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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.

Remembering and Forgetting Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Tessa: Welcome to TEXTing, where we consider issues relevant to Jewish life through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can follow the link to the source sheet in the episode’s description. Today we’re bringing you a special episode from our day of learning for our hostages that took place on September 30th. Elana opened the day of 15 hours of learning to mark the shloshim of the six hostages murdered last month. Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Alex Lobanov, and Carmel Gat, Yehi Zichron Baruch, may their memories be a blessing.

Our gathering showed solidarity with the 101 hostages still in captivity and called on the Israeli government and the international community to prioritize their return. This program was a unique collaboration among a wide array of educational institutions from across the Jewish world. We hope sharing this opening session brings comfort to all those grieving right now, helps us think critically about the challenges before us, and inspires us all to create a revolution for good.

Elana: Thank you to everyone who made today possible. I’m Elana Stein Hain, and I’m sitting here in Jerusalem, and I have to say it is really a privilege to be here in Jerusalem, to be able to give this talk and to be able to be with you, even as I’m with my Israeli colleagues, in person.

So the question of why we choose to learn Torah together for a moment like this, you know, it’s obvious that we need to be together. And doing something together is important. But I think there’s more to it than that, than just being together. And one thing I want to say is that Torah is our legacy. It is what’s been with us for the many millennia that we have been around, and it is what will be with us for the many millennia into the future. And the idea that there is some way to continue to hold on to something during this very unstable moment is really significant.

And the second thing I want to say about why we would learn and study in this moment is because bad ideas lead to bad actions, and good ideas lead to good actions. And we at the Hartman Institute, we want to fill the world with what we deem good ideas. So we hope you’ll join us on that journey today.

So my topic today is solidarity. And the reason why I’m choosing the topic of solidarity is because I think that we, whoever your “we” is, need each other now more than ever. I think a lot of Jews across the world have attempted to stay in solidarity with Israel throughout the year. I think sometimes we feel that social solidarity is falling apart as a concept. And I think the Yamim Noraim, the high holiday season, is actually all about solidarity, whether solidarity among people or solidarity between God and people.

And to be honest, I wouldn’t have necessarily come to this just for those reasons, if not for the fact that the Goldberg-Polins, the way that they led the campaign to free their son was to create a worldwide solidarity movement around the hope and the prayer to bring him back. And I want to keep that solidarity going that they gave us as a gift.

But the way I want to get to social solidarity is through memory. I walk around Jerusalem and I see pictures of Hersh everywhere. I see hostage posters everywhere. There is no sense that we are going to forget about it. And in fact, we have this day of learning because we refuse to forget those who are gone and we refuse to forget those who still need our help. And so what came into my mind when I thought about what to discuss today was the term from our liturgy on Rosh Hashanah, describing God as Zocher Kol Hanishkachot, who remembers all that are forgotten. And we here today are saying, we remember those who could be easily forgotten.

Rosh Hashanah itself is known as Yom Hazikaron, a day of memory. It is a time where God remembers, but so do we. And so I’d like today to offer three paradigms of how memory and solidarity are intertwined. But before I do that, I’d like to offer a few thoughts on memory itself. And there are some sources, I think, floating around. I hope that you have access to them. But I’m also going to ask my colleague to put them up on the screen so that I can share them with you.

The first point about memory that I’d like to make is related to the high holiday season. And it is, thanks to some colleagues here who specialize in Chassidut, in Chassidic thought, it is actually that memory is one of the ways that Chassidic masters talk about what we are doing on the High Holidays.

I’ll give you just one example in number one from someone, a Chassidic Rebbe from 18th century Ukraine, who describes his prayer to God for what he wants to do on the High Holidays, is: Ribono shel olam, sovereign of the universe, ani tzarich kol yimei chayai, all of my life I need to, lechapeis u’levakesh b’chol kochi, to search and to look for with all my strength, achar avi dati, after what I have lost, she’ibadati, that I’ve lost, ve’sheshachachti, and that I’ve forgotten, ve’nishkach ve’ne’evad mimeni kol tov nishmati, I have forgotten, it has been forgotten from me and lost from me, so much good of my soul, kol tov ha nitzchi, all the good that is eternal, kol tov ha amiti, all the good that is real, ve’eni yodea, and I don’t know shum derech, I don’t know any way, eich levakeshu lechapes achar avedati, avedotai harabot me’od, me’od, me’od. Says, I don’t know how to find what I’ve lost and what I’ve forgotten.

And I feel like in this moment, that is where we are as a people. There have been so many things, over the course of this year that we have forgotten. We have forgotten the simplicity of not worrying about antisemitism. We have forgotten the ability to take for granted the existence of Israel and its thriving. We have forgotten the simple joy of not being afraid to look at the news when it comes to Israel. There is so much beyond the concrete losses that emotionally we have lost. And this is an opportunity to ask ourselves, what have we lost and what are we able to remember?

And that brings me to the second point about memory before I move to my big paradigms of the relationship between memory and solidarity. And that is a point that Dr. Mira Balberg makes in a magnificent book called Fractured Tablets. The opening of the book, she starts by saying that when you look in the Bible, the Bible’s understanding of forgetting is, forgetting is a cataclysmic event. If you forget, you will never remember. You are lost forever. Forgetting your God, forgetting the commandments, forgetting that God took you out of Egypt, it is something that is almost a point of no return.

But, she says, in the rabbinic lexicon, forgetting is just part of life. You may forget whether you did something or didn’t do something. You may forget if you said something right or didn’t say something right. And the acceptance of the ability for people to forget means that there is yet a possibility to remember. And one of the things I’d like to put out there for us today is the High Holidays are all about possibility. Things that we have forgotten, that we desperately want to remember, we can remember them if we work hard enough.

And the third point that I’d like to make is that memory is a collective endeavor on the high holidays. When we talk about asking God to remember us, it is not asking God to remember me. It is asking God to remember us. When we look around at each other, it is not only about what I need, but it is also about what you need.

There is a collectivism to this memory, so I wanna keep those in mind. I want to keep the sense that memory is collective in this moment. I want to keep the sense that even though there are things that we’ve lost and we cannot easily regain, we can work hard and hopefully be able to regain those things. And I want to admit that there is a lot, given the posture that we have had to take as a Jewish people this year, that has left us forgetting some of the things that actually we need in order to live normal lives, in order to cultivate resilience. And so with that, I bring us to memory and solidarity.

My three paradigms of memory and solidarity are actually coming from im matati odei, I would say. The way we talk about God in our liturgy and in other literature, remembering the Jewish people. That is a request for solidarity, divine solidarity. And I think we can learn a lot from the ways we ask God to remember us about how we can remember each other to be in solidarity. And so I have three paradigms for you. And in my general form, I’m going to tell you what they are before we actually go through and expound upon each of them.

The first model for the way that memory is related to solidarity, being together, staying loyal, being in union, being in fellowship, is what I would call a covenantal commitment. There are times when life is very, very difficult. Relationships and being in relationship, being part of a collective can be very, very difficult. And at those moments, what allows us to remain in relationship. The first model is to remember a commitment that we made to be in this relationship. A foundational commitment, a covenantal commitment, if you would.

The second model is what I call interdependent memory, which is the way that we engage our solidarity, the way that we can stay in relationship, is if you remember what you did wrong to me. And once you do that, I’m willing to let you, give you a pass. That’s the second model. Much more interdependent.

The third model is a model that’s essentially based on shaping memory. We might go through something together. And our relationship will come out one way if I focus on one aspect of what we went through. Our relationship will come out a different way if I focus on a different aspect of what we went through. In other words, there are ways to shape memories that we’ve had together that will weaken our solidarity, and there are ways that will strengthen our solidarity.

Now I want to look into each one of these models, and not in a pie in the sky kind of way. I know that we have real moral disagreements with each other. I know that people have crossed rubicons this year where it feels like it’s a point of no return. But I also know that if we can’t figure out at least some places to have solidarity, where there is disagreement, we are in deep trouble.

And so I want to start with the Covenantal Model. I come to the Covenantal Model, and we’re looking at number four on the source sheet, I come to the Covenantal Model from the section in the Musaf prayer on Rosh Hashanah. The section called Zichronot, Remembrances. It is such an interesting prayer. It starts by saying, and you can see it in the second line in the Hebrew, ki ein shichecha lifnei chisei kevodecha. God, you don’t forget anything. You remember everything.

And the last line of this paragraph, maybe my colleague can point with the pointer to it to make it a little easier, ki zecher kol ha’ma’asim lefanecha ba, ve’ata doresh maaseh chulam. Because the memory of everything that everyone has ever done comes before you, and you demand justice for it. In other words, we open this remembrance with, well, God, you don’t forget, right? Have you ever been in a fight with someone and you say, oh, that person never forgets. They’ll never forget that this happened, right?

This is essentially suggesting that our opening is, well, we’re in trouble because God remembers everything that we’ve done wrong. But the way that this section ends, first it goes on to say, but that’s not all you remember, God. You also remember your commitment to save. And it gives the example of Noah. You also remember earlier, better times. And it harkens back, if you go down a little bit on the sheet, it harkens back to God and the Jewish people in the wilderness, although, I think if we put a sort of a fine magnifying glass on that, that’s not so positive either.

But the way that it ends is it ends critically with, top of page four, a request that God remember something very specific. I’m going to go to the English now, sometimes English, sometimes Hebrew. Our God and God of our ancestors, remember us favorably before you and be mindful of us for deliverance and compassion from the eternal high heavens. But here’s where the rubber meets the road: Remember on our behalf, Lord, our God, the covenant, the kindness, the oath, which you swore to our father Abraham on Mount Moriah, meaning the reason why you should let us through this is because you have a basic foundational commitment to us. Not because we’re good, not because we’re repenting, but because you have a foundational commitment to us.

And in fact, just as this part of the prayer opened with, there is no forgetfulness before your heavenly throne. This prayer ends with, for the one who remembers all forgotten things from eternity are you, and there is no forgetfulness before the throne of your glory. And it ends with, Blessed are you, Lord, who remembers the covenant.

Now, I look at this and I don’t only see theology. What I see here is a model of, sometimes there are people and collectives with whom you are in relationship, you cannot fundamentally change them. You will not fundamentally change them. And yet you remain in relationship. There is some underlying commitment, a covenantal, foundational commitment, that you wish to honor nonetheless. Don’t forget that either. While I’m watching all the things I disagree with, let me go back to remembering what’s easily forgotten, which is my foundational, covenantal commitment.

To me, this is Jewish peoplehood. There are plenty of Jews who do things I disagree with, I don’t like, I even hate. And sometimes I have to remember that my covenantal commitment is as important as those disagreements. Now, we’re not going to be pie in the sky about this. Are there situations where someone might go so far over the line? That I might say, sorry, the covenant is broken. Sure, discussion for another time.

But at the very least, it provides us with a model that I would say is so dissatisfying because it requires so much of us. I have to be able to disagree with you and still have solidarity. I remember all the bad things, but I crucially remember my commitment to you and to being in a collective with you. That’s my first model, with all its positives. And all its negatives.

Second model. I want to move on our sheet to number five. The second model I call the interdependent model. It is very different from the first model. It does not require that I simply leave our disagreements alone. It actually is based on how much we need each other. It takes two to tango. The ability to have solidarity is not dependent on my unilateral decision to honor my commitment. Our solidarity is dependent on you understanding that we both belong here. And the most magnificent explanation I saw of the term from that prayer that we were just reading, the term zocher kol hanishkahot, that God remembers all that is forgotten.

Take a look at number five. Rabbi Eliyahu Ki Tov, interestingly enough, his original name, he was born in Eastern Europe, was Makotovsky. I think he did a very nice job with the Makatovsky to Ki Tov. And he has a book called Sefer HaToda’ah, which literally is translated as Book of Awareness, the Book of Awareness, written in the mid 20th century. Really it’s sort of the book of our heritage. It tells you things about the Jewish holidays. He wants people to be able to have a Jewish consciousness and have an understanding. His parsing of zocher et kol hanishkahot, that remembering all that it’s forgotten, I think is brilliant and very touching. Important for us to think about.

He says the following. Midatot shel hakadosh baruch hu, God’s character, is she’et hanishkachot la’adam hu zocher. That which human beings forget, that’s what God remembers. Aval hanizkarot la’adam eno zocher. But that which people remember, God does not.

What do we mean by this? Keitzad? How so? Harei she’avar adam averah ve’shochecha. Let’s say a person commits a transgression and forgets about it. Puts it out of their mind. They don’t think it matters. Ve’lo shav aleha betshuvah. And decides not to repent over it. If that’s the case, that a person decides, I did wrong, but I’m just going to forget about it, and I’m not actually going to repent over it, in such a case, HaKadosh Baruch Hu zochra, that’s when God remembers it, u’mevi et ha’adam b’din alehah. And brings human beings to justice over it. If you’re not going to remember it, I’m going to remember it.

The second case, avar aveira v’zochra tamid. If a person committed a transgression and always has a top of mind, kemo she’amar David, as King David said about his sin with Batsheva, v’chatati negdi tamid, my sin is in front of me all the time. That’s when HaKadosh Baruch Hu eina zuchra. That’s when God doesn’t remember it. Because it is not among the things that is forgotten.

I think this is a magnificent approach. The approach is essentially, what does relationship, what does solidarity have to do with memory? Well, quite frankly, if you decide, to forget how you hurt me or how you did wrong and you don’t allow that to be something that is front and center, well then I’m going to put it front and center. That’s not an act of divisiveness, that’s an act of asking you to join me in understanding what you’ve done to me.

And vice versa, if I am seeing that you remember what you did to me. You apologize. I’m not just talking about interpersonally with two people. I’m talking about collectives. I’m talking about groups. I’m talking about leaders. You remember what you did and you have it before yourself and you have a sense of regret as to what you did. Then I am going to be willing to let it go.

But Ki Tov continues. He has a flip side of this coin. The flip side of this coin is when you do good, hurray. This is the top of page five, harei she’asah adam mitzvah, if a person performed a mitzvah, a commandment, a good deed, v’zochra tamid, and always remembers it, umitgaeh bah, and is arrogant about it, look what I did for you, eino zochra, God decides I’m not going to remember it. Sha’arei sonei Hashem kol gvah lev, God hates all arrogance.

On the other hand, asa mitzvah u’shekhacha? If somebody did a mitzvah and forgot about it, meaning no big deal, of course I helped. Of course I did. Of course I came. That’s okay. It’s not a big deal. Right? Like we say in Spanish, de nada. It’s nothing. V’harehu be’inav ki’ilu lo’asa klum, and it is in that person’s eyes as though they didn’t do anything, ha’kadosh baruch hu zochra tamid, God always remembers it, ve’tomna etzlo, and literally holds it close, u’meshalem le’oseh ki’gmulo hatov, and gives a reward for it.

To me, this is an incredible model for solidarity. Solidarity does not always mean forgetting the wrongs that were done. Solidarity means that people have to be willing to admit the wrongs that they’ve done, and those who were wronged need to be able to admit, okay, I hear you, and we’re going to be able to move on. Solidarity means that when we do for each other, we don’t say, hey, look at me. Look at what I’ve done here. It’s really incredible what I’ve done for you. But actually, we essentially say, well, of course I did this. This is my basic responsibility.

I like both models of solidarity so far. But let’s think a little bit about what each gives and what each takes, or what each has to help us, and what each has as something to think about as a challenge.

So our first model of solidarity of, just remember your underlying commitments. What’s good about it is that it admits that you can’t always change people. Israel’s never going to be America. America’s never going to be Israel. Israeli Jewry is never going to be American Jewry, and American Jewry are never going to look like Israeli Jewry. There are important reasons for that. It’s actually a condition of our existence based on where we are. But to be able to accept each other anyway is actually something that’s incredibly deep and incredibly difficult.

You might add in an American context, if I may, Republicans and Democrats, People actually have their commitments. Keep those commitments! But what is the basic foundational solidarity that people have promised to each other? Now, the disadvantages are so clear. So clear. What do you mean I can’t change you? Maybe if I can threaten to cut you off, that’ll work and that’ll change you. By the way, no it won’t.

A second, are you telling me to give up my commitments? Are you telling me to give up what matters to me? And a third, are there people who get hurt in the process of, here we are figuring out our solidarity, and in the meantime, someone else is suffering. Because we don’t level critiques at each other or push each other enough. So let’s see it with real eyes.

This second model of, you have to actually be willing to talk about the issues. You have to be willing to admit wrong. And you have to be willing not to hold wrong over people’s heads. You have to see basic responsibility rather than arrogance. and self righteousness. Much easier said than done. Much easier said than done.

The positives in this is that people don’t have to just shut their mouths and just walk around saying, well, this is my commitment, I’m never going to change you. The positive of this is that there’s some sense of justice. There’s some sense of real appreciation of who the other is and how you’ve harmed them, and how you’ve hurt them. The positive is that we don’t force solidarity at the expense of people’s dignity and real world consequences that they live with.

But here’s the negative. What if it doesn’t happen? What if it’s not going to happen? What if we get stuck in a loop of I’m not coming to you to say I’m sorry, and you’re not coming to me to say I’m sorry. What if we get stuck in that sense of, well, if you’re not going to take the first step, then neither am I.

Better yet, what if people don’t actually validate each other for the step that they’ve taken? I tried. We tried. And yet, there’s no recognition of it. You don’t want to be arrogant, you just want somebody to notice what you did and appreciate what you did, instead of looking down on you, someone to actually remember what it is that you did. It’s not so easy. I want to look at a third model. The third model I call shaping our memory. Now one way to think about this, shaping our memory, is to think about this as almost having a selective memory.

Now, one thing you may be thinking to yourselves is, okay, so on a theological plane, this works because God can remember the covenant and kind of let us off the hook because that’s human beings, that’s humanity, that’s the human condition, but we can’t do that. Well, perhaps it’s our responsibility to strive to do that.

You might say the model of expressing remorse and being able to talk things through. Eh, it’s not going to happen. Everything’s ruled by power politics. I guess my question would be, are there places where we have to strive to do it? I’m not saying that these are the only building blocks for solidarity, but they have to be in there somewhere. The polarization can’t just go away ad nauseam, to the very end. Our sense of trying to clone ourselves can’t just go ad nauseam to the very end.

Here’s our third model. For our third model, we have a very touching verse in Isaiah 49:15. Actually the verse before, because there’s always more to the story, the verse before. Isaiah has the following words, Vatomer Tzion, Zion said, Azavani Hashem, God has left me, Ve’Hashem Shechechani, and God has forgotten me. That’s essentially the charge that is leveled at God. And this is the response offered in the book of Isaiah.

Hatishkach isha Uua? Can a woman forget her nursing child? Meirachem ben bitna? Can she forget to have compassion on the child of her womb? Gam eileh tishkachna, even if those people would forget, meaning even if mothers could forget their children, va’anochi lo eshkachech, I will not forget you.

Now this verse is, first of all, it’s beautiful. It’s touching. But it also is ripe for rabbinic interpretation. It has three times in it the verb l’shkoach, to forget. And so what the rabbis do with this is rather remarkable. They are not willing to allow this to simply be a situation of, I’ll remember you, and it’s that simple. Because after all, the rabbis are living in a time where, what do you mean? We no longer have a temple. We no longer have a sense that that covenant that we said God should remember is so clear and present. So I’m not sure that this verse stands just on its face.

And so look at what the Babylonian Talmud does with it in Tractate Brachot, page 32b. And this is really a call to shape our memory. It goes like this: Hatishkach isha ula? Can a woman forget her nursing child? Amar ha kadosh barachu, God said, Klum eshkach olot elim u’fitrei rechamim shehi kravt lefanai ba midbar? God says in a play on words with the word ula, which means her nursing child, can I forget the olot, the full burnt offerings that you gave me in the wilderness? Amra lefanav, so she being the people of Israel, Knesset Israel, says before God, Ribono shel olam, sovereign of the universe, ho’il ve’en shechecha lifnei kisei chvodecha, since there is no forgetfulness before your throne of glory, then maybe just like you’re not going to forget the sacrifices I gave to you, maybe you’re also not going to forget the sin that I committed at the golden calf.

Amar lah, God said to her, meaning, the Jewish people, gam eileh tishkachna, I will forget these. Changes the meaning of the verse, right? The verse says, would a nursing woman forget her child? Even if nursing women would, I will not forget you. The Talmud turns this into, there are things that I will remember and there are things that I will actively forget. I will remember what you gave me as offerings; I will actively choose to forget the sin of the golden calf.

But then she’s worried, because, wait a minute, this selective remembering and forgetting, is it possible that you might forget things that I want you to remember? Amra lefanev, she says before God, ribono shel olam, sovereign of the universe, excuse me, ve’yesh shichecha lefnei kisei chvodecha, if there is forgetting before your Heavenly Throne, maybe you’re going to forget what happened at Sinai, meaning how can I rely once you decide to forget certain things? Maybe you’ll decide that your amnesia is going to extend to the basic covenantal moment of Sinai.

Amar lah, For that, God says to her, ve’anochi lo eshkachech, and I will not forget you, the end of the verse, so I will remember the sacrifices. I won’t remember the golden calf. I will remember Sinai.

Vahaynu de’amar Rabbi Elazar amar Rav Oshaya, and that is what is meant by Rabbi Azar saying in the name of Rabbi Oshaya. Mai dichtiv, what is meant by what’s written? Gam ele tishkachna, these will be forgotten. Zeh maaseh ha’egel, this refers to the golden calf. Va’anokhi lo eshkachech, zeh maaseh sinai, and I will not remember, that is, I will not forget, excuse me, I will not forget you, I will not forget Sinai.

Now this is its own model. This is its own model. How do we, even after consequences happen, nobody’s saying that there were no consequences or there aren’t supposed to be consequences for the golden calf. The consequences were terrible. There was plenty of punishment. This was not a situation, well, oh, remember your covenant and therefore don’t have any consequences. This was a situation of terrible consequences.

And yet, how we shape our memory of a narrative does impact whether we are weakened as a group, or whether we are strengthened in our collective experience. There are times when you have equal and opposite forces for bad and for good, with the same group, with the same collective. And my question is, how do we decide to focus on the good?

I’ll give an example that I think think is very touchy and I want to be careful with it. When we look at October 7th, it is a calamity of gargantuan proportions. There are many who feel, and by the way we can stop the share, there are many who feel that they were completely abandoned by the forces that were supposed to protect them. And at the same time on that day, there were people, average people, who came out to fight and protect and to give their lives for others.

There is an element of, the focus on the abandonment as the key narrative is not going to allow the solidarity, that the focus on the sacrifice that people were willing to make. would be able to accomplish.

Now I say that this is touchy because to be honest I think all selective memory is touchy. We have in the United States a major argument going on about the founding of the country. The 1619 project was founded because of the selective memory that teaching United States history was engaging in. And to be honest, sometimes when you don’t have an actual account of the bad that happens, we cannot learn from it. We do not learn from it. People do not apologize for it. We fall into a trap.

And yet, I do have a question as to where and when it is appropriate to think about those forces of relationship, those forces that bring us together, and where and when that is simply dangerous and whitewashing and not bringing in what we need to be thinking about to learn our lessons.

And again, this is where I think that the fact that we’re talking about the golden calf, where there is actual, there were consequences and punishment for it. It’s not that people got off scot free. It’s the sense of, is there a way to also hold on to solidarity so that abandonment is not all that we’re left with? Because to be honest, if abandonment is all that we’re left with, we don’t have a lot to build on, even as we try to learn those lessons.

When we look at the advantages of this perspective, the advantages, irrespective of the example that I gave. If you don’t want that example, don’t give something that happened at one and the same time. Find an example like, oh, look what we did together for Soviet Jewry. There’s your Ma’aseh Sinai. There’s your Sinai-idic moment. And don’t be too over-eager to express the desire to divide over things that are more divisive and problematic. Doesn’t mean you don’t take to task. It doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences. It simply means that a long range view requires a focus, maybe an inordinate focus on what brings us together. The advantage is you get through really, really hard times and you’re willing to keep going. The disadvantages I already named.

Some of you might be asking yourselves, Well, what do we mean here by memory? And what do we mean here by forgetting? So I’ll tell you, in each of these models, I think you might suggest that memory might be slightly differently explained and forgetting might be slightly differently explained. Let me elaborate. Let me elaborate.

In the model of solidarity, where in order to stay together, we have to remember a covenant. We have to remember a commitment that we’ve made. To my mind, that essentially means we have to go back to the foundations and ask ourselves, why are we even in this conversation to begin with? Why are we even fighting with this other part of the collective? What is it that brings us together? We have to try to remember what that is. We have to try to make an argument for it if it’s still relevant. Because the truth is, people really do forget. We really do take for granted.

When we’re talking about the second example of interdependence and we say remembering what we’ve done wrong. What we mean is admitting it. What we mean more is mentioning it. What we mean is being willing to say it. What we mean by forgetting is not, I don’t remember that you did this. What we mean is we’re willing to put it on the back burner. Because you’ve been able to apologize, and I have the stability to know that this is not something that you want to repeat, that gives me the ability to say, what I’m going to put front and center is the connection, and what I’m going to put in back is the hurt that you’ve caused.

And in the third model of solidarity, where we’re talking about a situation of shaping our memory and selective memory, I don’t think that we ever should forget. I think pain is real. But I do think that there is a charge, excuse me, to say, what is the foundation that we want to be able to build upon moving forward? When the dust settles, what is the foundation that we want to be able to build upon? It doesn’t happen until after the dust settles. But we’re not just talking about remembering something we forgot, and we’re not just talking about admitting something. We’re talking about making an active choice to stay together.

And I think what all of these things have in common is they have in common the notion, which I think is the central notion of the High Holidays, which is we are not slaves to our past. The way things have been is not the way things must always be. Every party in a situation has a choice to make. That is equally true of us when we think about solidarity, whether you are talking about solidarity in family, whether you are talking about solidarity in the Jewish people, whether you are talking about solidarity with humanity, whether you are talking about solidarity with God, whether you are talking about solidarity between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel, we have choices to make. And the choices that we make will impact where we go.

I’m not saying that other things won’t. Of course they will. I’m sitting here reading the news every 10 minutes to know whether I should be in this studio or I should be back in my house in case there’s a siren. Of course. But the question of where we can find our ability to shape our way forward is a critical one in a year where so many of us, especially those who are watching from afar, feel like we don’t know what we can do.

And so I want to bring us back to the first thing that I read you. The first thing that I read to you from this Hasidic master who suggests, Ribono shel olam, sovereign of the universe, I have to use all of my might to find the things that I’ve lost, to find the things that I’ve forgotten. May this for us be a year, not just of uncertainty because we already know it is, not just of worry because we already know it is, but may this be a year where we choose to make decisions that bring people together, where we choose to honor the legacies and the loss of so many this year by bringing people closer. To my mind, that is an imperative for us. We need each other. It’s why you’re here. Thank you very much.

Sara: Elana, thank you so much for your important teaching this morning. The teaching is over, but Elana will stay on for 10 minutes, give or take, to answer questions.So Elana, there were many questions that emerged from your teaching. One of them has to do with applying these models from a human divine relationship to what seems to be more of a human interpersonal model of solidarity.

And to that end, Alan Warshaw wrote in: What about the mandate to remember and forget Amalek? And is that a model, putting those two questions together, that’s an interpersonal model, and is that something that, can you speak about how that might intervene here?

Elana: Yes, I really appreciate that question. I think that’s why the second model, the interdependence model, means so much to me. Because I think it is a dangerous, dangerous thing to give people a pass who don’t even realize they’re being given a pass. I think it is a dangerous, dangerous thing to whitewash what people do wrong. In the name of some, well maybe let’s not be confrontational about this. That doesn’t stop them from doing wrong. It doesn’t help anybody get better. It doesn’t make the world a safer place, might I add. And here I think we know what I’m referring to. I don’t think that forgiveness of terror without a recognition of terror in any form is forgiven, is okay. That’s not human solidarity. That’s dangerous.

Sara: One of the questions that came in from N is a practical question. Which one of these models would you advise using? And maybe you started to get to some of this in your session. Which models would you use when it comes to staying in solidarity with members of the Jewish community who are actively protesting against the state of Israel?

Elana: I knew that was gonna come up. I knew that was gonna come up. So, here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. I want to say, I think that there are kind of pretty basic senses, okay? And I think it’s actually very important that we remember that. So for example, the solidarity that I show by being in Israel this year with my Israeli colleagues is a thicker solidarity than the solidarity I show when I see a fellow Jew at the supermarket, you know, who I don’t know and wish them a Shana Tova. Right? It’s a different kind of solidarity. One of those kinds of solidarity, I’m investing, I’m engaging, we’re together, right? The other solidarity is merely a recognition of who you are.

And I think right now, we are in a little bit of a difficult moment. And by we, I actually mean, I mean Zionist Jews outside of Israel. I think we’re in a difficult moment because some of the people who are actively protesting the State of Israel from within the Jewish community are our children. They’re our friends. They’re maybe even teachers of ours, or our children. And I think it gets a little bit muddled because my desire to have solidarity with them as my family or as my teacher or as my child may be different than my desire to have solidarity with their ideology.

And from that perspective, I think what I would say is, I think it’s totally legitimate to recognize each other as members of the same people. I’m not sure that it needs to go beyond that to recognize each other’s ideologies as legitimate. I actually, one of the things that I thought about this summer is just I’m always thinking about that tent metaphor. And the wider, wider, wider we make the tent, eventually the poles are going to fall down. You can’t have an endlessly wide tent. And so from that perspective, I think we need to think about different models.

And I guess I’ll probably end with this, because I know we’ll have to get off in a few minutes. I saw a great article years ago by a professor, I think at Haifa University, Dr. Sagit Mor. She wrote about four models of solidarity. One model of solidarity is like the thickest model of solidarity. It’s family, it’s, you know, who’s on your baseball team growing up. It’s, you know, your besties. Okay, you share everything with them. That’s on one side.

On the other side, there’s a model of solidarity, which is just human solidarity. Human beings deserve, you know, human beings have b’tselem elokim. Human beings have, you know, the divine image. So they deserve rights, right? Pretty basic, okay?

In the middle, she had these two kind of different versions of solidarity that she says societies live with. One is sort of a thin version. Well, we need each other, you know? I’m gonna pay my taxes, you’re gonna pay your taxes. I’m gonna make sure that I stop at the red light, you’re gonna make sure you stop at the red light. There’s something, very, I would say, pragmatic about our decision to be in solidarity. But I’m not really gonna ask you much more than that. We’re not gonna go into it much further than that.

And the other version is like a thick version of solidarity, which is, yeah, we’re together because we kind of need each other and we are going to talk about the differences. We are going to go into it and we are going to respect each other’s differences.

So I’m, you know, I’m a little bit, when I, when I think about this, I really ask myself, you know, sometimes we may have to have like the thinner version. Sometimes we may just have not human solidarity, but just Jewish solidarity of, you’re a fellow Jew, and therefore we’re in it together in some form or another. And then other times we may actually have to make room for the differences because we’re going to recognize, well, where you want to go, I can’t go. And where I want to go, you can’t go. And that’s not necessarily agreeing, but it’s just recognizing the differences.

So I think there’s a lot more to talk about. I just wanted to offer us, you know, at the very least, I mean, the way that Rachel and Jon, the way that they pulled us all in the direction of solidarity over such a tragic situation, I’m just taking them as my North Star. I really am just taking them as my North Star. And I am pushing us all to take them as our North Star. So thank you so much.

Tessa: Thanks for listening to our show, and special thanks to all of the esteemed faculty members who joined Elana in teaching throughout the day of learning for our hostages. You can access recordings of other sessions on the Hartman website at https://www.hartman.org.il/program/day-of-learning/. We are grateful to the many educational institutions that partnered with us for this day, and for the thousands of learners that joined us.

TEXTing is produced by me, 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 Azevedo at Bear Cave Audio, with music provided by Luke Allen.

We’re always looking for ideas of what we should cover in future episodes, so if you have a topic you’d like to hear about, or if you have comments about the episode, please write to us at texting at shalomhartman.org. For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute, sign up for our newsletter in the show notes and subscribe to this podcast everywhere podcasts are available. See you next time, and thanks for listening.