Imagine not being recognized while visiting a parent with dementia. The hearts of those hearing of such a picture will fill with compassion and empathy. Losing one’s memory is a fear that grips most people beyond their twenties, transforming the overcrowded mind’s inability to remember where you left your keys into a panic-stricken moment.
Smells. Sounds. Tastes. These are antidotes to forgetting. Which helps explain why on the Day of Memory, a less known name for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year that we just celebrated, we enjoy foods that graced our great-grandparents’ table. We blow the shofar with exactly the same notes that our ancestors used. While there is ample room for the new, we doggedly insist on also retaining the old.
This year, Rosh Hashana, the Day of Memory, started on the evening of September 11th. Only twenty-five years after cataclysmic events in the United States, scores of young people only one generation removed, know little about the horrific happenings of that day. For a civilization that wishes to survive, this is a tragedy.
Governments, media, and schools cannot be trusted to be honest conduits of memory. As major media outlets instructed their contributors not to use the word ‘terrorism’ in their remembrances and as an education establishment that is decidedly anti-American perverts, minimizes, or ignores 9/11, it is folly to assume that the facts, emotions, pride, and lessons from that day will be transmitted.
Socrates worried that the written word would weaken human memory, harming the human ability to think deeply. Computers and AI were beyond his imagination. Most of us recognize that our mental powers are weaker than they used to be before we assigned so much of our thinking and memory to technology. Knowledge, let alone understanding, of history is a prime victim of that debilitation. Damaging and false theories are easy to spread; truths, nuance, and patriotism much less disseminated.
Islam has a memory that stretches back centuries. It is not accidental that September 11, 1683, was the date on which Christian troops turned back the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna. Yet twenty-five years after September 11, 2021, American youth students are fuzzy about what occurred.
I disagree with the editorialists and pundits who claim that because there has been no repeat of the mass death of 9/11, America has triumphed. There is no need for blood if you can conquer by persuasion. Our young people are empty receptacles being filled by our enemies.
Deuteronomy 32:7, which Jews always read in synagogue in proximity to Rosh HaShana, commands: “Remember the days that have passed, understand the years of generations. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will speak to you.”
The honor and obligation of passing on memory today belong to the family. It is forged by stories shared around the table, where taste, sight, smell, touch, and sound combine to drip memories of the past into the veins of the future. A country without that infusion will not survive.
Appreciated this article? Feel free to share it using this link: https://rabbidaniellapin.com/losing-the-war-on-deleted/
What Are You Selling Today?
Maybe you are selling a product or service. Or maybe you’re not. You might be presenting an idea, recommending a solution, leading others, or trying to get someone to see things differently.
That’s selling, too.
In Sell – Influence – Persuade, Rabbi Daniel Lapin shares practical, Biblical principles to help you communicate more effectively, build trust, and inspire action.
