This Sunday, Jews will spend the day fasting to mark the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, the Ninth of Av.
On this day we remember the destruction of the two Temples, the first by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon in 586BC; the second by Titus in AD70. We also remember some of the other tragic events to have befallen our people through the ages.
In today’s fast-moving culture, we undervalue acts of remembering. Computer memories have grown, while ours have become foreshortened. Our children no longer memorise chunks of poetry. Their knowledge of history is often all too vague.
Our sense of space has expanded. Our sense of time has shrunk.
That cannot be right. One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the knowledge of where we have come from, the things for which we fought, and why.
That cannot be right. One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the knowledge of where we have come from, the things for which we fought, and why.
None of the things we value — freedom, human dignity, justice — were achieved without a struggle. None can be sustained without conscious vigilance. A society without memory is like a journey without a map. It’s all too easy to get lost.
I, for one, cherish the richness of knowing that my life is a chapter in a book begun by my ancestors long ago, to which I will add my contribution before handing it on to my children.
Life has meaning when it is part of a story, and the larger the story, the more our imaginative horizons grow. Besides, things remembered do not die. That’s as close as we get to immortality on earth.
