Thread by @rabbisacks

Here is a thread from my Covenant & Conversation essay on #KiTavo called "A Nation of Storytellers". You can read it at bit.ly/2mhK7K2, listen to it at bit.ly/2lWOXfO, or download the accompanying Family Edition at bit.ly/2kIfJbC. #ShabbatShalom

#Jews were the first people to find #God in history. They were the first to think in historical terms – of time as an arena of change as opposed to cyclical time in which the seasons rotate, people are born and die, but nothing really changes.

#Jews were the first people to write #history. Yet biblical #Hebrew has no word that means “history” (the closest equivalent is divrei hayamim, “chronicles”). Instead it uses the root zachor, meaning “memory.”

There is a fundamental difference between #history and #memory. History is “his story," an account of events that happened sometime else to someone else. Memory is “my story.” It is the past internalised and made part of my identity.

Throughout #Devarim, Moses warns the people – no less than fourteen times – not to forget. If they forget the past they will lose their identity and sense of direction and disaster will follow.

Moreover, not only are the people commanded to remember, they are also commanded to hand that memory onto their children.

This entire phenomenon represents a remarkable cluster of ideas: about identity as a matter of collective memory; about the ritual retelling of the nation’s story; above all about the fact that every one of us is a guardian of that story and memory.

It is not the leader alone, or only some elite, who are trained to recall the past, but every one of us. This too is an aspect of the devolution and democratisation of leadership that we find throughout #Judaism as a way of #life.

The great leaders tell the story of the group, but the greatest of leaders, Moses, taught the group to become a nation of storytellers.