In Parshat Ha’Azinu, Moshe urges B’nai Yisrael to remember Hashem by asking their parents and grandparents about the past. They who witnessed the power, care, and mercy of Hashem, the One who created us, took us out of Mitzrayim and delivered us to Eretz Yisrael, will transmit to you their collective memory, through Torah, that He is just, righteous, fair, and rewards the good in all of us.
In the days leading up to Yom Kippur, memory plays an outsized role. While the exercise can be an uncomfortable or even painful one, we take inventory of our shortcomings over the past year. We have tried to be just, righteous, and fair, but surely, we made mistakes. We may have inadvertently caused harm and failed to acknowledge or make amends for it. Perhaps we weren’t even aware of the impact our actions or inactions on others.
Maybe we are still reliving the hurt a family member caused us and have had trouble letting it go. If so, are we allowing the emotional weight of those instances to shape how we perceive those people? What if the tables were turned? Would we want others to see us through the lens of our mistakes?
If you spent Rosh Hashana with your family, it is likely that stories from the past were retold. Depending on who told those stories, the facts may have varied widely, however conveyed with absolute certainty. In your family, like mine, maybe there is someone who confidently remembers events as they never were and steadfastly refutes evidence to the contrary.
Stories, it is said, take on a life of their own. Every time we recall an event, our brain reconstructs that event afresh: adding, subtracting, blending, and reordering details without our conscious awareness. Not only are we usually unaware of this memory mashup, but all too often our confidence in our recall is stronger than the factual basis for it. It feels real, so it must be.
By design, physiologically, memories are unreliable. They are not etched in stone. Every night as we sleep, our experiences during the day are revisited, and selectively stored for later recall or let go of. We store only that which has personal relevance, emotional significance, and which involves our senses and physical interaction. Emotion is key, as the events and information we remember are interpreted, shaped, and stored according to the emotions we experienced at the time.
Imagine having a conversation that leaves you feeling hurt or embarrassed. Perhaps the other person said something inadvertently insensitive without realizing how their comment would have affected you. Time goes by and this is still weighing on your mind to the extent that the memory has left an imprint on your relationship with that individual.
Is it time to let go of that memory, or is it time to sit down and talk about it so we can repair the relationship? If we choose the latter, with both of us openly sharing our memories and perspectives of the conversation, we may find that we each gain a new insight into the other that helps strengthen and renew our connection. That conversation, replayed in our mind numerous times, may have been amplified and distorted over time without our even realizing. It may be eye opening to find that what happened wasn’t exactly as we recall. (Of course, it is also possible that the conversation that was emotionally charged for us was not even stored as a memory for the individual for whom it was emotionally neutral.)
As part of the social-emotional learning at OCA, we teach our students how to talk through the inevitable hurts and misunderstandings of social relationships. Key to developing a resilient and healthy emotional life is learning to use language to express one’s feelings, develop the flexibility to see an event through the eyes of a peer, reframe events using these new insights and perspectives, and continually work on building positive relationships. Providing our students with the tools and practice in these essential skills is a daily component of school life that begins in the ECC and continues all the way through MS.
As we prepare for Yom Kippur, may we apply the lessons about memory to heal our relationships with others. May we, like Hashem, strive to remember one another for the good, just as how we would like others to remember us. G’mar chatima tova!