![]() Blowing the shofar is a reminder of the covenant at Mount Sinai and the patriarchs. On Rosh Hashanah, the blowing of the shofar connects memory and observance. And in the Rosh Hashanah musaf service, zichronot is one of the three main themes (the other two being shofarot and malchuyot). As part of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, the rabbis made the theme of zichronot part of the Rosh Hashanah Torah reading, which recounts God’s remembering Sarah with the birth of Isaac. Zachor also serves as a reminder of God’s covenant with Abraham and the Jewish people. This act of remembrance has not only historical and ethical value, but is of great psychological importance, too.īut remembrance in Judaism does not only refer to historical events. Zachor - in both the context of Amalek and the Holocaust - reinforces the importance of the victim’s voice and the role of the persecuted in recording their history both during and after collective trauma. Indeed, the Pew Research Center’s 2013 Portrait of Jewish Americans found that 73 percent of Jewish Americans found “remembering the Holocaust” to be an essential part of Jewish identity, more than any other response. The commandments to remember and bear witness have been integrated into modern Jewish observance through holidays like Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) and Yom Hazikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day). Remembrance has taken on new implications in the aftermath of the Holocaust. During and after the Holocaust, comparisons between Hitler and Haman were commonplace. Later in Jewish history, we learn in the Book of Esther that Haman, a descendant of Agag, set out to destroy the Jewish people. Saul and Samuel battle the Amalekites and King Agag, as described in the Book of Samuel (also read on Shabbat Zachor). ![]() The explicit implication here is that the act of writing and reciting, recording history and recounting it verbally, will blot out the memory of Amalek, even though every generation will be forced to confront Amalek again and again. This is the first reference in the Torah to the act of memorial writing. In Exodus, God tells Moses to write a document as a reminder of His promise to wipe out Amalek. The commandment to remember Amalek in Deuteronomy is in fact the second time this tale is recounted. Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. How, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt. On the Sabbath before Purim - appropriately named Shabbat Zachor - the Torah reading includes the following verses: How else can we explain the continuity of the Jewish people through millennia of migration, persecution, destruction, and renewal? As Yerushalmi suggests, one might argue that the commandment to remember has been central to the survival of the Jews in dispersion over thousands of years. ![]() In his masterwork on the subject, “ Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory,” the historian Yosef Haim Yerushalmi notes that the Hebrew word for remember - zachor - is repeated nearly 200 times in the Hebrew Bible, with both Israel and God commanded to remember: to remember the Sabbath, to remember the covenant, to remember the exodus from Egypt. Judaism is a religion built on a foundation of memory. My Jewish Learning is a not-for-profit and relies on your help Donate
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