Remember Us for Life: A Coalition of a Forgotten God and a Forgotten People
A Shabbat Shuvah reflection on Zochreinu L’Chaim, the selective amnesia of the world, and our unbreakable covenant
"Remember us for life,....." This phrase, among others, are incorporated into the regular weekday and Shabbat Liturgy between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. The notion of a forgetful deity, is not merely disconcerting from a cosmic management perspective, ("who's actually running this place?") but also poses a theological conundrum: How do we reconcile a G-d who forgets, and requires our prayerfully reminders— with the good old fashioned notion of Divine omniscience?
While I'm hopeful that we can create an opportunity to do a philosophical deep dive into that at some point: I want to narrow the lens somewhat and zoom into this from a human behavioral perspective. Perhaps the altering of the focus is itself the key to resolving our dilemma?
Remembering:
The experience of being remembered, is at its core, one of the most powerful means of fostering human connectedness. The simple act of picking up the phone for example, just to say hello—particularly to an individual that might be isolated, or between friends who have drifted apart for whatever reason, is far from simple. It is an acknowledgment that says, "my world is infinitely better with you in it."
A person who has undergone circumstances that have contributed to a cycle of self loathing, a forgetting of the fact of their own fundamental goodness and a gradual slipping away from their own center, or a person who has been the target of verbal abuse, such as being systemically painted in categorically negativistic language, both share the experience of living in a state of quasi darkness.
Being remembered on the other hand, is like having someone walk into your life, open the shades and turn the lights back on.
Our prayer to G-d or G-ds prayer to us?
Can the the prayer of "Remember us" be seen as a horizontal cry of existential loneliness within humanity itself, a lament issuing from the forgotten ones— directed towards those who have forgotten?
Or even as an internal dialogue between the part of us that lives in the light and the part of us that might have subjected our selves to a self imposed darkness— or one that others subjected us to—inflicted by the self serving and typically contradictory pseudo righteousness of others?
Can this be a Divine prayer aimed at us as well, formulated in response to our collective human memory lapse?
That being the case, is it then possible to understand "Zochraynu Lchaim" as a prayerful expression of an unlikely coalition; one in which a "forgotten G-d" joins forces in alliance with "forgotten people?"
A prayer for memory itself to come alive and for forgetfulness to be forgotten?
Do we not all feel the sting of being overlooked, and don't we all bear guilt and need to beat our chests with the "Al Chet" of overlooking whatever, or whomever it was or is that we should never have forgotten, for the sin of taking for granted what should never have been taken for granted?
(Parenthetically: Why is it that we seem to only be able to remember what we should learn to forget and forget all the good things we should remember?)
For is not our penchant for oblivion to the pain of others, our sin of looking through one another, at making others disappear, or appear to be invisible, at its very core, symptomatic of a colossal gesture of forgetting G-d himself— and by extension the forgotten slice of him that resides within each of us? Have we overlooked others precisely because we overlooked the same sliver of G-d residing within them?
Here's to remembering to remember the important things!
Much Love,
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Yossi