Science Can Inform the Jewish Understanding of Memory

For Jews, the injunction to remember is deeply embedded in religious thought and practice, and in cultural life more generally. The Hebrew word transliterated as zakhor is the command “remember!” It is used frequently in the Hebrew Bible, as in the Commandments (zakhor et yom hashabbat lekadsho — remember the Sabbath day and sanctify it). As the late Rabbi Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi wrote in his 1982 essay Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, the word "appears in its various declensions in the Bible no less than one hundred and sixty-nine times, usually with either Israel or God as the subject, for memory is incumbent upon both. The verb is complemented by its obverse — forgetting. As Israel is enjoined to remember, so it is adjured not to forget."