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Candle lighting is at 4:30 pm on Friday, November 21. This week's Torah portion is Parashat Chayei Sara. Havdalah starts 60 minutes after sundown, at 5:47 pm on Saturday, November 22. Courtesy of hebcal.com |
The Jews of HistoryBy Rabbi Alan Yuter In Orthodox circles, Jewish history has a bad name. Possibly because Rabbi Zeharias Fraenkel founded the intellectually open Breslau Seminary. But the Orthodox Berlin Seminary also studied with the Historical method. Henry Ford said that history is "bunk." Deuteronomy commands us [32:7] to "remember the days of old, and understand what happened in antiquity." There are two verbs here that are not merely synonyms, but complimentary idioms. And both words are in the imperative; we are commanded to "remember" and "consider." This means that the history enterprise is not optional, not forbidden as heresy, and not a The word for remember, zachor, also carries the sense of "speaking." This sense is common in both Akkadian and Ugaritic. The command to remember, zechor, the Sabbath, for Maimonides, is not done with memory but with words. History is about memory put into words. The first command, "remember the days of old," means to remember what happened. Historians call this memory the study of time, chronology, which is the compound of two Greek words, chronos, and logos, or word or knowledge. The Hebrew word "consider" or understand means that we must make comparisons for similarities and differences. This kind of study invests the reader/student with responsibility and dignity to makes sense for oneself out of history. This exercise is called "historiography," history writing and meaning making out of our recorded memory of the past. There is no rabbi and no rabbinate that can learn history for the Jew. Professors of history cannot do it for you, either. But students of history can share their understandings and memories and reconstructions. And as we reconstruct, we reinvent ourselves, hopefully for the better. This reinvention means transformation. The study of history is the repentance of the mind, which it sanctifies as it grows, expands, and appreciates the Divine hand in human history. |