Remembering, one of the key themes this Shabbat, is a complex process often fraught with challenge. In 2014 my colleague Rabbi Dr Andrew Goldstein and I published our second Anthology, A Jewish Book of Comfort, and we had a chapter of readings under the overall heading of Memory.
The passage which follows, by Harry Halpern and reproduced with the kind permission of our colleague Rabbi Jack Riemer, expresses the nuances of remembering, and memory as well as any piece I know.
Where does yesterday go?
What happens to the days which have passed?
Are they consumed as objects which are destroyed by fire,
leaving only ashes behind?
Or is there perhaps some indestructible quality
which can save the past from annihilation?
The answer lies not in the days themselves,
but rather in us.
It rests within our power to save the yesterdays
and the means for achieving this is memory.
What is memory?
It is the God-given gift
of being able to behold the
golden days of the sunset
which went before
while standing in the ensuing gloom.
It is the ability to hear the sweet melody
after the instruments have ceased playing.
What is memory?
It is the ability to feel the zeal and spirit of youth
in the midst of the disillusionments of the later life.
It is the ability to dance in the heart
when the legs can no longer keep up with the music.
What is memory?
It is the gazing at the bride beneath the canopy
and remembering the infant in the crib.
It is playing with the grandchildren
and seeing their parents.
It is celebrating a boy’s Bar Mitzvah
and simultaneously attending the Bris.
What is memory?
It is experiencing today the heartache of yesterday.
It is the sorrow in the present for an agony of the past.
It is a conversation with someone who can no longer speak.
And the sight of a smile on a face no longer here.
What is memory?
It is all that is left to us
from the burnt out hopes and strivings,
as well as the pain and sorrow of the past.
What is memory?
It is that in which, above all else,
is to be found the source of our immortality.
Rabbi Dr Charles Middleburgh Dean of Leo Baeck College
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.