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To the folks telling us to just “get over” the January 6th insurrection, a reflection:
As a Jew, we don’t believe in “getting over it.”
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As a Jew, we don’t believe in “getting over it.”
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We have religious rituals and traditions to remember the horrors inflicted upon our people as well as moments to celebrate our triumph and our joy.
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Each year on Passover, we retell the story of our enslavement in Egypt and our liberation. We read the story in the first person—as if “we were slaves in Egypt.”
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The ritual re-enactment creates empathy for those who are suffering and implants in the hearts and minds of every Jew the responsibility to work with all who are enslaved today towards full equality, equity, and liberation.
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We remember the pain of enslavement, the wretched evil of the Egyptian task masters, the joy of freedom—with stories and food and song and community.
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We remember the Holocaust on Yom HaShaoah to #NEVERFORGET the capacity for human hatred and the evil of antisemitism. It is a solemn, heart wrenching day.
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On Purim, we dress in costume, send gifts to our friends, feast, and make gifts to those who are hungry to retell the story of Esther and how she saved our people from the evil Haman (Boo).
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We read the Megillah—the scroll of the story—laugh, drink, sing silly songs, and engage in reverie. Vanofochu, the sacred text reads; the world is upside down and we laugh at all its absurdity.
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For more than 3,000 years, my people have been gathering in the desert, in the great Temple in Jerusalem, in small huts in Babylonia, in shuls in Eastern Europe, in great synagogues in America to tell the stories of our people:
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The Pharaohs we confronted, the desperate measures we took for our own survival, the heroes in our midst, the ethical call to be a people who seek peace and pursue justice. These stories bind us together in a shared moral project: to make the world more whole and more just.
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There is no moral value in forgetting January 6.
Indeed, to remember that day, to tell the story of the violence, the terror, the moments in which democracy teetered on the edge of existence, and the heroes who saved it, will be our great strength as an American people.
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Indeed, to remember that day, to tell the story of the violence, the terror, the moments in which democracy teetered on the edge of existence, and the heroes who saved it, will be our great strength as an American people.
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