TRY TO REMEMBER
AND HOW WILL WE BE REMEMBERED
From the 1960 musical The Fantasticks with Music by Harvey Schmidt and Lyrics by Tom Jones, sung by Jerry Orbach.
“Deep in December, it's nice to remember
Although you know the snow will follow
Deep in December, it's nice to remember
The fire of September that made us mellow
Deep in December, our hearts should remember
And follow, follow, follow”
I have previously written about the importance of remembrance (see below)
but I’d like to re-visit the subject and look at it from an individual perspective and what we will be remembered for.
It’s nice to remember nice things, obviously. It’s nice to remember nice people, beloved family members and friends, people who have done good in this world. Talking about people recalled, is their memorial.
In Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ Marc Antony proclaims “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Here, he reflects on how people’s wrongdoings are remembered after death, while their good deeds are often forgotten.
In Judaism, at the time of the High Holy days, Jews pray to their creator to both recognise them and inscribe them in the ‘book of life’, whilst at the same time seeking forgiveness for their sins in the year just gone.
The Torah is less concerned with the hereafter than today; there may be many worlds, but this is the one that matters the most. Having said that, there is certainly an indication that ultimate justice will be done someplace other than this world. A striking example is the story of Cain and Abel.
"Trust in God and do good.” ( (Psalms 37:3). What is the "good" being referred to here? They are the good deeds, which a person does in the physical world, and which arouse the source of that good in the sefirot in the spiritual world. The ‘sefirot’ (the ten attributes or emanations of God in Kabbalistic mysticism) represent the various stages of the Divine creative process, whereby God generated the progression of created realms culminating in our finite physical universe.
What will I be remembered for? What will you be remembered for? Will our ‘good deeds’ recall memories of us in those who live after us, or as dear Will would have it, will the good be “interred with [our] bones”?
We live in a deeply troubled world, a broken world in which some countries are ruled by dictatorial gangsters waging war for reasons of racism, ambition, or world wide religious supremacy.
Societal infrastructure often seems fractured. Our digital and AI world increasingly isolates each of us from each other, causes dissatisfaction with our lives and with those who we choose to govern us, and encourages lethargy and a desire to acquire material wealth and possessions without having to earn them.
How will US President Trump be remembered? For the Abraham Accords, or the arrest and detention of immigrants by masked members of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department?
How will Hamas be remembered? As a legitimate resistance organisation whose only mission was to seek ‘liberation’ of a ‘colonial occupation’ by an ‘illegitimate’ country called Israel? Or as the monstrous, barbaric, psychotic terrorist organisation that it actually is?
And how will Israel be remembered? As a country which caused deserts to bloom, which contributed numerous impactful inventions across diverse fields, including the PillCam for medical imaging, modern drip irrigation for agriculture, the Iron Dome defense system, and technologies like the cellular telephone and firewalls? As a country which has had thirteen Nobel laureates recognized across various fields, including literature, economics, and especially chemistry?
Or as a violent lawless country which waged war on a vulnerable neighboring population purely for its own gratification?
Jews are taught to remember and wish to be remembered. There are a number of significant historical events that the Torah tells us to remember every day. Some traditions list only four remembrances and others count as many as ten but the prevalent custom is to recite six remembrances after the morning prayers. These include, the Exodus from Egypt. the revelation at Sinai, the Sabbath, the Golden Calf, and Amalek’s attack on Israel, so, a celebration of the good things and lessons learnt about the bad things, such not to be repeated.
The actual remembrance of Jews is not just in annual commemorative events like International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27th) and Yom HaShoah (Israel's national day of commemoration, observed on the 27th of Nissan in the Hebrew calendar), which mark the Holocaust, but as Rabbi Pesach Efune of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement community in Brighton once wrote:
“Sometimes it appears to me that Jews are obsessed with the past. We always seem to be remembering something; all our festivals revolve around recalling past events and we make a big deal about remembering our beloved parents and ancestors. The Yizkor (the remembrance service on Yom Kippur) service is always guaranteed to attract a large crowd.”
In 2005 some of the Jewish residents in Gaza decided to wear orange stars as a symbol of their protest against the policy of disengagement by Israel. This caused a stir in the Jewish community. Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti Defamation League, said that, "The honor of the Holocaust is being de-legitimized." Then Israel President Moshe Katzav called the use of these stars "Unlawful." The BBC reported that many see this protest as "trivializing Nazi Genocide." In response, Moshe Freiman of Gush Katif (a bloc of 17 Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza Strip). was widely quoted, "I feel I am a victim of a new expulsion... a Shoah is being visited upon my home."
Remembrance can be painless and painful, joyful and sad and it only natural that each of us would wish to be remembered for the good things we achieved.
How will Israel be remembered? As a plucky little country, the size of Wales, that stood up to endless attempts to extinguish it by its Arab neighbours and terrorists or in revisionist history as a warmongering colonial enterprise which should never have existed in the first place?.
Despite the disgraceful decision of UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to recognize a Palestinian State, where there is no state with any defined boundaries, nor the infrastructure of a state, and where half of it run by proscribed terrorists, I believe that Israel will be remembered kindly and will survive, maybe not today or tomorrow but eventually. And will Starmer be remembered as a hero by those who want to delegitimize Israel, or, ultimately, a PM who betrayed the trust placed him by his Jewish citizens at a time of increasing antisemitism?
I not only want to believe that. I need to believe it because it is part of me. It is my ultimate safe space. My head and heart is in my country of birth and nurture but my soul is in Israel.
In Freemasonry an initiate is delivered what is known as an ‘Ancient Charge’ reminding him of his obligations as Mason. Part of this reminds us of
“…. paying due obedience to the laws of any state which may for a time become the place of your residence or afford you its protection, and above all, never losing sight of the allegiance due to the Sovereign of your nature land, ever remembering that nature has implanted in your breast a sacred and indissoluble attachment toward that country whence you derived your birth and infant nurture.”
And for all of us who wish to be remembered-and to remember- kindly
“…Deep in December, it's nice to remember
The fire of September that made us mellow
Deep in December, our hearts should remember”
Perhaps, Jewish or not, ‘the fire of September’, in which occurs the Jewish New Year, should cause us all to reflect and consider how we want to be remembered.
And to my readers, only good things I wish for you.