"Memory," taught the Baal Shem Tov, "leads to redemption, while forgetfulness leads to exile." We Jews have memories going back thirty six hundred years, and today, on Yom Kippur, we review our collective and personal memories, and ask God to do the same. Yet, what we choose to remember, or not, is a complex process. Memory can be selective. It can play tricks on us. Our memories have a fluid, creative quality: We soften them and shape them, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, in order to establish a record of the past as it ought to have been, rather than as it may actually have occurred.
In her novel, Stones From the River, Ursula Hegi tells about the town butcher, Herr Immers, who, in 1918, traded twenty pounds of sausage for an officer's uniform. He had himself photographed in this uniform, even though he had been, to his great shame, medically unfit and unable to enlist in the Kaiser's army. "Herr Immers," writes Hegi, "framed an enlargement of the photo, and whenever he looked at it in his shop...he could imagine that indeed, he had fought in the war, not as a common soldier, of course, but as a highly decorated officer. With the passage of years, he would come to believe that fabrication, and it would be unwise for his wife and customers to remind him otherwise. Eventually the entire town would pretend along with the butcher, even the taxidermist who traded him the uniform, and the next generation would be fed that illusion as history."
"It was like that with many other events, and it took courage for the few, who would preserve the texture of the truth, not to let its fibers slip beneath the web of silence and collusion which people, often with the best of intentions- spun to sustain and protect one another."
The memories and stories that shape our personal histories become part of the fabric of the memories and myths that shape communities, and even nations. Oftentimes, these collective memories are founded in historical truth. But sometimes, they serve the purpose of softening, and even of altering difficult truths.
The past year has seen a crumbling of a whole host of national myths, collective memories that have sustained certain countries since the end of the Second World War. More than fifty years later, hardly a single week has gone by without one or more Holocaust related stories - -scandals that have settled old scores, opened old wounds, and exploded cherished myths.
The Swiss Banking scandal, for example, shattered the Swiss myth of neutrality, and opened the way for what has been called the "Swiss identity crisis." What began last year as a scandal regarding the Banks' callous and venal hoarding of the funds of Holocaust victims and their heirs, expanded into an expose of the banks' acceptance of Nazi gold, including assets looted from their victims, to finance the Nazi war effort. Other realities have come to light, that are not spoken of, and certainly not believed, by the citizens of Switzerland. For example, far from having been neutral, the Swiss police actually approached the Nazis in order to have Jewish passports identified with a "J," in order to more easily keep German Jews out of Switzerland.
In Switzerland, the initial reaction to these revelations was anger, and righteous indignation. However, the anger was not directed towards the banks, or towards corrupt and immoral leaders of the past, but towards those who would jeopardize the country's image in the world, and more important, the Swiss people's comfortable image of themselves, by publicizing and talking about such things.
When a bank security guard rescued pre-war bank documents from being illegally shredded, he was fired from his job, and forced to flee to the United States. Far from being congratulated for his law abiding honesty, today the Swiss bad mouth the hapless security guard as a "Mossad Agent," or a "drug addict." When the truth bumps up against cherished national memories, the truth, or the person who speaks it, can be an unwelcome intruder.
In France, another myth, the myth of French Resistance, also has come under attack. A generation of Frenchman were taught by their parents that most of the French people during World War II resisted the Nazis. There were, so it was said, very few collaborators outside of the officials of the Vichy Government. It took decades for the truth to come to light, and for the French to begin to take responsibility for what they themselves perpetrated. This year saw the trial of Maurice Papon, a French police officer of the Vichy Regime, who ordered the deportation to death camps of over 1,560 Jews. The trial took place more than fifty years after his crimes were committed, and more than 14 years after he was originally indicted! Similarly, it wasn't until three years ago that a French President, Jacque Chirac, could admit that it was not just the Vichy Government, but France itself, that had committed the unpardonable during those years. Imagine, a national myth so impregnable, that it took over half a century for a nation to be able to face well documented, but painful, truths.
And in Germany, today, one of the issues in this year's national political campaign became whether to build, or not to build, a Holocaust Memorial in the heart of Berlin. Which construct will inform German memory and identity: That the War is in the past, and that atonement for Nazi atrocities has already been made? Or that the Holocaust should be an abiding reminder of the unspeakable evil that people, that Germans, are capable of committing?
For decades, Germans neither spoke nor taught about the Holocaust to their children, as if it had all but disappeared from their memories. And, to the extent that it was acknowledged, it was, according to national myth, only Hitler's S.S., and not regular German soldiers, who took part in the slaughter. In recent years, however, these lapses in memory and in historical accuracy have been openly challenged. When Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners, travelled to Germany last year, for example,he was, far from being shunned, treated as a media star.
These issues tug at Germans today, and even the race for the chancellorship was fought, strangely, over the memory of dead Jews.
At some level we can all understand the Germans, the French, and the Swiss, for holding on to now debunked, self-serving myths for so long. That's one of the natural functions of memory-- to edit and shape the truth, in such a way that we can live with it, and not fall under the crushing weight of its burden.
And if the truth is today being confronted by these countries, it is largely due to the passage of time and a generational change. The official apologies are being made, the funds for restitution are being established, and the memorials are being built. The old myths of neutrality and of resistance, which were nurtured for so long, are being reshaped before our eyes, into new collective memories.
It's as if, before the last eyewitnesses and participants pass from the scene, people have a need to set the record straight, to come clean, to reach some honest level of self-understanding. Europe, more than fifty years after the war, is going through its own kind of Yom Kippur.
Letting go of cherished myths is hard. Columbia University professor and P.L.O. champion Edward Said has recently taken up the subject of what he calls "the ideology of remembering," what entire cultures choose to remember and forget. Not long ago, in one of his political columns, he argued that there can be no basis for coexistence between Palestinian and Israeli Jews until two things happen: Arabs acknowledge and respect the fact of the Holocaust, and Jews do the same for the dispossession of the Palestinians since 1948. "I got the most hostile mail I've ever gotten," all from Arabs, Mr. Said wrote. "That's impossible for people to understand- -that there are irreconcilables...but they exist, unreconciled, next to each other."
In an interview with The New York Times, Said, a Christian Arab who was born in Jerusalem, recalls that he first became active in Palestinian causes in 1968, after hearing Golda Meir's statement that "there are no Palestinians." That of course, was our fondly held, but perhaps over-stated historical myth.
The way in which nations shape their collective memory is a mirror image of what each one of us does. In our minds, we each individually shape our own personal historical record. We do this in order to defend our right to feel hurt, or to hold grudges. We do it to justify our past failings, or so that we can tell ourselves that we were smarter, or stronger, or nicer, than we actually were. And just like nations do, we sometimes reconstruct our pasts in order to mollify our consciences.
There are painful memories that we simply dispense with-- repress. A recent biographer of the aviator, Charles Lindberg, describes Lindberg's childhood as particularly unhappy and dysfunctional. The famed flier once confided as an adult, " I have no recollection whatever of my daily routine during the early years of my life."
Sometimes we make up stories out of whole cloth that, in time, take on the quality of remembered truth. An amusing example of this tendency is told by a former Globe reporter, Richard O'Donnell. Back in 1968, O'Donnell set out to write an anniversary story about the famed Orson Wells "War of the Worlds" broadcast, of 1938. You remember what I am referring to: When the radioplay was broadcast on Halloween, 1938, many listeners mistook the realistic description of an invasion from Mars to be an authentic newscast, and mass panic broke out. Thirty years later, O'Donnell interviewed Boston residents who willingly shared their memories of the broadcast and that famous night:
"Young Fergie got on the roof," recalled one man, "and scanned the skies over in South Boston, looking for those Martians. Then he saw them and was going to leap off the roof. If my Pop hadn't grabbed him, Fergie would be a goner today." One woman remembered, "Tremont street was crowded with people, and you could see the terror on their faces. A man at the corner of Winter Street was telling everybody the Martians were coming." Then there was Mr. Murphy, a letter carrier: "I went down to the cellar and found that heavy mettle helmet I wore in the first World War. If those Martians ever showed up, I was going to give them their money's worth."
But when O'Donnell did a little more research, he discovered that at 8:00pm on that October Sunday night, while the rest of the nation was being jolted by the space monsters, Boston was listening to a one-hour radio broadcast from the Park Street Church. The station had chosen not to run Welles that week, because of low ratings. In fact, there was no "War of the Worlds" in Boston that Halloween weekend in 1938. Over the years, the desire of some Boston citizens to be a part of a historic event merged with, and overtook, the truth.
Like Herr Immers the butcher, posing in his bartered uniform, we remember ourselves as we would like to have been, but not necessarily as we were. But on this day, Yom Kippur, we stand before God and we strip the uniform off. And standing naked before Him, we say, "This is who I really am, God. Help me to acknowledge my failings so that I can live with them, but no longer be overwhelmed by the weight of them." Rabbi Nachman of Breslov interpreted the verse from psalms, "I admit my sin; I worry about my transgression," as meaning that ruminating about old mistakes and about the past can in itself be sinful.
Like the Swiss nation, each of us has sins in our past that intrude on how we want to see ourselves. Each of us own deeds that sometimes keep us up at night. But what do we do about them? We may first adopt the amnesia approach. We pretend that the deed and the memory are not there, and with all our force we try to push them out of the way. Then we may become indignant and angry when people or circumstances remind us of our deeds. But eventually, we face them, and we face our shame. We make whatever restitution we can. We recognize that our lives are different now, and that we would not repeat that act again. Perhaps we were too young or immature then. Or perhaps we lacked the communal support that we needed. Or perhaps our marriage was not strong enough at that time to have supported acting differently. So much has changed. And just as we can not blame the young German for the heinous deeds of his grandfather, we learn that we don't have to condemn ourselves for the sins of our earlier selves. We come to understand that each of us is continually creating his life, staking out his commitments, anew, and we allow ourselves, finally, to feel forgiven.
A neighbor of our friend the butcher, Herr Immers, Herr Blau, hears a knock at the door. The year is 1940, and Jews are being rounded up off the streets. "Go away," he whispers to the desperate young man outside his door, "I do not know you." Over the coming days, Herr Blau is haunted by the face of the young man at his door. Why didn't he at least hand him a coat, or something to eat? He unburdens himself to his neighbor, Leo Montag, who is hiding Jews in his cellar, and offers to help Leo in his efforts. "I think about him all the time," Herr Blau sobbed. "Fear", Leo said, "is a strange thing. It strips off our masks....In some people it brings out the lowest instincts, while others become more compassionate. Both have to do with survival. But the choice is ours."
"I made the wrong choice."
"But you didn't stay with it."
Herr Blau nodded, grateful for Leo's answer..."
My friends, you and I have murdered no one. We have not turned a stranger from our door to a certain death. We are basically good people, decent people nevertheless burdened with deeds of which we are not proud. But today is Yom Kippur. And today, God remembers. Perhaps that means that God can remember for us, that God can lift the burden of accumulated memories that no mortal can bear.
Rabbi Abraham Twerski puts it this way:
"Just suppose that Yom Kippur occurred only once in a century, that only once in a hundred years was there a special day of grace on which G-d removed all our sins and enabled us to begin life anew.
Those who were fortunate to have this unique day during their lifetime would consider themselves blessed with good fortune. Those who did not would consider themselves deprived of this special gift.
But in his infinite kindness, God gave us this day of Yom Kippur each year, and we thus have many opportunities to begin life anew, unencumbered by the mistakes of the past.
How privileged we should feel! How joyous we should feel on this special day!"
God gives us the chance to create ourselves anew, to fashion the next chapter of our life story, of how we wish to be remembered, in the image of our highest goals and aspirations. Let us fashion wisely.
L'Shanah Tovah: May we be inscribed and sealed for a year of purpose, of truth, of sweetness, of kindness, and of fulfillment.