work is underway on a complex
to house all of the greatest archaeological finds in Israel. Among the gems
of the collection are the only perfectly preserved Roman swords in the world,
their wooden and leather hilts and scabbards and steel blades all in exquisite
condition. They were apparently stolen by Judean rebels in the first or second
century CE and brought to the desert in the hope of being used later in the
battle. But the rebels never had a chance and the desert climate kept them
pristine, as if in fidelity to the future.
Right after that visit I boarded a helicopter and flew
along the Mediterranean coast, past Crusader Akko (Acre), Roman Caesarea—almost
all of the history of an embattled land in one helicopter trip. Landing at
Technion in Haifa I met students working in robotics, space flight,
engineering, and other fields. Each of them had lost hundreds of days of school
to fight in Gaza. One had hidden with his family in a kibbutz on October 7.
Another lost family. Each knew people, fellow students or friends, who had died
in the fighting or in the initial massacre. They were plagued with nightmares
and knew they would be called up again after—or perhaps even before—exams. It
struck me that they were probably the same age as the rebels who had stolen
those swords to hide in the desert. The continuum of defending the land
stretched back thousands of years. I knew these students had been brought up in
a culture that treasured the past and although they may not have known of the
swords, they knew the tradition. They put me in mind of a passage from 1
Maccabees: “Remember what our ancestors did and how much they accomplished in
their day. Follow their example” (1 Maccabees 2:51).
October 7 was a break in Jewish history. It was a break
inside and outside, both in the Jewish world and in the world at large. It was
a violation of the compact that Zionism had with the citizens of Israel, that
it would protect them in their own land. That was the break inside of Jewish
history. Having spent the past year as a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity
School, I had witnessed the liberation of the ugly id of hatred against Jews
outside of our own history. Because antisemitism is not essentially a problem
of the Jews, but a disorder of the hater.
Not everyone who shouted or shook a fist was a hater of
Jews, of course. But I saw enough communication among students, heard enough
praise for Hamas and Hezbollah, listened to people chanting about the river to
the sea (even after they actually learned what those words mean) to know that
the oldest hatred endured and flourished in the most renowned institutions in
the Western world. I saw the twisted and angry countenance of the hater in the
privileged Ivy League freshman wrapped in his newly acquired keffiyeh.
Amid all of this, what is it that Jews should remember?
When we speak of Gedaliah, or of Hersh Goldberg-Polin (an October 7 hostage
murdered by Hamas) we are not really engaged in an historical act. The words of
the great Jewish historian Yosef H. Yerushalmi in his brief tract “Zakhor”
(memory):
The Jews who mourned in the
synagogue over the loss of the Temple all knew a date of the month, but I doubt
if most knew or cared about the exact year when either the First or Second
Temples were destroyed, let alone the tactics and weapons employed. They knew
that Babylonians and then Romans had been the destroyers, but neither Babylon
nor Rome could have been historical realities for them. The memories
articulated in dirges of great poetic power were elemental and moving, but
phrased in modes that simply bypass our notions of “knowing history.”
Jewish memory is a kind of spiritual pattern recognition.
The destruction of the Temple is an historical event, yet we do not mourn it as
history, but as a marker in the train of loss that marks so much of the Jewish
story. The Temple was the center of Judaism. As Jews dispersed, only by
believing in a universal God who could accompany them in their pain to every
corner of the world could the tradition and the people survive. The same God
who accompanied us afflicted us, and that theological struggle stands at the
heart of the Jewish experience. We are comforted and challenged by God’s
promise and God’s presence.
The Jewish experience has been one of cries to heaven
that echo and build through generations. The chorus of loss grows in each age,
both for individuals and for the people as a whole. We mourn those we have lost
in our lives, of course, and the pain of parents who are bereaved is
unimaginable. Yet here too the very language bears the impress of pattern:
Hebrew has a word that applies only to bereaved parents, shakul. Can one
conceive of a history so studded with such loss that there needs to be a
designated word? Mourning for Hersh pulls on a long thread of sadness.
Memory seems like a passive attribute, but not in the
Jewish tradition. Memory allies with anger, with incomprehension, with a sense
of radical imbalance in what Jews have given the world and the return it has
given back. Memory is a spur to action and a ritualized reenactment of the
past. We remember not only to honor but to anticipate.
And for Judaism we remember because it is a command to
remember. “Remember” is the most repeated commandment in the Bible. The
imperative of the Hebrew word zachor is mentioned more than 25 times. We
are asked to remember what God has done for us, that we have survived the
hardships. We place a mezuzah on the doorpost to remember. Even those things
seemingly too painful to remember we are enjoined to recall. We are told to
wipe out the memory of Amalek, the tribe that attacked Israel in the desert,
and then commanded, “Do not forget.” The one name in the reading of the story
of Purim that we cannot ignore is Haman’s, the man who sought to destroy the
Jews, because we make noise to blot out his name as it is read, paradoxically
heightening our awareness of it. Gratitude to God in the form of memory
embraces the bad along with the good. The sin is not anger but indifference;
not struggle, but forgetfulness.
For the Jewish people amnesia is not an option. Jewish
memory is both a tribute and a harbinger. It is what we owe to God, and to
those who suffered and those who died. The dead should not be forgotten in the
press of the everyday. The poignancy of loss cannot be fully calmed by the
blanket of passing time. But memory is also a species of prophecy. Jews who
forget the past are bound to have it repeated at them, on them, again and
again. The State of Israel was established because we remembered.
When God speaks to Elijah on the Mountain of Carmel (1
Kings 18), the King James Bible translates God’s as the “still small voice.”
But a literal translation of the phrase is “the thin voice of silence.” Those
who have been murdered speak to us in the thin voice of silence. But like the
voice on that mountain thousands of years ago, we still hear and we still
heed.
More Sunday Reads and A Good Word
The “More Sunday Reads” and “A Good Word” segments of
this newsletter are usually full of what I think are some of the most
interesting bits of religion-related reading I’ve come across during the week,
and something encouraging. This week, the two are really one. While my neck of
the woods in Appalachia continues to recover from tragic floods brought on by
Hurricane Helene, I wanted to highlight the ways in which folks of faith are
trying to help their neighbors, seeking the good of their respective communities.
·
For Forward, Rabbi
Justin Goldstein writes about lessons of Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish new
year—amid his devastated hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. “Standing on a
bridge over the raging, swollen French Broad River, my 13-year-old daughter,
Naviyah, and I witnessed a beloved part of Asheville nearly submerged in water,
surrounded by friends and neighbors staring at the immense loss before our
eyes. Beer kegs, wine barrels, modular homes, mobile homes, shipping
containers, kayaks, and endless debris floated away beneath us. Beyond the
objects, we knew there were loved ones taken by the floodwaters beneath the
surface. So much of the loss is unrecoverable. And while there is immense
suffering and destruction, the people of the communities of western North
Carolina, throughout Appalachia, and those further south are supporting one
another and rebuilding their lives. Our resilience will allow us to persevere
and recover what we have built. In that moment on the bridge, trying to find
even the slightest lightheartedness amid the devastation, my daughter and I got
wrapped up in an intense debate about which objects a person might keep and
which objects an owner might search for. ‘Come and hear: if a river swept away
one’s beans, wood, or stones, they belong to the finder,’ the Talmud states, in
a passage she and I happened to read together a few weeks earlier. We discussed
the fine points of the text, before leaving the bridge for the short walk home.
People filled the streets, embracing neighbors, sharing resources, supporting
the most vulnerable, or just standing in silence and disbelief.”
·
Lots of stories this week have focused on how
faith communities—either via churches, non-profits, or just believers—have
responded to the aftermath of Helene. Early in the week, Christianity
Today’s Emily Belz offered a high-level view at the gargantuan task
before a host of faith-based organizations whose mission is to help in the
worst of times.“‘In my more than 20 years of disaster experience, I can’t think
of a time when such a large area was at risk,’ Jeff Jellets, the disaster
coordinator for The Salvation Army’s work in the South, said in a statement.
Samaritan’s Purse chief operating officer Edward Graham told CT that the
organization had to call in equipment and volunteers from its Canadian arm for
its hurricane response and even had to adjust some of its overseas work. Just
for this disaster, Samaritan’s Purse is operating
in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. ‘We’re running at max capacity for
our domestic response,’ Graham said. But he added, ‘Logistically, God has given
us the resources and the talent to navigate.’”
·
In Asheville, individual churches and
denominational efforts were some of the first to mobilize in response to
Helene’s damage. “Teams of Southern Baptist volunteers on chainsaw crews are
deploying out to clear trees, tarp roofs damaged by wind and trees, and to
treat flooded homes to try and prevent mold, said Mark Hinson, a site
coordinator for the North Carolina Baptists’ disaster relief arm,” reported
the USA Today Network’s Liam Adams. “The latter projects involve tearing
out walls, cabinets, toilets, showers and bathtubs, water heaters, insulation,
floors and sub-floors. ‘If you don’t tear it out and let it air out and dry and
spray it with the mold treatment, it (mold) will just keep growing,’ said
Hinson, who’s managing recovery teams based at Biltmore Church’s Arden campus.
The Southern Baptist chainsaw teams are mostly working in residential areas.
Hinson’s teams out of the Arden campus have received 53 requests alone and
Hinson said the total across all recovery sites is likely in the
hundreds.
·
And for the National Catholic Reporter,
Barb Faze reports on efforts by Catholic parishes in both North Carolina and
Tennessee. “The priests of St. Eugene Parish in Asheville, North Carolina, were
doing their best to help people suffering from the devastation of Hurricane
Helene, which left at least 30 people dead in Buncombe County,” Faze wrote
of North Carolina efforts, going on to quote Father Doug May. “‘Asheville
has not experienced such devastating rains, winds, flooding and an almost total
breakdown of the infrastructure for over a century,’ May told NCR. ‘With few
exceptions, we’ve had no electricity, water or telecommunications for the last
five days. Crews are gradually clearing major and secondary roads of downed
trees, downed power lines and landslides.’ Generally, there are no current
means to text or call,’ he said. ‘There are approximately 30 people standing
around and sitting in their cars trying to contact family and friends to assure
them that they are safe and hear their voices.’”
·
Meanwhile in Erwin, Tennessee, the small mission
of St. Michael the Archangel, which lost two of its members in the floods, is
mobilizing. Faze
talked to parish staff member Corey Soignier. “Immediately after the storm,
he said, parishioners began collecting water, nonperishables, baby products,
cleaning products — ‘everyday items that we sometimes forget about, that these
people who lost everything need. The response has been amazing here,’ he said.
‘Our parishioners have been at the high school helping out. They’ve been out in
the community, trying to get their hands into what they can.’ They keep trying
to figure out ‘what more can we do, what more can we do.’”
Say What?
The crew over at The Morning Dispatch has the
market cornered on “Presented Without Comment,” but I wanted to drop this story
here with much comment. Make of it what you will. The
Oklahoman: “Trump Bible” one of the few that meets criteria for
Oklahoma classrooms.
No comments:
Post a Comment