I. Concepts of Rememberance in Jewish History 
[.1. Zakhor: The Biblical Injunction to Remember 
Probably the most influential recent work on memorial traditions in 
Judaism was Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi's "Zakhor: Jewish History and 
Jewish Memory"!. Yerushalmi, a professor of Jewish history, Culture 
and Society, and the director of the Center for Israel and Jewish 
Studies at Columbia University, was a student of the first Jewish 
scholar to hold an academic chair of Jewish history, Salo Wittmeyer 
Baron. This may account for the highly self-reflexive style of the 
book: Yerushalmi not only examines the extent to which Judaism has 
been shaped by the biblical command to remember, but also the role 
of the Jewish historian himself. 
Ancient Israel was the only people to which the injunction to re- 
member became a religious imperative. While the Greeks explored 
their past in search of moral examples or political insights, and never 
gave historiography a place in their religion or philosophy, the Jews 
assigned a decisive religious significance to history. "Remember the 
days of old, consider the years of ages past" (Deut. 32:7). "Remember 
what Amalek did to you" (Deut. 25;17). And, insistently: "Remember 
that you were a slave in Egypt...". These biblical injunctions, repeated 
annually or even weekly, were part of the covenant confirmed at Sinai, 
whose biblical records are nothing but a history of the relation 
between God and his chosen people. 
Biblical faith holds that God is revealed in human history. This 
belief came about not through philosophical speculation. but a new 
and revolutionary understanding of God. The encounter between man 
and the devine no longer centered around nature and the cosmos but 
around human history. Writes Yerushalmi: 
With the departure of Adam and Eve from Eden, history begins, historical 
time becomes real, and the way back is closed forever. ...Thrust reluctantly 
into history, man in Hebrew thought comes to affirm his historical exis- 
tence despite the suffering it entails, and gradually, ploddingly, he dis- 
| Yosef Haim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory ( Seattle: 
University of Washington Press, 1982)