|
Has Abstract
|
Memory per se was not an operative category among East European Jews. Rather, in the premodern period, Jews had their master metaphors organized around saints, sanctuaries, and sacred times. In this way, each generation of Jews shaped the model life, the model community, and the model time. In periods of crisis, the function of Jewish memory was to transcend the ruptures of history. At such times, the precise levers of inner-Jewish transformation were the historical archetypes that embodied the covenantal relationship between God and Israel: God’s command of lekh-lekho (Go forth) to Abraham, the binding of Isaac, the Exodus, Sinai, the Mosaic curses, the destruction of the Temple, the Valley of the Dry Bones, the Battle of Gog, the Megilah of Purim. The chronicler, preacher, or synagogue poet could either invoke any of the relevant archetypes, reminding God, as it were, both of His promise and of Israel’s steadfastness in the past, or, more boldly, could provoke God’s response by throwing the present sacrilege in His face. “It is for Your sake that we are slain all day long,” says Psalm 44 (23–24), “that we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. / Rouse Yourself: why do You sleep, O Lord? / Awaken, do not reject us forever!” In the face of national catastrophe, the Jewish response is dialectical: the worse the present expulsion order, or massacre, or blood libel, the more it recalls the most sacrilegious event of the past.
|
yivo
|
