The Slenderest Thread of Memory
by Corina Dross
In parsha Ki Tavo we are at a transition point. Moses, near the end of his life, is preparing the Israelites to go on without him. The years of wandering in the desert are drawing to a close and he envisions a world he will not live to see: a land of milk and honey. In this parsha full of instructions and admonitions, blessings and curses, Moses has a lot to say to future generations. It’s a poignant moment, reminding me of my own elders who are often full of anxious instruction for me.
In his instructions to the Israelites, Moses’ vision is sharp and granular in some details, out of focus in others. First, he advises how and when to make offerings. The timing is precise—as soon as the first fruits are ready to be harvested. These would probably be herbs, legumes, and more importantly barley and wheat. The place for this offering is less clear. As Moses puts it “where your G-d יהוה will choose to establish the divine name.” That there will be a priest is clear. Who the priest will be at this time, less so. But at this time and place, the future generations are to offer a basket of first fruits to this priest. These are the important steps to remember. Next come the words.
What we say at this point is crucial. We’re entering a holy space, and we have to announce ourselves. Moses gives us a ritual formula to recite, recalling the exodus from Egypt and who our ancestors are. But how he does so is strange; he doesn’t mention the patriarchs Abraham or Isaac or Jacob, much less any of the matriarchs. What he says instead is so unusual several schools of translation have risen up around it.
In Hebrew, the phrase is: אֲרַמִּי֙ אֹבֵ֣ד אָבִ֔י (Arami oveid avi). אָבִ֔י (avi), my father, is clear. אֲרַמִּי֙ אֹבֵ֣ד (Arami oveid) is sometimes translated to describe a wandering, nomadic, Aramean ancestor. As the Jewish Publication Society puts it, “My father was a fugitive Aramean.” In other translations, the meaning is entirely different. This difference hinges on the word אֹבֵ֣ד (oveid) which can mean mean both going astray, as in nomadic wandering, or to perish and be destroyed. So we have the Kehot Chumash translating this same phrase as “An Aramean sought to be the destroyer of my forefather.” The explanation here, offered by the translator, is that Jacob spent twenty years in Aram before he had to flee an enraged Laban.
These translations exist side-by-side in our tradition. In this special set of instructions Moses gives us, in this phrase whose words we’ve preserved across so many generations and still include in our yearly seders, the meaning of אֲרַמִּי֙ אֹבֵ֣ד אָבִ֔י has been lost. Perhaps our father was a wandering Aramean. Perhaps our father was murdered by an Aramean, or an Aramean wished him murderous harm. This is a strange lineage, with only the tenuous connection to Laban to offer any through line back to the stories we know.
It’s uncomfortable to come up against these holes in memory. Not knowing what Moses meant here, we may assume that we—those future generations he so anxiously wanted to instruct—have forgotten something important. But it’s also possible that Moses, an old man here, has forgotten something important. He may be speaking as my elders with altered cognition do, confusing names or forgetting the sequence of events. In his anxiety to transmit everything he can so we can remember it and perform it, there may be something he is unable to transmit because he no longer has the capacity.
I have always feared memory loss and altered cognition. I grew up reading neurologist Oliver Sacks’ vivid and alarming stories about patients with unusual brain injuries. I cried when I first learned about all the books in the Library of Alexandria that had been burned, devastated at the loss of collective human memory. As a child I imagined that it was possible to amass all human knowledge, all human stories, if we only preserved all the books and then made time to read them. I prided myself on my ability to remember what I read, and often memorized long poems and short plays. My good memory was how I recognized myself. Who was I? I was the one who knew and remembered what I alone knew and remembered. Who would I be if I began forgetting these things?
This is what Moses fears in this parsha—who will the Israelites be without his instruction, without his memory of the right way to do things? Curses may befall them. Without the memories he’s holding for them, they may cease to be themselves.
For many years I’ve lived with chronic migraines that, when severe, can alter my cognition and disrupt my memory. I’ve found treatment that resolves most of the pain and other symptoms but the cognitive disruption is stubborn. Reading is often impossible. Sequential tasks like cooking a meal may proceed slowly and with a lot of wondering what I was about to do next. Time itself feels slack and unspooled. In the fog of a migraine I used to feel that I was no longer myself but something nameless floating above my body, vaguely aware that it was having a hard time. At first this horrified me—my oldest phobia had come true. I would wake up with relief after an episode, feeling myself fully alert and within my body, time ticking away at a normal speed, all my memories and language capacity restored. Over the years, though, I’ve visited this other realm so often that it’s lost its horror. I may feel disappointed when a migraine comes on and do my best to prevent it, but when I’m in it my goal is to be kind to myself. One act of kindness is to remember I am still myself. I’ve taken steps to integrate my floaty, slow migraine self into my fuller sense of self. I look for through lines—What do I remember when I am there? What am I capable of? What can I enjoy in this state? And I find them. Despite the capacity I have temporarily lost, there are many cords anchoring me back into myself. I’ve learned to practice a kind of presence with each moment that I only make time for when I can’t be productive. Recently, I’ve even found myself enjoying how rich my imagination becomes when I’m in this less embodied state.
Moses speaks in this parsha of either blessing or curses, but there are also blessings within curses. The kindness I offer myself when my brain is struggling with altered cognition has taught me kinship with beloved elders whose brains are permanently altered. I’ve looked for and found the through lines where love keeps expressing itself, even when memory and language are untrustworthy. My stepfather, before he had Alzheimer’s, loved to talk with me about my creative ambitions. We would have long conversations where he asked detailed, nuanced questions and nodded and laughed at my answers. Now, when it is hard for him to form a complete sentence, I still tell him about what I’m doing and he laughs and nods in the same old way. He is still very much himself, even though he’s forgotten so much. There are still through lines for connection, however slender. Being in each other’s presence is still a source of joy.
To counter Moses’ anxiety in this parsha, and my own younger anxiety about loss of memory, I turn to a story Elie Wiesel retold about the Chasidic master, the Baal Shem-Tov.
According to the tale, when the Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune coming he would go to a certain part of the forest to meditate. He’d light a fire, say a special prayer with specific words, and a miracle would happen to avert the disaster. In the next generation, his disciple, the Magid of Mezritch, would go to the same place in the forest and say the prayer, but he no longer remembered how to light the fire. Nevertheless, the miracle would be accomplished. In the next generation, Rabbi Moshe-Leib would go into that spot of the forest and say “I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.” The last rabbi in this tale, Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn, spoke to G-d saying “I cannot light the fire and I don’t know the prayer and I can’t even find the place in the forest. But I can tell this story, and that must be sufficient.” And it was.
Next to Moses’ fear that only curses will befall us if we forget the one right way, I like to hold this story’s vision of miracles relying on only the slenderest thread of memory, one anchoring cord when all else feels unmoored. We have forgotten what אֲרַמִּי֙ אֹבֵ֣ד אָבִ֔י is supposed to mean, but we still read this text and discuss it, and within this act of forgetting we are able to access a different kind of presence with the text, and a different sense of tenderness for ourselves and for Moses.
I’m an artist, writer, facilitator, educator, and consulting astrologer. My work is informed by an intersectional, queer lens and I offer tools for people to access their fullest capacity in challenging times. I draw my spiritual lineage from Jewish mysticism and earth-based spirituality. I draw my political lineage from disability justice, autonomous organizing, and solidarity with Black liberation. In my relational and artistic work I strive to honor the fullness and nuance of what is real, while reaching for what is possible.
