Benjamin Miller
In many siddurim, following the morning service, six remembrances are printed, each one a verse commanding us to remember (or not to forget) something. They are:
- The Exodus from Egypt: “. . .So that you shall remember the day when you went out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life” (Deuteronomy 16:3).
- The Revelation at Sinai: “But beware and watch yourself very well, lest you forget the things that your eyes saw, and lest these things depart from your heart, all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children and to your children’s children—the day you stood before the L‑rd your G‑d at Horeb” (Deuteronomy 4:9-10).
- Amalek’s attack on Israel: “You shall remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you went out of Egypt, how he happened upon you on the way and cut off all the stragglers at your rear, when you were faint and weary, and did not fear G‑d. [Therefore,] it will be, when the L‑rd your G‑d grants you respite from all your enemies around [you] in the land which the L‑rd, your G‑d, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:17-19).
- The Golden Calf and rebelling in the desert: “Remember, do not forget, how you angered the L‑rd, your G‑d, in the desert…” (Deuteronomy 9:7).
- God’s punishment of Miriam: “Remember what the L‑rd, your G‑d, did to Miriam on the way, when you went out of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 24:9).
- The Sabbath: “Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it” (Exodus 20:8).
The order of these remembrances is curious. It is not chronological, nor does it follow the order of the appearance of the events in the Torah; it also does not follow the order of the verses being cited to remember the events. What is the effect of remembering these things together, and, specifically, in this particular order?
Below, I offer a reflection on how the arc of the six remembrances offers us an antidote for an unhealthy presentism that has plagued the Jewish people since the time of Egypt. I will argue that embedded in these remembrances is a program to live beyond the panic and chaos of any crisis that happens to be in the present, by remaining squarely focused on the Torah education of children infused with certainty in the future.
Remembrance #1: The Day You Left Egypt: Children are the Key to Redemption
The first remembrance in the order it appears in the siddur is that of the Exodus from Egypt:
So that you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt as long as you live. (Deut. 16:3)
We begin with the remembrance of the day we left Egypt, perhaps because this day offers us an archetype not just for all future redemptions but for all future days, insofar as each day offers the possibility of a unique redemption.
The question is, what can one learn from the day we left Egypt about how to accomplish this daily redemption? The Israelites left Egypt in the following way:
… at the end of the four hundred and thirtieth year, to the very day, all the ranks of God (kol tzivot Hashem) departed from the land of Egypt. (Ex. 12:41)
Indeed, the Torah repeatedly uses the bolded expression above to describe how God is taking out the Jewish people (Ex. 6:26, 7:4, 12:41). Rashi comments on those earlier passages that this expression, “tzivot,” refers to marching in the formation of the tribes (i.e., according to the fathers) (Ex. 6:26). On a simple level, this perhaps alludes to the role that maintaining social structures played in meriting the Exodus (i.e., maintaining language and names, and not speaking gossip, “lashon hara” (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 48:21)). This meaning of tzivot expresses the importance of maintaining our integrity to the past, but there is a subtler meaning of tzivot that Rashi only alludes to later, which completes the recipe for redemption.
Commenting on the verse, “He made the laver of copper, and its stand of copper, from the mirrors of the women who congregated (“be-mar’ot ha-tzove’ot” at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting” (Ex. 38:8), Rashi explains this expression as follows:[1]
The daughters of Israel had in their possession copper mirrors which they would look into when they would beautify themselves. Even those mirrors they did not withhold from bringing for the contribution towards the mishkan. But Moses rejected them because they were made for accomplishing the ends of the Evil Inclination. The Holy One, Blessed is He, said: “Accept them, because these are the dearest to me of all, for by means of them, the women established many legions of offspring in Egypt.” When their husbands would be exhausted by the racking labor imposed upon them by the Egyptians, they would go and bring them food and drink, and feed them. Then, they would take the mirrors, and each one would view herself with her husband in the mirror, and entice him with words, saying, “I am handsomer than you.” By these means, they would bring their husbands to desire, and would have relations with them, and conceive and give birth there, as it is said, “Under the apple tree I aroused you.” This is what is meant by that which is said, “with the mirrors of those who congregated (be-mar’ot ha-tzove’ot). The kiyyor (laver) was made of them, because it is meant to make peace between man and wife, to give drink from the water in it to one whose husband warned her against secluding herself with another man, and she nonetheless secluded herself with him… Thus did R. Tanhuma expound.
Rashi’s explanation gives us the other half of the story that his simple explanation of the term “tzivot” (Ex. 6:26) left out. By connecting “kol tzivot Hashem” to the laver (kiyyor) and R. Tanhuma’s explanation, Rashi alludes to what is taught in Sotah (11b) with regard to women and the taking of water:
Rav Avira taught: In the merit of the righteous women that were in that generation, the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt… And they would then take what they prepared to their husbands, to the field, and would bathe their husbands and anoint them…
In remembering the day we left Egypt, we remember that we left Egypt in “ranks.” This formation as tribes alludes to the fathers, but the very existence of the children alludes to the mothers. We thereby remember that we were only redeemed in the merit of the righteous women of that generation who, despite impossible circumstances and no clear picture of how a future redemption would come about, nevertheless not only knew with certainty that such a redemption would indeed transpire, but acted on that knowledge at great personal risk to themselves.
In short, this dynamic of remembering a past in which our ancestors both honored their past and looked towards the future, serves as a daily recipe for redemption as well as a foundation for the other remembrances, which in turn gives us greater insight into how to reconcile this past and future with the various causes and consequences of this delicate balance breaking down. As we will see throughout, children represent the fullest expression of this unification.
Remembrance #2: Not Forgetting Sinai and the Children, Guarantors of the Torah
The redemption remains incomplete because the righteous women of that generation bore children conditional upon a future redemption not yet completed at the Exodus. As the Mishnah teaches, the freedom which began on Pesach was only fully realized in the ultimate freedom, the study of Torah (Pirkei Avot 6:2).
But at Mount Sinai, before the Israelites could achieve this freedom of Torah study, God demanded guarantors that the Israelites would observe the Torah before He gave it to the Jews (Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah 1:4). The Israelites first suggested their ancestors. God did not reject this suggestion but instead responded that the ancestors too need guarantors. This alludes to the importance, but incompleteness, of merely preserving the social structures of the fathers. The Israelites only merited to receive the Torah on the promise that the children would be the guarantors through their study. The beauty of this midrash is that the study of the children is not merely a means to an end for the children’s future observance (“Train a child according to his way; even when he grows old, he will not turn away from it (Proverbs 22:6)). Rather, a child’s studies are the best guarantee of the parents’ observance.
This message is reinforced in the wording of the remembrance:
But beware and watch yourself very well, lest you forget the things that your eyes saw, and lest these things depart from your heart, all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children and to your children’s children—the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb. (emphasis added)
In light of the above discussion, we can understand this verse as saying, “And how will you prevent yourself from forgetting this Torah? By teaching it to your children…” There are many ways we can understand this insight. Those who learn in order to teach will merit to learn and to teach (Pirkei Avot 4:6). Furthermore, our children hold us accountable, lest we deviate from the rules we try to impose on them, a particularly strong form of how we learn the most from our students (Ta’anit 7a). This is perhaps further reinforced by the fact that, in this verse, Moses is speaking to the generation who were the children at Sinai.
The irony this midrash brings home is that only by being focused on the future, i.e., the Torah education of children, can we in fact preserve our own fidelity to teachings of the past. It seems simple enough, but, as we will see in the next remembrances, the panic of the present easily causes us to lose sight of the future.
Remembrance #3: Amalek’s Attack and the Redemption of Purim
The third remembrance is of Amalek and the commandment to destroy the Amalekites completely. The commandment in Parashat Zakhor to remember Amalek is read directly before Purim because Haman was a descendant of Agag, king of Amalek (Megillah 13a). We might also add that Mordekhai was a Benjaminite, as was King Saul, who failed to kill Agag as commanded (Meg. 13a). Purim is therefore a kind of rematch to fulfill this third remembrance.
Purim is also the completion of the process which began at Mount Sinai. As the Sages of the Talmud teach (Shabbat 88a), God turned Mount Sinai over their heads and coerced the Jews into accepting the Torah, such that it was only at the time of Purim, when they accepted it willingly, that the “marriage” was valid.
Following the logic of the first two remembrances, both the sin which led to Amalek’s attacking us, and the ultimate remedy to destroy Amalek, can be explained. The sin that gave rise to the threat of Amalek was the betrayal of our fundamental commitment to the future redemption. This sin is ultimately overcome through the Torah study of children.
The Midrash (Esther Rabbah 7:18) explains that the Jews were destined for destruction because the men attended the banquet of King Ahashveirosh, as described at the beginning of the Book of Esther. The text emphasizes that the food and drink were “according to the law,” i.e. kosher (Meg. 13b). What, then, was so bad about this? Rabbi Yosei Bar Hanina expounds that King Ahashveirosh held the banquet to celebrate the end of what he understood to be 70 years since the Temple was destroyed and the Jews went into exile. Jeremiah had prophesied that the Jews would be redeemed after 70 years. King Ahashveirosh, thinking this deadline had passed, was celebrating the seeming falsification of the prophecy, thereby implying permanency of the exile. The Jewish men who attended were either bought in or were too fearful to object. Either way, their actions implicitly denied a certainty in the future redemption. Without that commitment to the future, it doesn’t matter if they dressed as Jews and ate as Jews, because they acceded to the arbitrary whims of political power and, therefore, were open to complete destruction by Amalek.
It should therefore not surprise us that the Jews were redeemed on Purim in the merit of the study of the children (Esther Rabbah 9, commenting on Esther 5:1). This was the completion of the process begun at the Exodus from Egypt, as made explicit by the Midrash (Esther Rabbah 8, commenting on Esther 4:15-17). Esther instituted her three days of fasting so that the third day coincided with the start of Pesach. When Mordekhai objected, Esther retorted, “Elder of Israel, why is it Passover?” By gathering the children on the eve of Passover, Mordekhai was recommitting the Jewish people to the guarantee made at Sinai, which was in turn the fulfillment of God’s promise in Egypt.
Remembrance #4: How it All Comes Apart
By following the logic of the first three remembrances, we come to a unique understanding of one of the most baffling episodes in Jewish history, the sin of the Golden Calf. Simply put, the sin of the Golden Calf was possible because the men ignored the women, despairing of the future that was the precondition of the Exodus, and were therefore open to be ruled by arbitrary authority. That the cause of the sin was lacking precisely what they needed to merit the Exodus from Egypt is alluded to in how the fourth remembrance is edited in the siddur. The going out of Egypt is mentioned in the verse from which the fourth remembrance is taken (Deut. 9:7), and yet, this part of the verse is not printed in any siddur (neither nusah Ashkenaz nor Sefarad) that features the Six Remembrances (at least not that I have found).
In Egypt, the men showed a short-sightedness and sense of doom that led them to not want to procreate, such that the women had to go to extraordinary lengths to cajole them (as explained in the Rashi we discussed in remembrance #1). In Persia, the men who attended the banquet showed a nihilism about the future because of a miscalculation of the 70-year period after which they were promised to return to Israel. It therefore shouldn’t surprise us that the root of the sin of the Golden Calf came after the men similarly, prematurely, despaired of Moses’ return.
Nor should Aaron’s attempted solution surprise us either. When the Jews confronted Aaron to build the Golden Calf, he instructed them, “Remove the golden earrings that are on the ears of your wives…” but they did not do so; rather, they simply gave their own (Ex. 32:2-3). Midrash Tanhuma (Pinhas 7:1) explains that Aaron did not simply want to delay them, but calculated that if they had shared their plans with their wives, the wives would have stopped it (in a way that he clearly could not). This would be consistent with Aaron’s status as a peacemaker between husband and wife (Rashi on Num. 20:29). This rejection of the future is here explicitly connected to cutting the women out of the decision-making.
Of course, sadly, we know that Aaron failed to deter the men. But, one may ask, how do we know that the women would have disagreed? Midrash Tanhuma (Pinhas 7:1) says explicitly that the women protested. Even if we didn’t have this source, we could still infer it: Rashi points out at the building of the Mishkan that the men brought their wives with their jewelry still on them (Ex. 35:22). According to the view that the Mishkan was an atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf (based on Rashi’s chronology, commenting on Ex. 31:18), this makes perfect sense. The involvement of the women in the building of the Mishkan diametrically opposed their exclusion from the sin of the Golden Calf.
This dynamic of the men who didn’t believe in a path forward, turning away from the women who did, is not unique to the sin of the Golden Calf, but indeed plays out across the various ways in which,
How you angered the Lord, your God, in the desert; from the day that you went out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebelling against the Lord. (Deut. 9:7)
In the sin of the spies, too (Midrash Tanhuma, Pinhas 7:1), we find that Moses specifically sent men (Num. 13:2). Indeed the choice to send men is significant, as this is one of the sources from which we derive the concept of minyan, specifically as an atonement for men. Perhaps, had Moses sent women, they would not have sinned because, as the daughters of Tzelofhad showed us, the women loved the land. Indeed, none of the women were punished for the sin of the spies (Rashi on Num. 26:64).
Even more examples can be given of this point regarding the sins in the desert (e.g., the men straying after Midianite women). In all cases, the belief of the women in a future redemption is at the heart of the salvation of the Jewish people. And, chief among all the prophetesses is, of course, Miriam, to whom we now turn directly.
Remembrance #5: Miriam and the Incomplete Solution
In contrast to remembrance #4, in which the going out of Egypt is mentioned in the source text but not in the siddur, we find the opposite conundrum in remembrance #5. The verse states, “Remember what God did to Miriam on the way out of Egypt.” But what does Miriam’s punishment have to do with leaving Egypt? Miriam’s role in the Exodus was as the leading figure in ensuring the unification of the men and women, and in promoting certainty in the Jewish future. Nevertheless, her punishment for the way she went about criticizing Moses, through lashon hara (refraining from lashon hara is one of three reasons the Jews merited redemption), undermined the very unification she championed. Furthermore, Miriam was unable to accept that there was a place for Moses’ exceptional status as a prophet who was required to always be in the present, thereby requiring a certain kind of “divorce” from the future, implied by being married and having children.
Miriam’s essential role in the Jews’ salvation from Egypt can best be encapsulated in her name, which breaks down to “mar” (bitter) and “yam” (sea). In both cases, Miriam’s role is linked to the women’s essential role in the redemption.
The bitterness, as we know from the Seder, refers to the slavery, and, in particular, Pharaoh’s decree against the male babies. Rashi teaches that when Pharaoh issued this decree, Amram (Miriam, Aaaron, and Moses’ father), who was the leader of the Jewish people, divorced his wife, Yokheved, and all the Jewish men did the same (Ex. 2:1). Miriam rebuked him, saying that his decree was even harsher than Pharaoh’s, for he decreed against all the Jewish children, whereas Pharaoh only decreed against the males (Midrash Rabbah, Shemot 1:13). Arguably, therefore, the bitterest moment for the Jews was not actually at the time of the decree, but at the time of Amram’s response, for only then was the total destruction of the Jewish people at stake. Amram relented and Moses was born, thus also tying this initial role of Miriam to her role in seeing that her baby brother survived. This pattern should be familiar to us, given all we’ve said about the above remembrances and the figurative “divorcing” of men from women, who could not see past the present moment.
The yam (sea) part of Miriam’s name refers, of course, to the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. Miriam led the women in praise of God, and, in contrast to the men, they had instruments ready (Ex. 15:20). Rashi explains that they had taken out instruments because they expected to see miracles. This anticipation of the future repeats the same dynamic we saw earlier, in which the women anticipated the redemption and therefore were willing to have children.
So, we see that Miriam’s great leadership is tied up in the physical reproduction of the Jewish people, this fundamental certainty about the future, and the virtue (greater prophecy?) of the women more generally. We can therefore understand better why, according to Rashi, Miriam would have begun to speak out when her brother, similar to his father, divorced his wife, even if it was so that he could be available to learn from God at all times (Num. 12:1). On some level, perhaps, it must have seemed to Miriam that Moses was repeating what his father had done. Her reasons were essentially good, but the way she went about it was exactly self-defeating, and the application of her principle to Moses’ relationship to his wife was, in fact, incorrect.
Firstly, the way she went about speaking out was not just incorrect, but diametrically opposed to her end goals. If the problem was a lack of connection (to his wife and married life), the sin of evil speech specifically divides. This diametric opposition between the sin of evil speech and the Exodus from Egypt is perhaps hinted to in the Talmud, where it offers the view that when the entire nation brings the Paschal offering in a state of impurity, even a zav (one who has had an gonorrheal emission) could bring it with them, but a metzora (one who has tzara’at, traditionally attributed to evil speech among other sins) cannot (Pesahim 67a). Additionally, in the earlier discussion of the reasons the Jews merited redemption from Egypt, refraining from lashon hara is listed along with not taking foreign clothes and names. Earlier, we said that refraining from speaking lashon hara is an example of maintaining the ethical standards of the fathers, but now we can appreciate it more fully as a mitzvah that specifically ensures harmonious family relations.
Secondly, Moses was different from Amram in two crucial ways. Amram separated from his wife reactively to the despair of the moment, and he inspired others to follow him. Moses separated proactively for the purpose of teaching, and indeed was put in a genuinely exceptional position by the Jews, asking that Moses receive the commandments from God directly on their behalf (at a time when husbands and wives were separated to maintain ritual purity). There is a role for spiritual leaders responsible for the spiritual reproduction of the people, who may thus be removed from the physical reproduction of the people, but they are the exception, not the rule (e.g., R. Shimon Bar Yohai; Berakhot 35b).
We see that the fifth remembrance, then, makes explicit this fundamental lesson about the connection between husband and wife that runs through the first four remembrances. It also introduces the exceptional dynamic that Moses had, wherein he was able to divorce his wife to focus entirely on his spiritual offspring (i.e., the nation as his Torah students). In order to redeem the Jewish people, we need the coming together of the feminine and the masculine, as well as the physical and the spiritual reproduction of the people, what we might call the Miriam and the Moses principles.
If we can reconcile these principles, we could achieve the ultimate Redemption, the final Shabbat.
Remembrance #6: Shabbat, the Ultimate Reconciliation
The Six Remembrances culminate with Shabbat, both the weekly observance, but also the symbol of the world’s completion, the fulfillment of its purpose in the messianic era. For if the Exodus from Egypt was our birth as a nation, and took place only in the merit of those women who believed in and acted on our future, then it stands to reason that our daily remembrance would culminate in Shabbat, which represents both our weekly and ultimate future.
Indeed, the idea of relating each day to Shabbat is manifested in the daily prayers in the fact that, in the Song of the Day, each day is counted in relation to Shabbat. There are two ways we can understand how our current moment relates to that ultimate future, which parallel two attitudes towards what it means to say, “this too is for the best.” We could understand our current moment as a means to a good end, or we could understand this moment as intrinsically good, whatever the outward appearance, with the end merely revealing the deeper good that was there all along. These two attitudes also parallel two different understandings of the value of children’s Torah study. According to the first view, it is instrumentally valuable (i.e., if we teach our children Torah they will not depart from it in the future). According to the second view, the primary value of teaching children Torah is the effect it has on us and the world right now.
What this attitude towards this ultimate future means for our daily conduct can be illustrated by the different practices of Shammai and Hillel (Beitzah 16a):
It is taught: They said about Shammai the Elder that all his days he would eat in honor of Shabbat. If he found a choice animal, he would say: This is for Shabbat. If he subsequently found another one choicer than it, he would set aside the second for Shabbat and eat the first.
However, Hillel the Elder had a different trait, that all his actions, including those on a weekday, were for the sake of Heaven, as it is stated: “Blessed be the Lord, day by day; He bears our burden, our God who is our salvation; Selah.” (Teh 68:20)
Both Shammai and Hillel have the future in mind but, whereas Shammai’s faith in the future causes him to act now for the sake of the future, Hillel’s faith in the future causes him to act in every moment for the sake of that moment.
Hillel’s exceptional quality parallels Moses’ exceptional position as one who needed to be entirely present for revelation in every moment, and therefore couldn’t be involved in marital relations. This is, in a sense, the positive expression of what we have characterized until now as the Israelite men’s tendency to not see the future. But it’s also true that Hillel conceded to Shammai on this point about saving one’s best for Shabbat (Peninei Halakha 2:1). It is not realistic to expect most people to see the intrinsic good in the apparent evil of the moment, and it is perhaps even harder to educate our children on that principle. But regardless of how bad things might be in the moment, we are not allowed to give into the temptations of nihilism or presentism. We are not allowed to get distracted from our fundamental task as Jews at all times and in all places, which is the Torah education of our children.
Conclusion: Living With the Six Remembrances Day by Day
We are living through chaotic times, and this produces anxiety in us and in our children. But, every day, we are called on to step back from the false limits of the moment and realize that we can only bring about a secure future for the world by bringing about children (both literal children and spiritual children, i.e., students) and nurturing them properly in Torah study to make a better world founded on certainty in that better future.
We can therefore understand why the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn, said the following at a farbrengen (Tevet 22, Ha-YomYom):
Just as wearing tefillin every day is a commandment, so too is it an absolute duty for every person to spend a half hour every day thinking about the Torah education of children.
It is clearly a biblical commandment to teach Torah to children, but from where does R. Schneersohn derive that it is daily in the same way as tefillin? The Torah states (Ex. 13:8-9):
And you shall explain to your child on that day, “It is because of what Hashem did for me when I went free from Egypt.” And this shall serve for you as a sign on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead in order that the Teaching of Hashem may be in your mouth—that with a mighty hand God freed you from Egypt.
The Torah juxtaposes the commandment of tefillin to the commandment of specifically teaching your child about “the day” we left Egypt, thereby alluding to the fact that salvation is merited precisely by this teaching. May we all daily wrap our minds, hearts, and hands around providing our Jewish children with a Torah education, infused with fidelity to our past and certainty in our future.
[1] Rashi: The Torah With Rashi’s Commentary Translated, Annotated, and Elucidated (4th ed.), translated by R. Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg, R. Yaakov Petroff, and R. Yoseph Kamenetsky, (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 1999), Vol.2.
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