This is the holiday season for Jews the world over. It is a time for personal and collective introspection. Unfortunately, this holiday season comes with powerful and devastating memories of the past year.
Despite this, the Jewish people and the the persecution of Jews throughout history are forward-thinking.
Many often say that Jews and Israel are obsessed with the past; that they focus on history and persecutions. And I have heard that Jews spend too much time focusing on the Holocaust. Actually, that is one of the major canards and a common explanation for why people say that they hate Jews – they bring up the Holocaust too often.
This is a mistake. Those who perpetuate these ridiculous lies and spread them throughout the Internet are disseminating pure unadulterated Jew-hatred. These ideas are the furthest from the truth about Israel and the Jews.
The Jews are informed by history; they are not obsessed with history. They embrace their past as a vehicle for the future. It is not an obsession but a tool. History, for Jews, is not a discipline in a liberal arts college to be studied; it is family memory dating back millennia.
A response to persecution
That is especially the case for Israel. Israel is more than a political entity, a state, or a bureaucracy. The modern State of Israel is a modern collective expression of the Jewish people, including its memories and history.
Sometimes memories and history do not jive, and when that happens, the collective Jewish memory wins out. For Jews, this concept is not about evidence but about transmitting the message from generation to generation. It is the uniqueness of the Jewish people and their resilience. It is the fortitude of the Jewish people and the ability to not just survive the unimaginable, like the Holocaust and like October 7, but the ability to use that memory as a fulcrum to help create a better, more exciting, more dynamic tomorrow – precisely, because of the past.
Jews have been persecuted for millennia. However, the Jewish state, at its core, is a modern Jewish response to the memory of the persecution of Jews throughout history.
Israel is also a bulwark to defend Jews in Israel and around the world. These are not simply empty words and ethereal concepts. This is visceral and gut-wrenching. This is how memory, history, and reality merge within the Jewish people and Israel.
Part of this holiday season includes reading and studying the last days of Moses’ life, in the final chapters of the book of Deuteronomy.
It is extremely powerful. Moses is not permitted to enter the Promised Land. Standing atop Mount Nebo, he looks out. Moses has appropriately appointed Joshua as his successor, and the next stage of history and memory is about to begin.
We do not know the exact burial site of Moses. We do know the location of Mount Nebo. It is in Jordan. Atop the mountain is the town of Madaba. There is a spectacular vista of Israel from there. The Madaba Map, a sixth-century mosaic map of Jerusalem and the world, was found in the remains of the Greek Orthodox Basilica of St. George in Madaba.
This mosaic map is the best example of Jerusalem during the Byzantine era. It helps understand Jerusalem during the time of the Byzantines. It depicts the cardo maximus – the main commercial street of Jerusalem, and portrays Jerusalem as the center of the world. Like all ancient maps, it is oriented east; actually, the word “orient” means east. Only recently are maps oriented north.
The essential point is that Jerusalem is at its center.
For Jews all over the world, memories of events are told and retold as if it were yesterday. At the Seder, Jews read from the Haggadah “we were all slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.” It was as if we were there. Even if some historian proclaims that the Children of Israel were never in Egypt and that they did not build the pyramids, it will not change collective Jewish memory.
It is memories that are handed down from generation to generation.
My prayer is that during this next year, the memories we will retell are of creative, exciting, and dynamic moments.
The writer is a columnist, and social and political commentator. Watch his TV show Thinking Out Loud on the Jewish Broadcasting Service.