Can Forgetting Help You Remember?
Four times a year, I attend the Yizkor service at synagogue. Yizkor in Hebrew denotes “remembrance,” and the official name of the service, Hazkarat Neshamot, means a “remembering of souls.” During the service, I call to mind loved ones who have died—parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, close friends—reliving shared times that were cherished, and some that were fraught. I think about what I learned from these people, several of whom were in my life from my first moments of awareness. I recall being taught to swim by my father, hearing my pious Russian grandmother’s tearful account of the Kishinev pogrom, standing by my father’s bedside as a medical student in an underequipped community hospital as he suffered a fatal heart attack. The Yizkor service at my synagogue ends with the Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, and with a call to perform deeds of loving-kindness in memory of the departed.
Many religions and cultures have rituals structured around remembrance, a fact that suggests how central the ability to remember is to our sense of self, both as individuals and as communities. But how accurate are our memories, and in what ways do they truly shape us? And why does some of what we remember come to us easily, even unbidden, while other things remain maddeningly just out of reach, seeming to slip even further away the more we struggle to summon them?
Esta historia es de la edición May 20, 2024 de The New Yorker.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición May 20, 2024 de The New Yorker.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Age of Anxiety
The love songs of Billie Eilish.
A Reporter at Large – You Make Me Sick
How corporate scientists discovered—and then helped to conceal—the dangers of forever chemicals.
OLD ENGLISH
“Player Kings,”\"The Cherry Orchard,” and \"London Tide.”
THOROUGHLY MODERN
Yuja Wang uses her star power to lead audiences out of their comfort zones.
THE PERFECTIONIST
Why we're still catching up to Brancusi.
DESERT ISLAND
Tastes of Hawati abound in Las Vegas.
HIGHER AND HIGHER
To preserve humanity—and the planet—should we give up growth?
MAXED OUT
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.”
WOMAN, FROG, AND DEVIL
January Wojnicz, a retired civil servant and a landowner, was a splendid man, as they said in Lwów, handsome and dignified.
THE STASI FILES
Piecing together the secrets of East Germany’s past.