Torah
Deuteronomy 11:22
Sifrei Devarim 48:1
Deuteronomy 4:9
Sifrei Devarim 48:2
Lamentations 5:21
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TEXTing with Elana Stein Hain delves deeply into Jewish texts to guide and inspire us as we grapple with the concerns and meaning of this moment. Join Elana as she addresses the issues of our day through the lens of classical Jewish texts, in conversation with Hartman scholars Christine Hayes, Yonah Hain, and Leora Batnitzky.
TEXTing. Where ancient wisdom meets contemporary relevance.
Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Elana: Welcome to TEXTing, where we consider issues relevant to Jewish life through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain. We’re recording on June 10, 2024. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description.
A few weeks ago, we made a bar mitzvah for our older son. It was a profound experience full of love and meaning. At Shabbat lunch during the bar mitzvah, a friend of mine turned to me and said, can I make a suggestion? Why don’t you eat a food right now that you eat often and explicitly connect it with the memory of this moment and this weekend? That way, whenever you eat that food, you can remember back to this moment. His suggestion not only led me to take a bite of salad, but it also made me think about the importance of trying to remember that weekend and all that came with it. He was right in assuming that I wouldn’t want to lose those memories.
Now, whether his method is going to work or not remains to be seen because the memories are still pretty fresh, but there is a deep question here. What is it that we are afraid to forget? Sometimes it’s important moments in our lives that we feel the need to remember. Sometimes it’s people, especially people who may not be with us. And sometimes it’s forgetting beliefs or principles that we want as the bedrock of our lives. How do we make sure that we don’t forget? And can we actually make sure that we won’t forget?
Today, I want to learn a passage that relates to this issue. The Sifrei Devarim, chapter 48, sections one and two. And my chavruta for this is going to be one of my favorite philosophers, maybe my favorite philosopher Leora Batnitzky. Hi, Leora. Welcome.
Leora: Hi Elana, great to be here with you again.
Elana: How would you define forgetting and what makes it so scary to people?
Leora: So I think some of the examples that you just gave help us think about why forgetting is so scary. So to take it at an extreme, if we think about dementia, what is it that’s so terrifying about dementia, both for the person who has dementia and for that person’s loved ones? It’s really the loss of identity. And so forgetting means that we’re no longer ourselves.
But I think even more deeply, what no longer being ourselves means, means that we’re no longer connected to other people. And so I think that we really lose our connection. Not just to ourselves, but also our connection to others. And that’s, I think, what’s, at bottom, most scary about forgetting. And I think that also leads up to even forgetting sometimes even trivial things, because all the things we’re trying to remember are part of who we understand ourselves to be and the world, the ways in which we relate to the worlds in which we live.
Elana: Wow, you know, it’s interesting that identity and connectivity I think is really going to come through in the Sifrei. I think it’s the bedrock of this conversation. We’re working off of, in this text, we’re working off of a verse, a pasuk in Devarim, Deuteronomy chapter 11, verse 22. And it’s interesting, this verse actually follows what we know as the second paragraph of the Shema. And the second paragraph of the Shema famously starts with, “And if you heed,” but maybe also “hear,” my commandments. And this verse that comes at the end of that paragraph says, “If you keep my instruction, “Ki im shamor tishmirun et kol hamitzvah hazot.” And it even says it in double language, right? If you keep, keep. If you keep faithfully. And that is where the Sifrei takes its cue.
Why do we have something that says, some verses earlier, you know, about nine verses earlier, “V’hayah im shamoah tishme’u,” if you will really, it means listen, but it really means obey, right? But the auditory faculty, if you’re gonna listen and listen, listen faithfully, and then nine verses later, if you’re going to keep faithfully. And so the Sifrei starts like this: “Ki im shamoah hamitzvah hazot, if you faithfully will keep all of this instruction, lama ne’emar? Why is this said?” And the reason is because it’s already been stated nine verses earlier. “V’haya im shamoah tishme’u el mitzvotai.” If you will, we say it means obey, but literally hear my commandments that I am commanding you today, is the rest of the verse. So what might I have thought? Shomea ani, I might have thought that once a person hears words of Torah once, they can just rest on their laurels and they don’t have to repeat them.
Therefore nine verses later, the Torah says, no, no, no, you have to keep these faithfully. Now, again, keeping faithfully means obey, but they’re using it in the sense of safeguard. Maggid, this teaches, that just as a person has to safeguard a coin so that it doesn’t get lost, likewise, they have to safeguard their Torah study so that it doesn’t get lost. That’s how we open, hearing it once, not enough, safeguarding it the way that you would take care of your money, that’s what we need. What do you think?
Leora: So, I think, of course, implied in what you’re saying is the way in which shamor also does literally mean to guard. And so, guarding something suggests that there, something needs to be protected. And so, how is it then that we protect what we don’t want to lose?
Elana: Yeah, and it’s interesting, I think the use of money also takes something that feels abstract, like Torah learning makes it very concrete, and also compares it to something quite valuable, right? The next line of the Midrash is, “And likewise, there’s a verse in Proverbs 2:4, “Im tivashena bakesef,” if you seek it out, meaning wisdom, which the rabbis understand as Torah, if you seek it out like silver, just as silver is difficult to acquire, likewise, words of Torah are difficult to acquire, right?
So it’s not even, it’s not even just, we assume you have something and you don’t want to lose it. It sounds like even the manner of knowing whether something is stably with you takes work, right? My friend wanted me to eat mushrooms in order, like, salad, mushrooms, just in order to remember that moment because he said. You’re going to forget it. It sounds like in this Midrash, it’s a repetition, right? It’s like social media is all about that, right? The things that matter to people, they repeat and repeat and repeat so that you see them over and over and over again because the idea is that’s the way you acquire them.
But then the Midrash goes on. It says, okay, well, if they’re like kesef, if they’re like silver, well, silver is very durable. It’s a strong metal. So maybe ma kesef kasheh l’abdo, just like it’s actually hard to, I would say even it’s hard to destroy silver, right? Meaning it’s not just, it’s hard to lose, it’s hard to destroy. Of course, you could lose a silver coin. The point is, it’s a durable metal. So maybe kach divrei torah lakshmi l’adam, maybe likewise, your Torah learning. Once you’ve learned it, it’s hard to, you know, it doesn’t break easily.
Talmud lomar, therefore, we have another verse, right? And not surprisingly, this verse is from Job, where a lot of things break pretty easily, and the verse is, “Lo yaarchena zahav hazechuchit,” “Gold and fine glass cannot be compared to it.” Meaning, it’s hard to acquire them, like gold, but it’s very easy to break them, like glass.
Leora: Yeah, no, it’s, I think there’s so much to be said about first the analogy between silver and Torah, and then this movement to glass. I mean, about the analogy, one of the things that just occurred to me as you are reading this is that what Torah and silver or money have in common is that they actually used to live. Of course, Torah is an end in itself, but in a certain sense, Torah is also meant for life. And so too, money is meant to be used for other goods, so I think that’s interesting. But of course, I think the real thrust of it is how easy it is to forget or to lose Torah.
Elana: What I’m realizing is as you’re saying this, you started by saying that it’s scary to forget because we lose our identity and sometimes we lose our connections. I think you’re upping the ante a little bit. You actually can’t survive if you forget certain things.
Leora: That’s right.
Elana: And I think you can’t survive sometimes as individuals and sometimes as collectives you can’t survive, right. How often do we have this, you know, these statements within rabbinic literature where they forgot all of the laws of X and somebody came and was able to refresh them? Or following the destruction of the temple, we lost Y and they said anybody who remembers or has that, meaning there is something to the ability to continue. And one of the things that I’m seeing right now, in sort of the world that we’re living in, because things feel so changed, there are certain feelings or way of being that we, ways of being that we forget, right? Sort of just the basic, calm, boring, uninteresting world. I don’t remember it. I don’t remember it because I don’t remember it before October 7th. I also don’t remember it because of COVID, right? Meaning, there are certain things that we just forget. Our memory of those things has faded.
Leora: Absolutely. So what’s interesting is, right, we see the necessity of remembering, but what we also see is this emphasis on the fact that we are actually going to forget, that forgetting is also part of life. And that’s really interesting. Meaning, so the point isn’t to become the very best memorizer ever or, you know, to try and absolutely perfect our memory as the ultimate goal. It’s to know that we’re going to forget, but to know that we also have to remember.
And so I’ll just make maybe two very different points. And the first is about the role of forgetting in rabbinic literature. And I know both of us have read this great book by Mira Balberg, who teaches at University of California, San Diego. But she recently published a book called Forgetfulness and Fallibility in Late Ancient Rabbinic Culture. And I, there’s a lot of stuff in the book that people may be interested in, but I just want to kind of zero in on, on one point.
Elana: By the way, the title, the title is Fractured Tablets, which is
Leora: Oh, Fractured Tablets.
Elana: Which is so evocative because you’re telling us, no, no, no, the tablets are always going to get fractured. And biblically, fracturing of the tablets is a major trauma, right? And you’re about to normalize it.
Leora: That’s right. That’s right. Okay. Yes. I guess I gave the subtitle and not the title. Okay. Yeah. So, but basically her, her argument is that the rabbis are really kind of obsessed with forgetting and that they give all kinds of scenarios, some of them very strange for the kinds of things that people forget and what to do about them.
And she has many arguments that she draws from this, but it reminded me, it reminded me of an experience I had a couple of years ago with a student in one of my courses, and this was a Jewish student who was new to observance and the course was on religion and law. So we were talking about law, and he said to me after class one day, he said, you know, I have a question. What happens, if it’s Shabbat and I, you know, and I forget it’s Shabbat and I accidentally turn on the light.
And I was a little bit puzzled by the question because I was like, what do you mean what happens? But he helped me understand a very basic point, which Mira Balberg’s book also helps me understand, which is that the answer to it, and this is the answer that I told him. I said, nothing happens, but you get to try again next week.
Elana: It’s so interesting, because, by the way, if we lived in temple times, there would be something to do. He would have a particular sacrifice that he could give, which, by the way, might make him feel more resolved, right? But the point is, you’re saying, this is actually normalized, but the idea is not, okay, now you fall off the wagon. It’s, you forget we actually have to force ourself, to the degree that we can, to remember. Or to try again.
And I think that’s an interesting, to me that’s a very interesting question right now with Jewish collective memory. Because I think Jewish collective memory is so affected by when you live, right? And the question of can you get people to remember things, not just that they didn’t live through, it’s can you get people to remember things that don’t feel similar to what they’ve lived through?
And I think that’s really, really, I think that’s really, really hard. It’s a big conversation about young American Jews and their relationship to Jewish collective memory. It’s, by the way, a big conversation about Israelis after October 7th, who suddenly say, oh, I connect much more to the memories of my grandparents in Europe than I had or thought that I should. Right? So even reconnecting to something is it is an interesting concept here, but it’s fragile. And you’re saying, yeah, okay, so collect another coin next week, but you have to work at it.
Leora: That’s right. Exactly. And this is where repetition comes in. There’s, Shabbat’s going to come again. Everything is repeated in Judaism, certainly liturgically, and to some, I think to a large extent, halakhically, so the forgetting and the repeating are part and parcel of what it means to live a Jewish life. But I think that we come upon an interesting distinction between recollection and repetition. And so maybe I’ll just say something about that quickly.
This reminded me of Søren Kierkegaard, who’s a 19th century Danish philosopher. If anyone listening has heard of him, it’s probably because of his very famous book, published in 1843, called Fear and Trembling, which is about Genesis 22, the Akedah. I’ll put that to the side.
In 1843, Kierkegaard also published another book called Repetition. And he makes this interesting distinction between recollection and repetition, where basically recollection is about the past, whereas, repetition is about the future. Because simply put, you have to move forward. You have to do something again. It’s that again that makes it about the future. So what’s, what’s interesting, in the context of Kierkegaard’s argument is What he’s suggesting is that not just that recollections about the past, but recollections also about the individual. It’s about sort of turning the past into an aesthetic object. It’s kind of like nostalgia. So recollection is very important, but it can become nostalgic.
Elana: Meaning, I just, I think about the first time I, I don’t know, came into my new home, right? But you’re saying that doesn’t, that’s very much about the past. It’s about remembering something that was, but that’s not committing me to anything.
Leora: That’s right. And as opposed to repetition, is about the future, but it’s also precisely about commitment, as you just said. And so the example he actually used, he being Kierkegaard, is the example of a young man in love who, he loves this woman, but he also wants to break off his engagement, which actually parallels Kierkegaard’s own life, but that’s another story.
And part of what’s going on there is that he has an idealized conception of his beloved. She’s not a real person to him. It’s a way in which she is in a way lives in his mind as a recollection as opposed to repetition. And I think this part’s very interesting is he links that to marriage. Marriage is repetition because it is commitment. It’s not just about the past and a vow that we’ve made in the past. It’s not just about the present. It’s also about the future. It’s about committing and recommitting again and again.
Elana: It sounds like when you’re in the nostalgia phase or the recollection phase, you kind of flatten that which you’re remembering, whereas when you’re in the repetition phase, you actually have to engage with it in a more real way. I presume that when you engage with it, one day it feels one way, one day it feels another way, which is part of maybe what makes it so hard. Sometimes it would actually be easier to just let it alone, right? Like it would just, it would simplify things. You would be, you know, I, I understand the zechuchit. I understand the glass metaphor.
Meaning it’s, you’re rebuilding, I mean, obviously, you don’t want it to feel that way, right? You want it to feel exciting and fresh and, you know, not just, oh, I’m just working and I’m just building, you know?
But actually, it reminds me of two different sayings within Jewish thought, one which is biblical and the other which is rabbinic. The biblical saying is from the book of Lamentations, Eicha, which chapter 5, verse 21, it’s, you know, God return us to you and we’ll return. But here are the words at the end, chadesh amenu k’kedem, renew our days like the ancient times, which to me sounds like a nostalgia recollection of the ancient times were good. Right? We kind of flattened the negativity that might have been around those. The ancient times were good. We want to return to those ancient times.
And then I think on the other hand, and I might be getting the paraphrase wrong, but the rabbinic understanding of where the Bible says everything that I, you know, you should recall everything that I’ve taught you this day is, b’chol yom vayom yihyu b’einecha kichadashim. That every day Torah should be new and feel new to you. In order for that to happen, that has to, that’s actually, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of work. And I would say if you’re in the, I understand if you’re in an abundance mindset of like, yeah, let’s do this. We can do this. That’s one thing.
But if you’re in a situation where you’re feeling the fear of forgetting and what happens if you forget, it’s actually the motivation is very, it’s a little scary, the motivation.
Leora: Absolutely. I mean, I think we do have to remember, we do have to recall, but we can’t let memory be a substitute for living in the present and looking towards the future. And I’m saying that in a way that makes it sound easy, but that’s what’s really hard.
Just one more point about the difference, I think, between recollection and repetition, is that repetition, I think, in a way, almost by a definition, has to involve other people, because we’re in the world and doing things, recollection is in our minds. It’s not, it’s not actually something happening outside of our minds. And so that’s also, so I’d say in a way, recollection has a static nature. And repetition has a dynamic nature and it’s interesting in relationship to your mushroom salad, because I think
Elana: No one’s ever said that sentence to me before.
Leora: Yes, well, this was a new experience for you, the mushroom salad, is that, you know, the point, the point is that it is recollection but it’s also repetition because the premise of your friend’s comment is that you’re going to eat the salad again.
Elana: Yes. Yeah. I’m gonna, I’m gonna purposely trigger it. Again and again.
Leora: That’s right.
Elana: Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point. Well, let’s move to the next part of the Midrash, because the next part of the Midrash I think ups the ante very much, going back to your point about identity, connection, even survival.
The next part of the Midrash takes a verse in Devarim chapter 4, right, we’re in Devarim no matter what, but it takes a verse back from chapter 4, pasuk nine, verse nine, which also has this lishmor, this sense of guarding, and it goes like this, but it’s very clearly about remembering, forgetting, because the verse goes as follows, rak ki shomer lecha, be careful, right, guard yourself, u’shemor nafshecha me’od, and guard yourself excessively, pen tishkach et hadevraim asher rahu einecha, lest you forget that which you saw with your own eyes, ufen yasuru melvavcha kol yimei chayekha, and lest they leave your heart, but really in the ancient world that means mind, right? Let’s say, leave your mind all the days of your life. V’hodatan levanecha b’levnei vanecha, what you need to be doing is you need to be passing them down to the next generation.
So this verse is explicitly about the fear of forgetting, right? It’s not, you know, obey this law and we’re turning obedience into safeguard. It’s safeguard this knowledge, this experience, this feeling, this awareness, because you’ve got to pass this on to someone. It’s not just about you. You have to pass it on to someone. That’s another piece of this puzzle. And so the Sifrei says, Rabbi Yishmael says, quoting this verse, be very careful, guard yourself excessively.
Here’s the metaphor or the analogy. The analogy is to a human monarch who hunted and trapped a bird and gave the bird to their servant and said, be careful with this bird. It’s for my kid. It’s for my child. And if you lose it, don’t think you’ve lost a bird that’s just worth some amount of money. You should think of it as though you’ve lost your own nefesh, you’ve lost your own soul, which of course is a play on the verse that said, shemor nafshecha me’od, you should guard your soul, really just yourself, excessively.
And likewise, it then quotes a verse from the end of Devarim, right? The end of Deuteronomy. And by the way, you get this sense that what the rabbis are doing is they’re encompassing the whole book of Devarim, the whole book of Deuteronomy, Moses’ speech to the people as a book that’s telling you, please don’t forget all the stuff that I’ve taught you. Please don’t forget. I’m not going to be here to repeat it to you. Please, please, please don’t forget.
And of course, the book of Devarim itself, the book of Deuteronomy itself is a repetition, has a repetition of many, many commandments in the Torah that show up earlier. So it’s kind of a picture within a picture, but they quote a verse later that says in, in chapter 32, that you should know, ki lo davar reik hu mikem, this is not something empty, ki hu chayechem, this is your life. And the end of the verse, which is not quoted here, but the end of the verse is exactly to your point about survival. Which is, and it’s in this thing, through this thing that you are going to endure a long life on the land that you are going over the Jordan to inherit.
Meaning, it’s so clear, first of all, the knowledge that whatever this is that we want you to remember is something you’re supposed to pass on to somebody else. Second, the idea that this is your life. You hold your life in your hands. This is not a petty issue or a small issue. And third, you hold your life in your hands. But this thing that you’re supposed to keep is like a bird. What is less containable than a bird? How are you supposed to hold on to it?
Leora: Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think this is very powerful. And I think it really does go back to the relational issue that identity isn’t just about ourselves. It’s not static both temporarily and also in a kind of material way, but it’s always relational. And so, of course, the only way to remember anything, really, is to keep it alive. And the only way to keep something alive is to repeat it. But of course, every repetition, as you said before, is something new. Because time marches on and things are different.
And I think that’s maybe in a way kind of what the bird’s about. The bird is not some kind of static object. It’s not like, you know, keep this beautiful silver coin for my son. It’s actually dynamic. Just like children are dynamic, just like other people are dynamic and so what we have to do in order to genuinely remember it is to repeat and
Elana: It’s living, it’s living. Meaning it’s your life because it’s living. But then you also, then you’re also saying that the only way to keep it alive is actually to recognize that it’s dynamic.
Leora: Yes, I think that’s right.
Elana: Meaning otherwise, you’re, it’s just not going to work, right? It’s just not going to work. And it’s interesting, you know, if we go back to the examples from the beginning, you know, some of the examples, whether it’s remembering a moment that you experienced, remembering someone you’ve lost, remembering to act on behalf of people who need you, remembering certain principles, you can see how both the way that you remember them and even the content of the memory that is important may change over time. Right?
Like what aspects do you need to be focused on right now? How do those memories actually get applied? How do you talk about them? How do you interpret them in this moment? That you could see as being something that’s dynamic, but it sounds like what we don’t want to do is let the bird fly away
Leora: That’s right.
Elana: Or let the glass break.
Leora: That’s right. We don’t want the bird to fly away and we also don’t want the bird to die in our hands because we’re not giving the bird any oxygen to breathe. Um, we, we really want the bird to live with us.
Elana: Easier said than done.
Leora: Yeah, all these things are easier said than done, for
Elana: Yeah. Thanks. Okay. Fine. You are my favorite philosopher. You tell it like it is. You tell it like it
Leora: Well, no, I get to say the easy part. I do the easy part. I say it. I don’t do it.
Elana: Do as I say, not as I do. Well, thank you so much, Leora, for this wide-ranging conversation. I hope that it’s meaningful to our listeners who I’m sure are thinking about lots of things that they want to remember during this difficult time.
Leora: Thank you, Elana.
Elana: Thanks, everyone, for listening to our show. And special thanks to my chavruta this week, Leora Batnitzky.
TEXTing is produced by Tessa Zitter with production assistance from Sarina Shohet. Our senior producer is M Louis Gordon and our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode was mixed by Ben Azavedo at Bear Cave Audio with music provided by Luke Allen.
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