Parsha:

Haazinu 

Description

Each of us is granted two precious and seemingly contradictory gifts - memory and forgetfulness. Of these two, we often value memory more, for without memory, we simply do not exist in any way that makes sense - personally or collectively. Without memory, the "self" does not exist. The poet was on point when he wrote, "this world would be for us a happier place and there would be less regretting if we would remember to practice with grace the very fine art of forgetting." Too often, remembering seems to exist in opposition to forgetting. But the Torah's goal in remembering is not simply establishing an absence of forgetfulness. The Torah never seeks the absence of something, rather the fullness of something.