Davar Acher: I Was There; So Were You!
July 19, 2010
Torah | Youth and Family Life
(1 comments)
by Fred Greene
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)
 I enjoyed Rabbi Perlin's teaching about how to "talk Torah" and the power of engagement through conversations with others. There are few things as sweet as when my wife and I speak words of Torah around our own Shabbat dinner table with our daughters.
To reinforce Rabbi Perlin's argument, earlier in the parashah we read: "But take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes and so that they do not fade from your mind as long as you live. And make them known to your children and to your children's children" (Deuteronomy 4:9). Moses is addressing the community long after the Israelites left Egypt and stood at Mount Sinai. Most of the people he was addressing were not even actual witnesses to those great events. Nevertheless, the next generation needed to hear about the former generation's experiences.
I often wonder what builds a strong Jewish identity. Information and knowledge are surely significant ingredients. But the most crucial ingredient is memory. We have to remember what we have seen and pass it on to the next generation. When we lose our memory, our people become vulnerable and our relationship with Torah and God becomes at risk.
As I read this verse, I see that our response ought to be the sharing of these collective memories of our people. This is why we are told to reenact much of what our ancestors experienced: we say that we were slaves in Egypt at our Passover seders, we raise the Torah scroll as everyone stands and proclaims that this is the Torah that God gave to Israel at Sinai (bringing us back to Sinai), we build and dwell in a sukkah reminding us of our ancestors' journey through the wilderness, and so much more.
In the end, these aren't just rituals, but reenactments--our effort to reclaim our ancestors' experiences for ourselves and our Jewish journeys.
Rabbi Fred Greene is the rabbi at Temple Beth Tikvah of Roswell, Georgia, in the Metro-Atlanta area.
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The collective memories of which Rabbi Greene speaks include the personal memories of Jewish families -- not just the ceremonial community rites, but the individual vignettes that connect the generations.
One reason I am so "present" on this blog is to leave an anecdotal archive for my grandchild of how I was shaped as a Jew, hopefully some of which will impact on how he is shaped to carry on the tradition.
I invite the other sharers of memories on this blog -- Jane, Marge, Andi, Donny, David, to cite a few -- to keep your personal stories coming, for they too are Torah.