Remember Us for Life
For the past month, there has been a melody accompanying me. It is a melody for Ata Zocher, from our Rosh Hashana prayers:
אַתָּה זוֹכֵר מַעֲשֵׂה עוֹלָם וּפוֹקֵד כָּל־יְצֽוּרֵי קֶֽדֶם
You remember all the deeds of the world… every creation from the beginning of time
I find myself singing it aloud as I put towels in the dryer, as I tie my shoes, carrying it around with me like something I forgot to put away. A melody about God remembering.
And lately, that melody has been bringing another memory back to me: on motsei Rosh Hashanah about 10 years ago, I was sitting with my father in his study; he had found for me a video of the Israel Philharmonic playing music of the Modzitz chasidim. We sat listening together, and they began to play, also from our Rosh Hashanah prayers, זָכְרֵנוּ לְחַיִּים Zochreinu L’Chaim— Remember us for life.
I remember that evening. I remember the orchestra–the cellos and violins, the tender sweep of the bows… I remember sitting together, amidst sfarim and science books, and yellow notepads of grandson-math lessons, singing along in soft voices –the melody stirring our emotions, while we didn’t say anything with words.
And now, when we sing Zochreinu L’Chaim, I remember that moment.
How does a moment from the past, a moment that is over, become inscribed in us this way, and continue to remain present?
Memory is a strange, extraordinary thing. One of the things that first drew me to become a neuropsychologist was the complexity of memory—how sensitive it is, how powerful it is, how fragile–and because of that, beautiful and precious– it can be.
We tend to think of memory as something that happens inside our brains. We experience something, and somehow our neurons preserve a representation of it so that we can bring it back later.
But on Rosh Hashanah, we ask God to remember us.
זָכְרֵנוּ לְחַיִּים — Remember us for life.
What can it mean to ask God to remember us?
God doesn’t have neurons… as far as we know. God may not even have past and present in the way we do. God doesn’t forget, in the way humans do. As we sing in Ata Zocher
אֵין שִׁכְחָה לִפְנֵי כִסֵּא כְבוֹדֶֽךָ There is no forgetting, before your throne of glory.
So what are we asking for when we say to God, “Remember us”?
As we continue through Zichronot prayers, the part of our Rosh Hashanah service called “memories,” we find the beautiful, lilting words of the prophet Yirmiyahu:
זָכַרְתִּי לָךְ חֶסֶד נְעוּרָיִךְ
אַהֲבַת כְּלוּלֹתָיִךְ
לֶכְתֵּךְ אַחֲרַי בַּמִּדְבָּר
בְּאֶרֶץ לֹא זְרוּעָה
I remember for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your bridal days, how you followed Me into the wilderness…
זָכַרְתִּי לָךְ I remember for you.
First we ask God to remember us, but then, we remind God of the memories we share.
It’s not about whether God has forgotten; it’s about how we remember each other, and how we remember for each other.
And this may help us understand what we are asking God for on Rosh Hashanah. We are not simply saying, “God, please don’t forget that I exist.” We are asking: God, remember for me. Hold my life. Hold the things I’ve done. Hold the people I’ve loved. Hold the moments that mattered. Hold even the things that are painful to remember.
There are things about ourselves that we might actually like God to forget. On the day of judgment, we might imagine that the best thing would be for God not to remember everything–especially our mistakes, our meltdowns, our hidden faults.
But that isn’t quite what our Rosh Hashanah prayers ask for. We say:וְאֵין שִׁכְחָה לִפְנֵי כִסֵּא כְבוֹדֶךָ There is no forgetting before You. Nothing about us is forgotten, before your throne, God. The throne from which all our souls come. There is a comfort in knowing that God remembers all these things for us.
Why does being remembered matter so much to us?
In a touching Midrash in Rut Rabbah, the sages wonder, how might the figures of the Torah have acted if they had known, while they were living their lives, that God would one day write their stories into the Torah?
The Torah tells us that Reuben saved Joseph from his brothers. But had Reuben known that God would one day write about that moment in the Torah, the Midrash imagines, he would have carried Joseph on his shoulders all the way back to his father!
And when Aaron went out to meet Moshe, the Torah tells us, “he rejoiced in his heart.” But had Aaron known that God would record that moment, he would have greeted Moshe with drums and dancing!
Knowing that something will be remembered can change the way we live the moment.
But then the Midrash turns from their lives to ours. Their acts were written into the Torah. But what about all the acts of goodness that happen now, unnoticed and unrecorded? Who remembers those?
לְשֶׁעָבַר הָיָה אָדָם עוֹשֶׂה מִצְוָה וְהַנָּבִיא כּוֹתְבָהּ, וְעַכְשָׁיו כְּשֶׁאָדָם עוֹשֶׂה מִצְוָה מִי כּוֹתְבָהּ
In the past, when someone performed a mitzvah, a prophet would write it down. But now, when someone performs a mitzvah, who writes it down?
And they answer: Elijah writes it down, and the Holy One, blessed be He, affixes the seal.
No deed gets forgotten.
And the Midrash brings a prooftext from Malachi:
וַיַּקְשֵׁ֤ב יְהֹוָה֙ וַיִּשְׁמָ֔ע וַ֠יִּכָּתֵ֠ב סֵ֣פֶר זִכָּר֤וֹן לְפָנָיו֙ לְיִרְאֵ֣י יְהֹוָ֔ה וּלְחֹשְׁבֵ֖י שְׁמֽוֹ׃…
And GOD has listened and heard, and a sefer zikaron, a book of remembrance, has been written….
A sefer zikaron, a book of remembrance.
Those very words are echoed in the Rosh Hashana prayer Unetaneh Tokef:
וְתִזְכֹּר כָּל הַנִּשְׁכָּחוֹת
וְתִפְתַּח אֶת סֵפֶר הַזִּכְרוֹנוֹת
“You remember all that has been forgotten, and You open the Book of Remembrance.”
A book takes something ephemeral and gives it permanence beyond the moment. So much of our human lives, our actions, our moments, our memories, are fleeting; But – יִּכָּתֵ֠ב סֵ֣פֶר זִכָּר֤וֹן– it is written into a book of remembrance. God remembers for us.
And perhaps we need God to remember for us precisely because we cannot hold onto everything ourselves.
Unetaneh Tokef reminds us how fleeting it is to be human:
כְּחָצִיר יָבֵשׁ — like grass that withers.
וּכְצִיץ נוֹבֵל — like a flower that fades.
כְּצֵל עוֹבֵר — like a passing shadow.
וְכַחֲלוֹם יָעוּף — like a dream that flies away.
On Rosh Hashanah, we remind ourselves that the answer to our fleetingness is not to pretend that we are eternal. But to remember that who we are and what matters can cross the boundaries of time.
That is what God’s remembrance can mean for us: that our moments, our actions, our relationships, are held beyond the moment in which they occurred.
But maybe there is something in God’s remembering that teaches us about our own.
Because we do something like this for one another, too.
We often think of memory as something we carry inside ourselves, in our own individual minds. But maybe memory is larger than that.
We remember for one another.
There are things about the people we love that they may no longer remember, but we remember them. And there are things about ourselves that we may one day forget, but that does not mean they disappear.
Our memories may be fleeting because we are finite. But the meaning carried in those memories can move from person to person, from time to time. What we have meant to one another is held by one another.
Maybe this is what it means to be written into a Book of Remembrance. We remember for others, and others remember for us.
And this active remembering is an act of love. As we say at the end of the Zichronot prayers, from Jeremiah:
אִם יֶלֶד שַׁעֲשׁוּעִים
כִּי מִדֵּי דַבְּרִי בּוֹ
זָכֹר אֶזְכְּרֶנּוּ עוֹד
עַל כֵּן הָמוּ מֵעַי לוֹ
Is Ephraim not My precious son, a child of delight? For whenever I speak of him, I remember him still; therefore My innermost being is stirred for him.
God remembers His relationship with the people, remembers us like one would a precious child– כִּי מִדֵּי דַבְּרִי בּוֹ–talking about him, and remembering him even more–keeping the memory present, keeping the relationship present, feeling it present in his innermost being.
That is what we are doing on Rosh Hashanah.
We are stirring our memories.
We are reawakening the memories that remind us of our relationships—with God, with the people we love, with the people who have shaped us, with the lives we have been given.
We are reminding ourselves what matters.
And perhaps that is what זָכְרֵנוּ לְחַיִּים can mean, when we say to God, today in our prayers, “Remember us for life.”
By asking God to remember us for life, we are asking to become people who remember what matters. To hold memories for each other. To stir our innermost beings, as we remember the loves of our life. To live in such a way that precious parts of us will be carried forward in the lives of others.
So when a moment matters, let yourself know that it matters, let it absorb into your soul, speak about it–כִּי מִדֵּי דַבְּרִי בּוֹ– with someone who can help carry the memory. Look at one another and say, in whatever way we say it, let’s remember this.
I must have been doing some version of that as my father and I sat listening to the orchestra that night—letting the moment be inscribed in me, somehow knowing: I want to remember this.
And maybe we can turn to God and say it too: Let’s remember this.
Zochreinu Lechaim. May we remember for life. And may we all be remembered for life.
