Remembering: Jewish History and Jewish Memory

Why does telling history of events as they actually happened not play a role in Judaism? Why are historians never the first preservers of Jewish collective memory? This book is a historical masterpiece that studies the issue of collective memory. It has won the National Jewish Book Award. The book provides a panoramic survey of Jewish memory and the compilation of Jewish history from ancient times to the present, and systematically summarizes the ways in which the Jewish nation participates in the past. The author makes an important distinction between history and memory. He believes that if Herodotus is the "father of history" in the West, then the Jews are the "father of memory" in the West. The Jews are a nation of memory, not of history. The Jewish nation has a Bible, oral teachings, and oral laws, but almost no history books. This book is written for anyone—Jewish or not—who is curious about the ambiguous relationship between history, nation, and collective memory. In modern society, the important status of history is not necessarily taken for granted, and memory has its own path.