Two ways of ritualization -Transgenerational Memory in our time

Two ways of ritualization – Transgenerational Memory in our time © Mordechay Lewy The leading question before us is how to shape a culture of memory for any near future in order not to forget a traumatic event of gigantic dimension which is called, for the sake of keeping its uniqueness, –SHOA. We know that forgetting is human. Animals do not have anything to forget as they do not have memory unless they inherit it genetically without knowing it. Pavlovian dogs, dolphins or anthropoid primates developed an ability to remember, some more other less. Remembering is a rational process which requires special mental effort in human brain. In daily life, all age groups are memorizing things by way of repetition or by association with different degree of success. A child is asked to learn by heart his home address or his telephone number. But with the coming of digital age in which knowledge is stored at random, memorizing becomes old fashioned. You keep essential things to remember in your cellular or desktop. A weak battery or an electric breakdown is likely to wipe out memories essential for to store. We live under constant threat to be subjected to electromagnetic amnesia. We live in a chaos of post modernity in which a fact is not considered anymore a fact. In the lack of reverence to any positivistic approach to accumulate facts we are encouraged to deconstruct everything to total fragmentation and refrain from any commitments to essentialism or determinism. In a world dominated by the dictatorship of an ill-defined political correctness not only facts were superseded by opinions, but all opinions became equal. The absolute truth has vanished and may return from exile, waiting for better times. Do you think that such an intellectual environment is conducive to develop a culture of memory? Keeping a culture of memory seems to become a luxury, if not a mission impossible. But even in a more conducive climate, the impact of elapsing time on faded memories is decisive. Time was and still is the main enemy of memory. Being however under such constrains may lead us to review options for shaping new or reinvent parameters of culture of memory. A distinction between religious and secular memory could be helpful to illuminate options ahead of us. Religious memory and its ritualization 1 Under religious memory we understand a remnant of a historical event that is relevant to the belief in God. This memory was canonized or frozen in a text which is repeated at a fixed unchangeable calendar. Such a text we call prayer. The repetition of it we call worship. Any change in its calendar is transforming its identity and may cause, as shown in church history, conflicts, splits, and schism. This process of transforming the historical memory to a religious memory I would like to call ritualization of memory. I suggest employing a sociological pattern of behavior known as routinisation in another context which is the religious behavior by using the term ritualization. I have no intention to entering the classical debate around the relationship between ritual (Frazer) and myth (Eliade) and their functional impact on religious behavior (Durkheim). Routinization refers to automaticity in behavior. Features of automaticity include among others unintentionality and lack of awareness but stand also for efficiency. Ritualization develops through repeated execution of a behavior or in our case by religious rite. Moreover, single behavior steps are not consciously chosen but form a pattern that is stored in memory. This passivity prescribed in behavioristic approach runs counter to the initiative-taking religious believe some of us may share. It might however be a way in which historical events could be remembered for the near future through religious ritual as long it is performed. Memory in monotheist religions To illustrate this option, we may deduce the experience from the monotheist religions which are all historicizing religions. What is at stake here is not the veracity of their history but how they structure historical events into their religious memory. In Christianity and Islam biographical events of the founding fathers Jesus (his birth in Nativity on 24.12 on the year 0 AD according to Gregorian calendar) and Muhammad (his immigration to Medina – the Hegira on twelve rabi al Awal which equals to 24.9. 622 AD), were considered so important that they triggered the initiation of a new calendared era dividing time before or after. In Judaism the beginning of the calendared era is mythical as today it counts 5781 years since the world's creation. There was nothing but chaos, not even time, before creation. Jews are overly sensitive when it comes to keep the memory of key events, they consider essential for one's own religious identity. The Exodus of the people of Israel from 2 Egypt is considered a fact even if it lacks the proof of critical questioning. For Jews, the Exodus is the historical set up for Passover. It is a didactic family feast whose rituals and gestures are designed to reenact the memory of the divine benevolence of what they consider a particular historical event. The Hebrew people were liberated from pharaonic slavery and were brought to the Promised Land. It is a religious duty to tell this story or history (to use Herodot's term) from one generation to another. It is worth noting that Christian Easter, having the celebration the Jewish Passover as its backstage, is designed to commemorate also historical events. Christians reenact Jesus' passion and ritualize the last supper through the Eucharist rite. In performing the Imitatio Christi, the believer castigates himself in an act of corporeal identification and spiritual liberation with the crucified Christ. I bring this example to show that Christianity was not only rooted in Judaism, but that Christian rituals inherited traces of the Jewish pattern of keeping historical events in memory. The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, so traumatic for Jews also for its consequences, is commemorated as a full night and day fasting (Ta'anit) which is dedicated to lament about the destruction itself- the 9th of Av. This day of mourning is prescribed first in the Mishna Tractate Ta'anit since tradition attributes it to the fire put by Titus which destroyed the second temple in the year 70. This event came about after the end redaction of the Old Testament. There is reason to believe that due to the vicinity of this date to an older fast day, set on 7th of Av (mentioned by the post Babylonian exile prophet Zacharias, 7:19), which commemorated the burning the first Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (Book Kings II, 25:8-9), there was no difficulty to fix a joint commemoration, even if 500 years separated both events. Ritualized memory by religion may however not always be a safe bet to commemorate events for ever. Local massacres, blood libels and pogroms which befell local Jewish communities, were commemorated often on local level only. The pogroms initiated by Bogdan Khmelnitsky in 1648-49, which decimated the number of Jews in Great Poland (in today's Ukraine), were commemorated by the Jews in Poland on the 20th of Sivan with special fast and prayers. This day of commemoration is almost forgotten, as during the 20th century the Nazis annihilated those communities. Other traumatic event as the SHOA were able to overshadow such a remote memory. 3 The ritual of observing the fast became part with the historical commemoration. As time has elapsed, the command to observe the fast became more important. Usually, one observes because tradition commands it, what for, becomes secondary. Memory was formalized and canonized, so that they were fixed to all future generations of observing Jews. One regional pogrom threat became however a commemoration fast which was shared by all Jews. It is the fast day of Ester (Ta'anit Ester) who rescued with her uncle Mordechay the Jews in Persia from Hamman's intention to annihilate them. Although this local fast was mentioned in the Book of Ester (4:16 and 9:31), it was introduced as a general fast day in the Middle Ages and fixed on the 13th Adar, three days before Purim. It is not considered a severe fast and is restricted only to day light. I assume that contemporaneous relevance has invoked other communities to share the memory of Queen Esther. On the 3rd of Tishrei a fast day is held until today to commemorate the assassination of Governor Gedaliah ben Ahikam. After the destruction of the first Temple, the Babylonian king installed Gedaliah to rule the remnant Jewish population in Judea. Only two months has passed and Gedalia was assassinated by fellow Jews. Therefore, the Babylonians decided to exile all the Jews who remained the Land of Israel. This politically motivated murder revealed the danger of fraternal war. This event dated to 583 BC is considered the beginning of Babylonian captivity. A day of fast was installed accordingly and is kept until today. The motives of fraternal war related to Gedaliah’s murder regained relevance after the political assassination of the late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in 1995. It is still open how the Israeli citizens will shape within time the commemoration of Rabin's assassination. Will it be turned to religious ritualization with prayers and fasting or will it keep the commemoration in its secular parameters. Gedalia's assassination was molded into religious ritualization because that was the known expression of public mourning during its time. But if we look at Jewish holidays, they can be divided in two categories of motivations, one commemorating historical events, the other celebrating a part of agrarian cycle of the year, (sowing, harvest, etc). The original cycle of agrarian celebrations is usually underlying the commemoration of a historical event. Best example is Shavuot which was originally the feast of the harvest but at the same time has been devoted to the 4 receiving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. This feast was adopted by the Zionist pioneers who devoted themselves to toil the land and to found kibbutzim from the 1920s on in the parameter of an agrarian feast of celebrating the harvest. This is a modern example of how historical- religious commemoration got back its original agrarian meaning with its own rituals. This tradition is likely to fade away with the decline of the agrarian dimension of the kibbutzim, as the rituals were never canonized but remained open to the creativity of the organizers, artists or choreographs. What are then the ingredients of secularized commemorations which make them less sustainable compared with religious one? Secular memory Under secularized memory we understand that a remnant of a historical event is considered relevant to the collective identity of a given group, such as a nation. This remnant deserved to be kept in memory. It is becoming mythical by shaping a meaningful space in a monumental structure, by fixing a calendar and a reoccurring ritual which becomes a state sponsored ceremony. Historical veracity is less required for keeping it mythical. Ritualization of religious memory is easy to recognize by an annual reoccurring festivity, cult, or worship. It has its own body language through corporeal gestures, standing, sitting, prostrating, special dress, special head cover, and verbal repetitions of canonized texts of prayers. Keeping memory in such a way becomes very formalized and impersonal but may not fade away. How would a secularized ritualization of memory look like? In order not to fade away it tries to adopt a religious body language. We should look at prevailing secular commemorations among different nations since secular commemoration and ceremonies are essential ingredients in forming a nation. In the USA, the commemoration of Thanksgiving has been always understood as a national commemoration and not a religious one. It remains to be seen if the traumatic commemoration of the events in Ground Zero will get religious expression or will be deliberately held as a place of secular commemoration. The two versions can live next to another if they do not demand exclusivity. In France, the secular ritualization of the national day on 14th of July, with a military parade through the Champs Élisées 5 avenue, or the veneration of the French national heroes in the Pantheon in Paris are exclusively secular. This stands in conformity with the French post revolutionary state ideology of laicité. It serves as a model of national ceremonies for many countries throughout the world, especially if they were under French colonial rule. The cult of the fallen heroes for the nation is considered as a main expression of secular ritualization. The glorification of someone who lost his life as a martyr for his nation is occupied by the state and not by the church. In Rome, the main national monument next to Capitoline Hill - is called Altar of the Nation. Often gestures of secular ceremonies were nevertheless taken from the arsenal of religious body language. Sometimes it looked banal if we remember the ritualized weeping of the North Korean mass-mourning. But secular rituals are subject to the changing fate of nations. Many of Germany's national commemoration sites became sidelined after the Second World War for obvious reasons. Monumental sites like the memorial to the Battle of the Nations during the Napoleonic wars in 1813 in Leipzig, a memorial which was in the year of its completion 1913 the biggest site in Europe, is hardly frequented. The same can be said about Wallhalla temple overlooking the Danube next to Regensburg, which was inaugurated in 1842 as a national Pantheon. They lost relevance and their significance is fading away. The ritualization process in its secular version was identified with an ideology which lost its reputation and popular support. Religious memory resists time constrains within longer periods. Would it not be a matter of belief, which you may share or not, the vehicle of religious ritualization could be a viable instrument for keeping a culture of memory longer alive. Will a concentration camp become a sacred religious space? We all know that time is the enemy of keeping memory. As time is passing by, we must assess the significance of generations as a vehicle to transport the memory. Traumatic memories as the Shoah, are characterized by different reactions among following generations accordingly. The first generation of the victims and the survivals themselves, were marked by a traumatic silence. The second generation of the off springs was the one who got active because they were afraid of the biological disappearance of the first generation which did not yet tell their stories. This second generation after Shoah, was the one who established the culture of memory we know today. It is a secular one, which reflects a-religious mood of the public space since decades. The third generation which is taking over now is characterized by a certain 6 polarization between hyperactivity or increasing indifference. This present polarization is triggering a question how the memory should be kept for future generations. What options do we have, can we choose them at all? What would be the better one in terms of viability to keep Shoah in memory? What does it entail to ritualize memory in religious or secular categories? Are they contradictory, and how can they be reconciled? These remain open questions. What becomes clear is that we are afraid that without ritualization in whatever form memory will fade away. * * * * * 7