Remember not to forget….
This is the Shabbat we are told to remember not to forget Amalek. We read this just before Purim because we are also told that Haman is a descendent of Amalek. Let’s read it together.

Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt. How, undeterred by fear of G-d, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the Lord your G-d grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your G-d is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget! (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)

And yet, since we just celebrated Saint Patrick’s Day I found this on my Facebook feed posted by a congregant. Old Irish words of wisdom:

Always remember to forget
The things that made you sad.
But never forget to remember
The things that made you glad

Always remember to forget the friends that proved untrue.
But never forget to remember those that have stuck by you.
Always remember to forget the troubles that passed away.
But never forget to remember the blessing that come each day.

It would seem to be the exact opposite. We Jews spend a lot of time talking about memory. Zachor. Remember. Yizkor, the Service of Remembrance. Remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt. Remember, as this week’s portion tells us, never to forget.

What then is the role of memory? I think it has to be to remember the bad and the good. It keeps us grounded. It keeps us connected to the generations that came before. It brings us comfort.

But what is the difference between memory and nostalgia. I think sometimes people want to return to that day when they walked to school in the snow storm, up that giant hill. And then walked home in the snow storm—up that same giant hill. Or those who want to return to the shtel. That is somehow glamorized by Fiddler on the Roof. But make no mistake it was no picnic. Or that commercial on now for Direct TV with the settlers. Little House on the Prairie was no picnic either. And how many of you long for a time here where all 216 seats were full? Perhaps Elgin in the 1950s. The world might have seemed simpler then, but was it really better?

Sometimes, what is too painful to remember we choose to forget. I stole that line from
Barbra Streisand, The Way We Were. Remember the whole song?
Mem’ries,
Light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? Could we?
Mem’ries, may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it’s the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember…
The way we were…
The way we were..

The way we were. How were we? What if our memory starts to fade? Or blur. Or is too painful to remember.

Shortly after my mother died I returned to Grand Rapids, to moderate a book discussion on the last book she had chosen for her book group. The Madonnas of Lennigrad is a haunting book that moves between war torn, besieged St. Petersburg and her present day Alzheimers. She had kept herself vibrant by remembering her docent speech at the Hermitage. Now she was struggling to remember who she was today. I was struck by the discussion. How did we know that the siege of Lennigrad was as bad as it was portrayed. Others present answered that one. It was worse. Why wouldn’t she have told her children about how bad it was? I tried to explain that many people who undergo that kind of stress do not tell their children of the horrors—Vietnam vets, from who we first learned about PTSD, rape victims, Holocaust survivors. They don’t want to relive those painful memories or burden their children with them. Then a person asked how did we know that the Holocaust happened.

Because Hitler documented everything, I wanted to scream. Because we are taught to remember. To never forget. To keep telling the stories. To interview the survivors. To keep that memory alive. Just like today’s portion commands. Remember to never forget.

But it is not enough to remember. And here is where the Irish blessing comes back in. Because in order to survive. In order to thrive, we need to forget the little things We need to in the words of this blessing,

Always remember to forget
The things that made you sad.
But never forget to remember
The things that made you glad.

That is what Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson said recently, “Holy Forgetting: the ability to let go of the trivial, the toxic, and the entrapping. Cultivate the capacity to selectively forget in order to truly inhabit the present….It is good sense to overlook an offense.” Proverbs 19:11.

Yet it seems there is a difference between a garden variety offense and the sin of Amalek, attacking the hungry, weary rear, or Haman or Hitler.

Perhaps there is one more song. Peter Yarrow wrote Light One Candle. In fact, as Simon and I pause to celebrate our anniversary, we remember that we sang this as part of Havdalah at the rehearsal dinner. We remember, with nostalgia the daisy petals from heaven that fell that morning. But these words tell us what we must do.

What is the memory that’s valued so highly
That we keep it alive in that flame?
What’s the commitment to those who died
That we cry out they’ve not died in vain?
We have come this far always believing
That justice would somehow prevail
This is the burden, this is the promise
T
his is why we will not fail.
Keeping that memory alive only works for me if we work for a time when the rear guard is not attacked, where an evil despot does not try to wipe out an entire people, where no longer will there be a genocide, any time, any place, against any people. This is why we must remember to never forget Amalek. To spur us to memory and action.