Shaping the Myth of the Memory of the Shoah: Response to Prof. Saul Friedländer

Abstract

ABSTRACT In response to the historian’s perspective on the transmission of memory, this article proposes a writer’s point of view. Facing the tension between personal and collective memory, especially powerful in the case of the Shoah – a collective event that had imprisoned the individual – the personal dimension is described in this response as a transmission from mother to daughter. Ritual is presented as a genre enabling the shaping of memory for the collective psyche. The foundation myth of the Lurianic Kabbalah is a mode of facing Evil not as a source of fascination, but rather as a definite entity, an aim for struggle and defeat. The Jewish way of shaping the memory of the slavery in Egypt as an ongoing struggle against slavery through laws and designated rituals offers a model for shaping a ritual of Shoah remembrance as both a personal and collective responsibility.