Ki Teitzei: The mitzvah of memory
This Shabbat, I mark the fiftieth anniversary of my bar mitzvah, held on Shabbat Parshat Ki Teitzei 5734 in 1974. I will be celebrating this milestone primarily by officiating at the bar mitzvah of an enthusiastic, devoted young student, whom I have been teaching and preparing for the occasion for well over a year. I hope he will look back at this Shabbat and the learning that preceded it with as many happy and formative memories as I call to mind on this personal Jubilee.
Parshat Ki Teitzei is particularly conducive to sacred memory. The parshah includes two mitzvot explicitly demanding we remember events of our shared national past. Deuteronomy 24:9 instructs us: “Zachor! Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the journey after you left Egypt.” We recall that Miriam — Moses’ elder sister and childhood protectress — was stricken with leprous scales, ostensibly as divine punishment for the sin of criticizing Moses’ marriage to a Cushite (Ethiopian, or African) woman, as well as for griping about his uniquely exalted position of leadership and prophecy.
Not so pleasant a memory!
We might also recall, though, that Miriam led all the Israelite women (and, a careful reading of Exodus 15:21 suggests, Israelite men as well) in song and celebration at the Red Sea — at which point she is identified as a prophetess. The Sages teach that it was in response to Miriam’s merit that God miraculously provided Israel with drinking water throughout the desert trek. The Prophet Micah remembers Miriam as a consequential figure of Israelite leadership: “I brought you up out of the Land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam” (Micah 6:4).
So, while it is a mitzvah to remember Miriam, what we are to remember is actually left unspecified by Scripture! Are we to remember Miriam’s leprosy or her leadership? How we remember Miriam is a Rorschach test of sorts, a reflection of our own character. Are we more inclined to grudges or to gratitude? Do we more readily remember the bruises we endure or the blessings we enjoy? The slights we have suffered or the sensitivity and selflessness we have seen?
Parshat Ki Tetzei also demands, in its concluding verses (and in language echoing the Miriam verse), that we remember the ruthless attack against our Israelite ancestors, perpetrated by the Torah’s pioneering prototype of antisemitism, Amalek. “Zachor! Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt — how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all those who were lagging behind” (Deuteronomy 25:17-18). As a bar mitzvah boy, these were the first verses I ever chanted from the Torah.
That passage issues seemingly contradictory instructions: “Blot out the memory of Amalek” and “Do not forget!” Perhaps the tension within this verse acknowledges that while it is generally a virtue to focus on grateful memories and to minimize grudges recalling past offenses, identifying and remembering acts of true evil is a moral imperative, and in some instances it is indispensable to securing our future. Holocaust survivor and partisan fighter John Klein said: “Those who say we should forgive and forget, have nothing to forgive and nothing to forget. I cannot forgive. I cannot forget.” (The quote is from “When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust”.)
What to remember on principle, and what is willfully to be forgotten, our parshah reminds us, is a morally fraught and complicated calculus, in terms of both Jewish history and our own personal relationships.
The two mitzvot of memory in Parshat Ki Tetzei are among the Shesh Zechirot — the Six Remembrances — generally considered to be daily religious obligations. These verses are listed together in many traditional prayerbooks. In addition to remembering Miriam and Amalek, we are to remember the Exodus, “the day when you left Egypt” (Deuteronomy 16:3); “the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb” (Deuteronomy 4:9, that is, the Revelation at Sinai); “how you angered the Lord your God” by worshipping the Golden Calf (Deuteronomy 9:7); as well as to “Remember the Sabbath Day to make it holy” (Exodus 20:8, the fourth of the Ten Commandments).
It should not be surprising that five of the six Zechirot appear in the Book of Deuteronomy, Sefer Devarim. The fifth book of the Torah is comprised almost entirely of Moses recalling and recounting Israelite history and, especially, details of the Exodus. Moses is the master of memory.
The Book of Deuteronomy and, in particular, the Six Remembrances (including the two in Parshat Ki Teitzei) set a historic pattern. For millennia, Jews have come to regard memory as a moral obligation and a sacred duty. Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel taught the scope and gravity of this calling when he wrote: “Without memory there is no culture. Without memory there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”
Parshat Ki Teitzei beckons us to be faithful, judicious, and worthy custodians of memory.
This particular Shabbat Parshat Ki Teitzei, I remain grateful for the parents and teachers, the family and friends, and the congregational community who celebrated with me 50 years ago. I am grateful for the privilege of training hundreds of students for bar and bat mitzvah over the course of my rabbinic career. This includes, notably, my own three children — and I already have been “officially” engaged to provide bar and bat training for my grandchildren. For that I am especially grateful!
Shabbat Parshat Ki Teitzei 5784 comes after a long, hard year of haunting memories: “Zachor. Remember what Amalek did. Do not forget.”
But let us pray that the new year soon to begin will bring us ample reason to dance, again, like Miriam: besorot tovot (long-awaited good news), perspective and justice, peace and comfort, frequent cause for celebration, with a defining abundance of blessings and happy memories.
Enough to last us and our students, our children and our grandchildren, a lifetime.
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