The following piece, written by Rabbi Wein zt'l in 2014, is as relevant now as it was on the day it was written.
The Torah emphasizes hat the day of Rosh Hashanah is a day of remembrance and of memory. Heaven can recall everything and everyone; human beings, less so. Human memory is selective, arbitrary and—many if not most times—faulty and inaccurate.
People have often told me that they heard me say such-and-such
in a public lecture and I have no recollection whatsoever of having ever
publicly said something so inane. My memory is often faulty and betrays me when
I need it. But the hearing of my listeners is often also impaired. People tend
to hear whatever they wish to hear, even if the speaker never really said those
words.
All of this is part of our human condition, our frailties
and our mortal nature. And it is a great and truly awesome (how I despise that
word as it is used in current society!) experience on Rosh Hashanah to
encounter Heaven’s perfect memory and faculty of total recall.
This leads us to a basic question regarding our memories:
what do we choose to remember and what do we sublimate and choose to forget?
The Torah instructs us over and over again not to forget the basic principles
of Jewish life: God and the Torah
revelation at Sinai, the exodus from Egypt, the sins of slander and gossip, the
sanctity of the Sabbath, the continuing enmity of Amalek and much of the
non-Jewish world towards the people of Israel, and finally the tendency of the
Jews from the time of the Sinai desert till today to anger God by backsliding
on obligations and covenantal undertakings.
We have chosen to remember other less important things in
life—foolish statements and imagined slights, unimportant statistics and false
opinions, our jealousy of others and their achievements—while at the same time
consigning the basic memories that should guide our lives to the dustbin of oblivion.
Rosh Hashanah demands an accounting of our memory and our
forgetfulness. The prophet long ago proclaimed that Israel was unfaithful
because “I (God) was forgotten.” It is only forgetting that begets the
ignorance of one’s heritage, faith and self. And it is that very ignorance that
creates the climate of sin and assimilation, secularism and violence, greed and
avarice that threatens our very existence as a people and a state. Woe to those
who no longer remember for, without awareness of their past, their future is
doomed!
On Rosh Hashanah we read in the exalted prayers of the day
that there exists, so to speak, a book of remembrances in Heaven—of memory. And
in that book, each and every one of us has a page dedicated to our activities
and behavior in our life on this earth. Not only that, but our signature and
seal appears on that page, attesting to the veracity of what is written there.
That page reminds us of what we have forgotten, and whether we willed that
forgetfulness or otherwise.
Eventually, after we have departed from this earth, our true
and accurate powers of memory are restored to our souls. And, as the prayer
records for us, the page literally speaks for itself, announcing the events and
occurrences listed. So the ultimate day of judgment, just as the Rosh Hashanah
day of judgment here on earth, is the day of memory and recollection.
Remembering is the true catalyst for repentance and self-improvement. To put it into the current common vernacular, Rosh Hashanah should serve as one’s ultimate “selfie.” For that attitude of self-appearance is reflective of our fascination to remember and to know ourselves deeply and truly. On the day that everything is remembered in Heaven, we on earth should also strive to remember our past actions, attitudes and behavior.
