September 23, 2006
Zakhor Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 07:00 PM EST I attended Rosh Hashanah services today at the small synagogue in the small town where I grew up, and where my father still lives. Anyone who shares a passing familiarity with Jewish custom will immediately recognize that I’m not a particularly observant Jew: It’s both Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat today, and I’m sitting before my laptop, writing a post for AmericanHeritage.com. Not kosher. Still, I do try to attend the High Holiday services each year, and indeed my tallis was right where I left it last Rosh Hashanah, on top of the dresser in my father’s guest bedroom. As today’s services proceeded, I noticed just how many commemorative plaques adorn the synagogue sanctuary. Typical of American synagogue culture, virtually every tablecloth, chair, ark adornment, or wall is named in loving memory of someone. Ditto the prayer books, most of which contain commemorative inserts on their inside covers. There is even a plaque in commemoration of my mother in the community space, just downstairs from the sanctuary. All of which got me to thinking about a slim but marvelous volume, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, by the historian Yosef Yerushalmi. The book argues that memory and history have long been central to Jewish identity, especially in the long creation and evolution of a disaporatic culture. Yerushalmi finds that Jews have used history in different ways and for different purposes throughout time, but ultimately he locates collective memory as a fundamental building block of Jewish identity. The same can be said, I think, of other religious traditions. In his landmark book Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom, Lawrence Levine argued that black slaves fashioned a form of Christianity that hinged on collective memories of the Book of Exodus while blurring the temporal distinction between present and past. In the early black church, slaves could understand themselves as actors in a divine (and pre-scripted drama)—a remarkably innovative use of history if ever there was one. For Catholics, the Stations of the Cross likewise offer an opportunity to reenact the Passion, or Christ’s last days on Earth. I’ve never had the privilege of attending Muslim or Buddhist religious ceremonies, but I imagine that history must play a role of some sort in both. To all those American Heritage readers celebrating the High Holidays, Shana Tova. Here’s wishing you a sweet and happy New Year.
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