Remembering is Not About the Past - A Message for Hanukkah 5775

A large part of holiday observance is remembering events that happened in the past – leaving Egypt, defeating Haman, defeating the Greeks.  And then we eat, of course, but even the eating is connected to the remembering.

This morning I want to talk a little bit about how we remember.  Because the way we remember has an impact on us.  We can remember the past in ways that make us stuck in the past.  Or we can remember the past in ways that help us face the present. 

Forgive me if I spend a few minutes talking about Passover before I turn our attention to Hanukkah.  If nothing else, they belong in the same sermon because the two most widely observed rituals among American Jews are the Passover Seder and the lighting of Hanukkah candles.

Passover commemorates the Exodus from Egypt and how do we remember our time in Egypt and our leaving Egypt?

I recently heard a lecture about this by Micha Goodman, a Senior Fellow at the Hartman Institute.  He identified two models for how we remember Egypt – one which gets us stuck in the past and one which helps us face the present.

The first is represented by King Josiah.  He was the 7^th century BCE ruler of the southern kingdom of Judah who uncovered a book that had been lost and started a whole revival that brought back the “old-time” religion.  Passover apparently hadn’t been observed for generations and, among other things, he revived Passover.

He heard through the ancient grapevine that Pharaoh was going to be passing through with an army on his way to fight the Assyrians.

As described in the Book of Kings, Josiah went out to meet him and fight him.  And he got killed.

The Book of Chronicles adds another detail:  Pharoah sees King Josiah all ready to fight and says to him, ?מה לי ולך “Mah li v’lach?”  As if to say, “What are you doing?  I didn’t come to fight you.  I’m just passing through.  This isn’t your war!”

What was going on?  According to Micha Goodman, King Josiah was remembering Egypt and the Exodus from Egypt in the most literal way.  In order to remember the story authentically, he figured, he had to defeat Pharaoh just like Moses defeated Pharaoh. 

He remembered the past but got stuck in the past.  This was a new Pharaoh who wasn’t interested in fighting or even subjugating the kingom of Judah.  He fought the wrong battle.  And it cost him his life and, shortly thereafter, the Kingdom of Judah began to crumble and collapse.

By contrast, Moses tells the children of Israel, when you are about to enter the land, don’t oppress the stranger, כי גרים הייתם בארץ מצרים ki gerim heyitem b’eretz mitzryaim.  Don’t oppress slaves וזכרת כי עבד היית בארץ מצרים v’zacharta ki eved hayita b’eretz mitzayim – remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt.

This is a whole different approach to remembering.  And by the way, it’s Moses delivering the message, the one who actually fought Pharaoh, who says that what it means to remember Egypt is not so much to keep fighting with Pharaoh, but to have your experience in Egypt inform your sensitivity as you begin to establish a society in the promised land.

Moses’s way of remembering, unlike Josiah’s, did not get the people stuck in the past.  It prepared them to face the present and also to prepare for the future of a society based on tzedek, on justice.

We’re in the midst of Hanukkah.  We can focus on oil and we can focus on our victory over the Greeks.

But if we see Greeks around every corner, if we are fighting against secular life as the enemy, if we never allow that ancient animosities can subside, then we are going the way of King Josiah and becoming slaves to the past. 

Some old enemies are still enemies, but we have to know the difference.

If we are to follow the model of Moses our teacher, rather than King Josiah, how might our memory of the Hanukkah story impact the way we face the present?

First, we should remember the experience of being persecuted based on religious beliefs.

Moses was aiming his remarks toward a generation who didn’t actually experience the slavery.  The ones who were going to enter the promised land weren’t the ones who were slaves.  But he appealed to a collective, intergenerational memory.

And I’m doing that too.  Together in this room are people who grew up in the US, in Europe, in Iran and Iraq, in Cuba, in South America, many of whom experienced persecution to one degree or another.

When Yazidis and Christians are being persecuted in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, Jews need to care and speak up.

To remember the Hanukkah story the Moses way is to consider our negative experience and to try to prevent it from recurring to us and occurring to anybody else.

Not getting stuck in the past at all, but rather, facing the present more humanely.

Second, we should remember that our ancestors living in Jerusalem and Modii’n under the Greeks were trying to figure out how much of the good parts of the surrounding culture to absorb.   Exercise is good.  Philosophy can be good.  There was a range in those days from those Jews who completely shunned any adoption whatsoever of Greek culture to those who went for it whole hog, so to speak.  Changed their names, their dress, their eating habits and even, in some instances, tried to disguise their circumcision.

Full isolation to full assimilation and everything in between.

And so remembering the Hanukkah story can also be about asking ourselves the following question today:  How do we take the best that American culture has to offer and the best that Jewish tradition has to offer?  Where do we draw OUR lines?

These are questions that I discussed with the parents of our Nitzanim, kindergarten families this past Sunday.  I asked them to reflect on the places where they grew up, what it was like to be Jewish there, why they chose GN to raise their kids, what are the benefits and challenges of raising Jewish children in GN.

All with a nod toward Hanukkah, the holiday which challenges us to think about religious boundaries and identity IF we remember the Moses way, not the King Josiah way.

We can remember the past and get stuck in the past.  We can remember the past and live mindfully in the present.

That’s true of holidays.  That’s true of life.  How many of us remember our childhoods in ways that paralyze us so that we can never transcend old traumas and old fears?

For a person to mature, for a nation to mature, he or she has to learn how to remember.

I say to each of us, on this festival of lights, let’s remember the pain of religious persecution, experienced directly or through transmission, so that we can denounce persecution directed toward us and others.

Let’s remember the challenge of bearing an ancient tradition in a modern context so that we can enjoy the most fruitful synthesis of the two.

We were slaves in Egypt.  But we don’t have to be slaves to the past.  Not when our tradition provides us with creative ways to live today and to prepare for a brighter tomorrow. 

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on Shabbat Hanukkah, December 20, 2014