Daf Ditty Pesachim 34: Memory loss vs inattention

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats

It was at Wentworth Place that Keats composed his mysterious and magical
lyric ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, finished his narrative poem The Eve of St
Agnes, and wrote his great odes of spring 1819 including ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

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After mentioning ways in which impure teruma was used, the Gemara mentions other halakhot
pertaining to this issue. Abaye bar Avin and Rav Ḥananya bar Avin taught the tractate of
Terumot in the school of Rabba. Rava bar Mattana met them and said to them: What novel
idea can you say has been taught with regard to Terumot in the school of our Master, Rabba?
They said to him: What is difficult for you?

There must be some issue troubling you that has caused you to ask this question. He said to them:
The following statement that we learned in the mishna in Terumot is unclear: Saplings of teruma
that became ritually impure and were planted are pure such that they do not impart ritual
impurity once they have been planted, but they are prohibited to be eaten as teruma. The
question arises: If they do not impart ritual impurity, why is it prohibited to eat them? If their
impurity has been eliminated then it should be permitted to eat them, like other ritually pure
teruma.

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Abaye bar Avin and Rav Ḥananya bar Avin said to Rava bar Mattana: This is what Rabba said
in explaining this mishna: What does it mean that they are prohibited to be eaten? It means that
they are prohibited to be eaten by non-priests, but a priest may eat them. Once these saplings
are planted, they lose their ritual impurity but retain their status as teruma. Rava bar Mattana
challenged this answer: If this is the case, what is the mishna teaching us with this statement? Is
it teaching us that growths of teruma are considered teruma? It is unnecessary to teach this
principle, as we already learned: Growths of teruma, i.e., produce that grows from teruma that
was planted in the ground, are considered teruma. Why, then, is it necessary to teach this principle
again?

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And if you say as follows: This case is referring to the growths of growths of teruma, i.e., plants
that grew from the original growths of teruma, and what is it teaching us? It is teaching that an
item whose seed does not disintegrate when planted in the ground maintains its teruma status.
While most seeds will disintegrate, other plants, such as onions and garlic, merely continue
growing when planted. In that case, this mishna would be informing us that even the growths of
growths of such plants retain their teruma status.

However, we already learned that as well. As the mishna states: With regard to untithed produce
[tevel], its growths, the produce that grows from it, are permitted in the case of items whose
seed disintegrates; however, in the case of items where the seed does not disintegrate, it is
prohibited to eat even the growths of growths unless they are tithed. There would be no need
for the mishna to teach us this halakha a second time. They were silent and did not have an answer
to this question.

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They said to Rava bar Mattana: Have you heard something in this regard? He said to them:
This is what Rav Sheshet said: What is the meaning of the word prohibited in this context? It
means that it is prohibited for priests, since it has been disqualified for them due to the
diversion of attention. Teruma and other consecrated property must be guarded, and when one
fails to do so, it is treated as though it were impure. Therefore, these teruma saplings are treated
as though they have become impure once the priest diverts attention from them, and they remain
prohibited to him even after another generation grows from them.

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Summary
Terumah that is tamei Rava bar Masna cited a Mishnah that ruled: Terumah plants that became
tmei’im and were subsequently replanted are tehorim as far as transmitting tum’ah to other things,
but they are prohibited to be eaten.1

He then asked Abaye and R’ Chananya the sons of Avin why the plants are prohibited to be eaten
if they are tehorim. After Abaye and R’ Chananya failed to provide a satisfactory answer, Rava
bar Masna explained in the name of R’ Sheishes that the plants are prohibited for consumption
because they were not properly guarded from tum’ah.

The Gemara challenges this explanation because it is only consistent with one explanation of why
terumah becomes invalidated when not guarded properly.

The Gemara digresses and elaborates upon the disagreement between R’ Yochanan and Reish
Lakish regarding the rationale why terumah becomes invalid as a result of inattention.

According to R’ Yochanan it is because of the possibility the terumah came in contact with tum’ah.
According to Reish Lakish its status of being invalid results from the terumah itself. R’ Yochanan
unsuccessfully challenges the position of Reish Lakish.

When R’ Yirmiyah heard the explanation of R’ Sheishes he sharply criticized the Babylonians.
The actual reason the terumah may not be eaten, explained R’ Yirmiyah, is based upon a principle
originally taught regarding liquids, that planting the branches in the ground is not effective in
removing the tum’ah completely.

This principle is examined. Rava cites an example of a stringency applied to holy things.

Rav Avrohom Adler writes:2

1. Growths of terumah have the same status as terumah.

The Gemora states that growths of terumah are terumah. This means that if someone plants
terumah produce in the ground, whatever grows from that produce has the status of terumah. [See
Rambam and Ra’avad (Hilchos Terumos 11:21) regarding how much of the status of terumah they
actually have.] (34a)

2. Growths of tevel (untithed grain) are not forbidden if the tevel itself was destroyed as
a result of the planting.

The Gemora states that growths of tevel produce are not forbidden. This means that if tevel produce
was planted and produced a plant or tree with fruit, one would be able to eat in a temporary fashion
from the plant or tree just like one is allowed to eat in a temporary fashion from anything that has
not been tithed. The fact that its source is tevel is not relative (see Rashi DH “ha’Tevel”). However,

1
https://www.dafdigest.org/masechtos/Pesachim%20034.pdf
2
http://dafnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Pesachim_34.pdf

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if the original tevel was not destroyed by its being planted, its fruits, and the fruits of those fruits
etc., would be forbidden from being eaten (even temporarily) until terumos and ma’asros have
been taken. (34a)

3. When a korban is rendered invalid, the korban is burned right away unless it is only
invalid because of an indirect issue (i.e. the blood was spilled before it was sprinkled).

The Gemora quotes a classic rule regarding korbanos that when a korban itself is rendered invalid
after it is slaughtered, it is burned right away. For example, if part of the avodah (steps involved
in bringing the korban) of the korban was done with intent that the korban should be eaten after
the time allotted by the Torah, the korban is invalid and must be burned. However, if the body of
the korban was kosher, but an external reason, such as the blood being spilled before it could be
sprinkled on the mizbe’ach (altar), made the korban unable to become kosher, the korban is not
burned. It is rather kept overnight so that it will become inedible, and only after it is required to be
burned because it was kept overnight will it actually be burned. (34a – 34b)

4. Although “planting” can be used to make something impure become pure, it is not
effective for the use of kodoshim or terumah.

Rabbi Oshiya taught: If water that was supposed to be used for libations on Sukkos became impure,
it could be joined temporarily to the waters of the kiyor (water supply used to wash the kohanim)
and thereby become pure. It is considered to have been “planted” in the waters of the ground which
are free from being impure, and therefore become pure again. However, this was only if the water
had not yet been designated as kodoshim (but was only being stored to eventually be designated
as such). If it was already designated as kodoshim, the impurity cannot be taken away in this
fashion. The Gemora explains that although regular water would become pure in this fashion, the
Rabbis made a special decree that it is not true for kodoshim. Similarly, the Gemora states:
Terumah that is planted in the ground does not become pure, as the Rabbis made a similar special
law regarding terumah.

Using Defiled Tithes

Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:

The Gemara discusses what can be done with teruma that has become ritually defiled, and now
can no longer be eaten by the kohen. One suggestion is that it can be used by the kohen for fuel,
although care must be taken to ensure that such teruma will not be eaten by mistake. As an
example, the Gemara tells of Abba Shaul who worked kneading dough in the home of Rebbi, and
he would keep the dough warm by burning wheat kernels that were teruma temei’ah – ritually
defiled tithes. Rav Ashi explains that he was careful to first prepare the kernels by cooking them
and dirtying them in order to make sure that no one would come to eat them.

Tosafot point out that the story is odd, since we know that Rebbi was not a kohen. Why
was teruma being used in his house? Some explain that there were kohanim who were part of

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Rebbi’s household, and their presence allowed for use of teruma temei’ah even though others
would benefit, as well. Tosafot Ri”d explains that the laws regarding teruma temei’ah are
Rabbinic in nature, and the sages allowed their use for the public benefit even if there are
no kohanim involved, and in the house of the Nasi – the leader of the Jewish community – the
preparations were considered to be for the public benefit.

Another case discussed on our daf is a Mishna that appears in Massekhet Terumot, which teaches
that a vegetable which was teruma temei’ah and then replanted loses its status as ritually defiled,
but it cannot be eaten. The Gemara grapples with this halakha – if returning it to the ground
removes its tuma, why can it still not be eaten? Several possibilities are raised by our Gemara. The
Gemara records that when Ravin moved from Babylon to Israel he repeated these discussions
to Rabbi Yirmeya, who responded by saying, “Those foolish Babylonians! It is because they live
in a dark country that they record dark teachings!” He concludes that the reason for this is
straightforward – that replanted teruma may remove the tumah, but it does not remove the status
of the vegetable as teruma. Therefore, when the Mishna says that it cannot be eaten, it means that
it cannot be eaten by someone who is not a kohen.

Rabbi Yirmeya was, himself, born in Babylon and moved to Israel, where he studied under the
tutelage of Rabbi Yohanan and his students, and became one of the leading sages there. His
statements are quoted in both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud with such frequency that they
are quoted as “it was taught in Israel.” His quick, sharp-witted tongue on occasion got him in
trouble, to the extent that he was removed from the study hall for a time.

The Gemara (Shabbos 17b) teaches that the rabbis declared that if terumah is planted in the ground,
and it grows, the growth which sprouts forth has the status of terumah.3 The reason for this ruling
is that if we would allow it to be considered a new growth of chullin, this would encourage the
kohen who has in his possession terumah that is tamei to keep it and plant it.

The correct thing for the kohen to do is to dispose of the terumah which is tamei, in order to prevent
any accidental consumption of this terumah. If, however, the terumah can be recycled, so to say,
and produce new growth by being planted, the kohen would not dispose of it.

To prevent this, we remove the incentive of planting the terumah, for the kohen no longer has
anything to gain. Tosafos mentions that this precaution is only in place regarding seeds of grain,
which might produce new growth. If the new plants would be chullin, the kohen stands to gain
significantly, and we must discourage this behavior.
However, saplings of terumah which are tmei’im would only produce a small additional growth,
which does not represent a meaningful profit, and the rabbinic ruling does not apply. Rashi (ibid.)
explains that the rule that the growth of these terumah seeds remains as terumah is that the growth

3
https://www.dafdigest.org/masechtos/Pesachim%20034.pdf

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will have the status of terumah and that it will be tamei as well. Tosafos, however, raises a question
from our Gemara.

Here, Rabba explains that the saplings of terumah which became tmei’im and were then planted
into the ground are prohibited to non-kohanim, but they are permitted for kohanim. If the
explanation of Rashi was correct, these growths would be tmei’im, and therefore prohibited for
kohanim to eat as well.

Alternatively, Tosafos explains that the growth of terumah is deemed to be terumah, but not that
it is tamei. Nevertheless, the rabbinic ruling only applies to seeds, because it is here where the
financial gain stands to be the greatest. The entire pile of grain which is terumah could have been
transformed into chullin, if not for the rabbinical injunction. Saplings, however, do not represent
a significant financial gain by being planted, because it would only be the added growth which
stands to be non terumah, and there is no risk that the kohen may hold on to these saplings just to
gain this small benefit.

Teshuva: Repentance and Return: heise’ach ha-da’at,

Harav Aharon Lichtenstein writes:4

TWO LEVELS OF THE SIN OF FORGETTING

The sin of shikhecha itself is multi-leveled. At the maximal level, there is total obliviousness. A
person is simply unaware that he lives in a universe created by God, grounded metaphysically in
His being, sustained by His aid and His presence. He imagines that he lives in a Never-Never Land
within which he is lord and master, or man collectively is master. The sense of the both immanent
and transcendent presence of God is totally beyond him. This, of course, would entail total
disregard of the range of mitzvot.

There is, however, a second level, one which we might denominate not as shikhecha, but
as heise’ach ha-da’at, a lack of attention. Here we deal not with a total lack of knowledge or
recollection, but with an individual or a community in whose memory the relevant information is
properly stored. If tested, they could probably respond. But they do not actively focus their
attention upon it; their mind is elsewhere, upon other concerns.

The term heise’ach ha-da’at is, of course, a familiar category in Halakha. One might cite
two well-known but contrasting contexts within which it occurs. First, the law of heise’ach ha-
da’at in relation to tefillin: the Rambam writes,

4
https://www.etzion.org.il/en/teshuva-repentance-and-return, transcript by Eli D. Clark. This address was delivered at Yeshiva
University's Gruss Institute in Jerusalem, Tishrei 5748 [1987].

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 One should always feel his tefillin whenever they are upon him, so that he shall not remove
his attention from them even for a moment. (Hilkhot Tefillin 4:14)

Although the prohibition of heise’ach ha-da’at and the obligation of guarding tefillin properly
(deriving from Shemot 13:10) are incumbent upon an individual, the sanctity of tefillin is
unaffected if the tefillin are left unguarded.

Not so with regard to teruma and kodashim (priestly gifts and sacred items), whose
sanctity—at least as far as the permissibility of eating them is concerned—is totally lost, according
to our daf Reish Lakish (Pesachim 34a), if one does not pay attention to them. While R. Yochanan
agrees that one may not eat teruma or kodashim that were not guarded properly, he says that the
reason for this is the possibility that they were defiled by tum’a (impurity) when unguarded. But
were we to know with certitude that they did not come into contact with tum’a, then
the teruma or kodashim could be eaten. Reish Lakish goes beyond this, saying that heise’ach ha-
da’at is a pesul ha-guf, something which disqualifies the item itself. The teruma or kodashim are
defiled by the very fact that they did not receive the kind of attention which their unique status
deserves. Even if we were to know for certain that no tum’a had touched them, the heise’ach ha-
da’at itself removes something of their very special character.

If we ask ourselves, what is the effect of a person’s heise’ach ha-da’at in relation to God,
I would submit, daring as it may sound, that there is, kiveyakhol (as it were), a certain pesul ha-
guf. In a certain sense, the fact that God is ignored does not merely affect the relationship of the
individual to God, but kiveyakhol affects His very presence here. We speak of chillul Hashem,
desecrating the Name, and the Name means the symbolic presence of God. Chillul
Hashem presumably means that in some sense the Name is, objectively speaking, impaired. To the
extent that malkhut Shamayim (Divine kingship) is not fully recognized, kiveyakhol the presence
of the Shekhina is adversely affected.

In a celebrated statement (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tetze 11), Chazal note that in the verse,
“With hand upon the throne of the Lord (kes Y-a), [God swears that He will have a] war with
Amalek from generation to generation” (Shemot 17:16), only a shortened form of God’s Name is
mentioned and not His complete Name. The reason for this is, they explain, that “God’s Name and
His throne are incomplete as long as the name of Amalek has not been blotted out.” As long as
Amalek, which totally ignores the existence of God, exists, then somehow God’s Name is
incomplete. What is said there with regard to Amalek is universally true. Wherever God’s Name
is not recognized, then it is in some sense desecrated. Heise’ach ha-da’at here has some touch
of pesul ha-guf.

INSUFFICIENT APPRECIATION AND IMPROPER EVALUATION

We have, then, two aspects of shikhecha: total obliviousness and inattention. But there is a third
level of shikhecha too. Even when one relates to God and is aware of His presence, he may fail to
apprehend fully and appreciate the significance of that presence and that relation. Hence, he does
not perceive accurately the human situation.

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 Not to perceive that situation properly is a dual fault. It is in one sense an intellectual,
philosophical and theological fault. A person whose perception of reality is one which, while not
devoid of God, nevertheless does not position Him at its epicenter and apex, is incorrect in his
perception of the nature of reality, the structure of the universe, and the quality of human society
and individual existence. But, beyond this intellectual failing, there is a spiritual, if you will, a
moral and religious failing, and this too is to be understood in halakhic terms.

R. Moshe of Coucy, in his work enumerating the 613 mitzvot, the Semag (Sefer Mitzvot
Gadol), describes a dream-vision he had after completing the book:

In the vision an apparition spoke to me and said: You have forgotten in your list
of mitzvot the most important thing! You have counted 365 prohibitions, but you forgot the
most important prohibition: “Beware lest you forget God” (Devarim 8:11).

I had not intended to include this in the list of prohibitions; after all, the Rambam [whom
he follows by and large] had not included it. Then I reflected upon the matter in the morning
and decided that indeed this was a very basic foundation in the fear of God and added it to
the list. (Semag, end of the introduction to the prohibitions)

Within the text of the book, he explains the normative content of this mitzva:

This is an admonition that Jews should not be proud when God bestows bounty upon them,
and they should not say that it is through their labors that they have attained all of this, and
they shall then not be grateful to God as a result of their pride. It is to this that the verses
refer. . . This is the admonition that a person should not be proud of that which God has
granted him, be it wealth, beauty or wisdom, but he is to be very humble and meek before
God and before people and to thank his Creator that He has bestowed upon him this
particular advantage. (Semag, lo ta’aseh 64)

Here we have a specific prohibition of shikhecha. The transgressor has not necessarily
forgotten about God altogether; he need not even have been meisiach da’at from God. Perhaps he
thinks of Him regularly. But what does he think when contemplating God? How does he divide
the credit between himself and God for his accomplishments, nay, for his very existence? To the
extent that the division is incorrect, that he gives himself credit for all that he has achieved—he is
a shokhe’ach, he does not remember God, because he does not remember Him as the sustainer and
provider for all human needs, nor does he remember Him as the ground and ultimate goal of human
existence.

FORGETFULNESS AND PRIDE

This is, then, a third kind of shikhecha, one which is intertwined with pride in a dual sense. It is,
first, the result of pride. A person is flushed with success—“So Yeshurun grew fat and kicked; you
grew fat and gross and coarse” (Devarim 32:15)—and being flushed with success, he indeed
forgets: “You neglected the Rock that begot you, and forgot the God who brought you forth” (ibid.
18). This theme runs through parashat Va’etchanan and Ekev: You will have fancy homes, you

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will build a highly developed society, with the result that this kind of shikhecha will become a
clear and present danger.

But the relation to pride exists also at a second level. If, on the one hand, it is pride in one’s
accomplishments that brings one to forget God, on the other hand, it is forgetting God which
enables a person to be proud. In this sense, shikhecha is not the result of pride, but results in pride.
Where there is shikhecha, there are skewed priorities, a lack of perspective and narrowness of
vision. These very often enable a person to distort the reality of his existence and the range and
scope of his accomplishments.

Generally speaking, a vision of greatness, to one who can appreciate it intelligently and
sensitively, is humbling. For one thing, it helps a person establish priorities, to see what ultimately
is indeed significant and important. Milton, in a celebrated line in “Lycidas,” spoke of fame as
“That last infirmity of noble mind.” In one of Keats’ sonnets (“When I Have Fears That I May
Cease to Be”), he writes,

. . . then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

As long as a person resides in a very narrow world, he imagines that he is successful, that
he is eminent. He towers over contemporaries; he surpasses his peers. Indeed, he finds the thirst
for fame gratifying, and he imagines that he has attained it. But, given a vision of greatness, one
not only reestablishes priorities— just how important that fame is within a wide world—but one
also attains a clearer perception of his real stature. So long as a person remains within a fairly
narrow context, he imagines that he is a lamdan, a scholar—he might have a big shiur and people
come to listen—but when confronted by the Shakh (Rabbi Shabtai Hakohen Rappaport, a
seventeenth-century commentator on the Shulchan Arukh), one begins to get a much clearer
appraisal of what genuine greatness is and therefore a more accurate appraisal of his own stature.

The vision of greatness is humbling. But, of course, what is most humbling is the vision of
the ultimate, singular greatness—a vision of God. The Rambam, in a celebrated passage, speaks
of the mitzvot of loving and fearing God:

This great and awesome God—it is a mitzva to love and to be in awe of Him. . . And how
is one to attain this?

When a person contemplates His creations and sees within them infinite worth, scope and
wisdom, then immediately he loves, praises and is overcome by great thirst to know the
living God. . .

And when he contemplates these very matters, he immediately recoils, fears and knows
that he is a very minute and insignificant creature of small and superficial intellect in
comparison with the Omniscient. . . (Hilkhot Yesodei Ha-Torah 2:1)

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 The verse in Mishlei (16:18) says, “Pride goeth before a fall,” but as Augustine noted, pride
is itself a fall. So, the relationship of shikhecha and pride is dual. Pride leads to averting one’s gaze
from God, but it is because a person has not fully apprehended or appreciated God that he is able
to be proud.

FORGETTING SINAI AND TORAH

In addition to the prohibition of forgetting God, we have a similar prohibition of forgetting that
which is related to God:

Be careful and guard your soul very much, lest you forget the things you have seen and lest
these be removed from your awareness throughout the course of your life. (Devarim 4:9)

The Ramban (ad loc.) explains that this is to be understood as a binding halakhic prohibition, that
“we should forget nothing of the experience at Sinai, nor remove it from our hearts.” In his
commentary on Rambam’s Sefer Ha-mitzvot, the Ramban lists this as one of the mitzvot he thinks
the Rambam has omitted:

We shall neither forget ma’amad Har Sinai, nor remove it from our thoughts, but our eyes
and hearts shall be there perpetually.

This formulation is quite comprehensive, in three respects. First, whereas previously we

had known that it is forbidden to forget God, here we have an injunction against forgetting a
particular historical (and quasi-metaphysical) event, ma’amad Har Sinai. Second, not only are we
enjoined, according to the Ramban, from forgetting the event in its totality, but we are commanded
to strive to remember every particular detail. It is not enough that a person remembers ma’amad
Har Sinai, that he knows that one time “God descended on Mount Sinai” (Shemot 19:20), and He
revealed Himself to kelal Yisrael, gave the Torah and then He and they moved on. To
remember ma’amad Har Sinai is to remember it in vivid detail, to reconstruct the historical
situation with all its force, to relive the experience, the awe, the majesty, the grandeur! Third, the
Ramban tells us that this remembrance of ma’amad Har Sinai in all its vivid detail is to be
perpetual.

Not only are we enjoined lest we forget God and ma’amad Har Sinai, but also that which
was given at ma’amad Har Sinai:

R. Meir says: If a person has forgotten one thing of what he has learned, it is as if he is
worthy of being destroyed. . . (Avot 3:8)

The mishna then goes on to state that this does not refer to the normal processes of forgetting;
those affect all of us.Rather, we are talking about the shikhecha of “yesirim mi-libo”—removing
it from his heart. A person thinks: It doesn’t really matter, so I won’t know it, and he is not
perturbed. That kind of active forgetting is included in this prohibition.

In summary, then, there is active forgetting and there is passive forgetting, the result of
indifference and insouciance, of apathy and anemia

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PERPETUAL REMEMBRANCE

Thus, in addition to teshuva within the context of active engagement in sin, there is
also teshuva within a context of spiritual apathy, of indifference to God, of distance between the
world of Torah and one’s own being. Within the latter context, the proper teshuva is not so much
that of repentance, but the teshuva of return, of narrowing the gap, of deepening and widening
one’s bond to God—a process of teshuva wherein a person assigns to Him a central place within
his consciousness, sensibility, existence and experience.

The response to shikhecha is “zakhor,” remember. Zakhor has a perpetual dimension—for

example, “to remember always [Amalek’s] evil deeds.” Likewise, on the verse, “Remember the
Shabbat day to keep it holy” (Shemot 20:8), Rashi explains: “Set your heart to remember
continually the Shabbat day.” The Ramban elaborates upon this:

The mitzva is to remember the Shabbat always, every day, that we never forget it, nor
confuse it with other days, for by remembering it perpetually we constantly remember the
creation of the world. (ad loc.)

That perpetual aspect of zekhira (remembering) has both a quantitative and a qualitative
dimension: quantitatively, in terms of it being the constant focus of our minds and hearts;
qualitatively, in terms of the depth of the engagement, the extent to which our being is indeed
intertwined in and committed to contemplating and relating to God.

The Rambam describes the nature of avoda me-ahava (service from love):

What is that proper love [which a person is to love God]? A great, exceedingly intense
love, until his soul is bound up with love of God and he finds himself immersed within it,
like one who is lovesick, whose mind is never free of the thought of a particular woman,
and he thinks of her perpetually— whether sitting, standing, eating or drinking. Greater
than this should be the love of God in the hearts of His lovers, pondering upon Him
perpetually, as we have been commanded: “with all your heart and all your
soul” (Devarim 6:5). It is of this that King Shlomo allegorically has said: “I am lovesick”
(Shir Ha-shirim 2:5), and indeed all of Shir Ha-shirim is an allegory for this. (Hilkhot
Teshuva 10:3)

We note that the Rambam here speaks of the quantitative dimension—“perpetually,” but
the source which he quotes is one which relates to the qualitative aspect—“with all your heart and
soul.” That commandment of zakhor, being involved and engaged with God, has something which
quantitatively is all-encompassing time-wise and which qualitatively requires your whole heart
and soul.

Clearly, this level of ahava is very demanding. The Rambam in that very chapter seems to
speak of this both as being attainable to all, and as being reached only by a small elite. On the one
hand, he says (10:2), “This level is very great, and not even every sage attains it. This is the level
of Avraham Avinu,” of rare individuals. But, in the same breath, the Rambam—aristocratic and

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elitist in certain respects though he was—nevertheless makes it clear that, normatively speaking,
this is not a demand upon only religious virtuosi, but a demand imposed upon every individual.
While the ultimate goal is attained by rare individuals, the direction, the thrust, the momentum as
a desideratum in normative terms is the lot of each and every one of us.

“SIN CROUCHES AT THE DOOR”

I have spoken heretofore in general, universal terms or, if you want to narrow it somewhat, in
terms which address themselves specifically to klal Yisrael. I want to add something with respect
to a particular segment of klal Yisrael—Centrist Orthodoxy. The verse (Bereishit 4:7) says: “Sin
crouches at the door.” But presumably it is not the same sin at every door. Each door, each
domicile, each community has its particular sin, a specific spiritual danger indigenous to it,
endemic to that group or that individual. The Chafetz Chayim once commented that different
generations have different pitfalls. There are generations that succumb particularly to idolatry,
others to desecration of Shabbat, some to sins between man and his Maker, and others to
interpersonal sins. Each community and each individual has his own “door” and his own sin to
which he is susceptible. What might be regarded as the “sin that crouches at the door” of this
community?

In one’s relationship to God, there are two preeminent spiritual dangers. First, there
is avoda zara (foreign worship, or idolatry) and, broadly speaking, whatever relates to it—
superstition and misguided conceptions of God. There is also a second danger: kefira, atheism—
not that a person misconstrues and misconceives God, but that he denies God altogether.

There have been debates as to which should be regarded as being worse. Bacon opens his
essay “On Atheism” by quoting Plutarch’s remark that superstition is worse than atheism because
he would prefer that people say Plutarch had never existed, to stating that he had existed but ate
his children. The eighteenth century, more rational in its thinking, by and large accepted Plutarch’s
and Bacon’s judgments. Better to deny the existence of God, better to be removed from Him, than
to be caught up in narrow, ignorant, superstitious worship.

The nineteenth century, by and large, particularly in its Romantic religious thought,
disagreed. It felt that the groping for some kind of spiritual reality, giving expression to spirituality
in various modes—however primitive, narrow or misguided—was to be preferred to the kind of
rarefied religiosity (or non-religiosity) which the eighteenth century left as a legacy to the
Romantics. In a celebrated passage about England in the 1840’s, Cardinal Newman wrote, “What
this country needs is not less superstition, but more superstition”—out of a sense that for all its
faults, it nevertheless entails an awareness of spiritual reality and a quest for it.

If pressed to the wall, I would opt for Newman without reservation. But of course we ought
not, we cannot, allow ourselves to be pressed to the wall. We need to be sensitive to both dangers.
Which is more threatening? To a certain extent, that is a function of a given historical and
sociological situation, depending upon the era, depending upon the community.

What is the danger lurking at the door of this community? Of what does it need to be
particularly wary because its inclination lies in that direction?

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 I believe that the sin lurking at the door of the Centrist Orthodox or Religious Zionist
community, the danger which confronts us and of which we need to be fully aware, is precisely
the danger of shikhecha. Unlike other communities, this is a community which is not so susceptible
to avoda zara in its extension— attitudes the Rambam battled against, such as superstition and
gross or primitive conceptions of God—because it is more sophisticated intellectually, religiously
and philosophically. Unfortunately, however, it is very, very susceptible to
extended kefira or shikhecha, lacking the immanent sense of God felt so deeply, keenly and
pervasively in other parts of the halakhically-committed Jewish world.

CREEPING SECULARISM AND DAMPENED PASSION

The Centrist Orthodox community is one to which the danger of distance from God—the
eighteenth-century danger, the danger of a certain spiritual hollowness, of apathy, of pushing God
off into the corners—is indigenous and endemic. In part, this is a result of the link this community
has—to some extent ideologically, to some extent existentially—to the broader, general, secular
community around it. The secular world is, by definition, not so much the world of sin per se, but
a world of being distant from God, of simply not recognizing Him, having no links and no relation.

Of course, the secular world as such is one which, philosophically and ideologically, denies
God totally. But when I spoke before of avoda zara as threatening others, I was not referring chas
ve-shalom to the possibility that an idol is going to be put up and incense offered before it, but of
the broader spiritual ramifications. Here, too, in speaking of the dangers of kefira attendant upon
being linked to the secular order, one needs to think not merely of a kind of dogmatic rejection,
but of experiential distance—“ You are near to their mouths, but distant from their
innards” (Yirmiyahu 12:2).

The demands made by the secular world very often have the effect of chipping away at
one’s religious existence. The secular world very often likes to speak in the name of neutrality. If
they speak, for instance, of education, they say: We are not asking for anti-religious education, but
for neutral education; not an education of sin, but an education of distance. But from a religious
standpoint, neither philosophically nor existentially can such neutrality be sustained—not over the
short term and surely not over the long term. An education from which God is excluded is not a
neutral education. That is secular, anti-religious education by its very content and definition.

To take an unfortunate, insidious, recent example: We are told that the Israeli army must
be religiously neutral, and therefore missives which are sent out by commanders cannot have
God’s Name or any reference to it affixed to it; and this in the name of democracy and fair play.
What we have here is a kind of secularization which does not say, “Throw out God,” but effectively
does that.

The link with a social order grounded upon a sense of distance from God—both
experiential and ideological—can have an impact, and one needs to guard against that. One needs
to know that the link to such an order opens up a door through which sin can enter. In order to
ensure that it does not enter, we need to be vigilant, we need to intensify our commitment, and we
need to avoid shikhecha and heise’ach ha-da’at all the more.

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 Secondly, this kind of sin crouches at our door because, in certain respects, there is a certain
shallowness, a certain lack of passion and intensity within our own community. Quite apart from
whatever rubs off through contact with others, there is a form of shikhecha, a lack of total zekhira,
a dearth of absolute commitment which runs through much of this community.

We need to be aware of this sin at our door, because only to the extent that we are aware
of it will we be able to cope with it. If we are to engage in teshuva that is particularly relevant to
ourselves, it is, perhaps even more than the teshuva of repentance (which is within the context of
relationship to God), the teshuva of return.

NEARNESS TO GOD

We might single out a particular sin from the “Al chet,” the litany of sins we recite, which (at least
as some have interpreted) relates to this particular situation: “Al chet she-chatanu lefanekha bi-veli
da’at, for the sin which we have sinned before You without knowledge.” The viddui contains two
kinds of confessions. There are those which are themselves sins, and others which are not
inherently sins, but are either areas of experience or activity within which the sin takes place, or a
kind of quality or mind-set which attends upon the sin. “Bi-veli da’at” can be understood in two
ways. Some, perhaps most, would be inclined to understand it in the second sense: it is that which
enables us to be sinners. We were not sufficiently heedful, and as a result a particular sin ensued.

But some have understood “bi-veli da’at” as being itself a sin. A certain mindlessness is a
failing inasmuch as we do not then fully realize the tzelem E-lokim (image of God) within us—to
the extent that one accepts the Rambam’s view that tzelem E-lokim is da’at, knowledge. Even if
one does not subscribe to that view, surely da’at is one aspect of tzelem E-lokim. To the extent,
then, that our da’at is not maximized, we fail to realize our potential tzelem Elokim. Quite apart
from that, inasmuch as the “beli da’at,” the lack of focus and concentration, defines our
relationship to God, we are not “perpetually dwelling upon God.” When some quantitative or
qualitative shikhecha intrudes, that “bi-veli da’at” is a sin in its own right. And, I repeat, this is a
particular sin which confronts and afflicts this sector of the religious community.

That being the case, the teshuva which is specifically incumbent upon us is the teshuva of
return, of narrowing the distance, of no longer forgetting, of intensifying our awareness, of
bridging the gap. At one level, that entails genuinely sensing and understanding with the totality
of our being—not simply in our intellectual formulations, but with the whole fiber of our
existence— that indeed obliterating the distance is our ultimate good, our summum bonum. We
must fully identify with King David when he says (Tehillim 73:27): “As for me, nearness to God
is good”— that is good, and only that is good. Secondly, it entails making the effort—both
personally and communally—to close that gap, to bring ourselves closer to God and hopefully,
therefore, God closer to us.

These are days during which He is close already; Chazal say, on the verse
in Yeshayahu (55:6), “Seek God when He is present, call Him when He is near,” that this refers to
the ten days from Rosh Ha-shana to Yom Kippur. These are days in which one hears the message
of the prophet calling those from afar and those who are close (Yeshayahu 57:19). As Chazal say:

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“‘To the near and far’—to the far that he should be near” (Sanhedrin 99a). This is a call to one
who is not necessarily a sinner in the ordinary sense, but simply distant, his mind engaged in other
concerns, with God somewhere on the periphery.

These are days when God, being so near, calls for the determination and resolve that we,
on our part, shall go towards Him—as He has extended Himself and His hand to us—transcending
the sin that lurks at our door, the sin of shikhecha, of distance, of dissociation. These are days
during which the effort needs to be made and during which, we hope, when the effort is made, it
shall be crowned at a personal and communal level with success: that God should accept our return
with love. As we say in the Zikhronot prayer of Rosh Ha-shana:

Happy is the man who does not forget You, who gains courage in You, for those who seek
You shall never stumble, nor shall those who trust in You ever be disgraced.

NOTES:
1 See also Hilkhot Teshuva 2:2.

2 Heise’ach ha-da’at can also be regarded as a shikhecha of sorts. At least so it would appear from the gemara, which
concludes that failing to focus is also defined as shikhecha. Regarding the mitzva of remembering Amalek, the gemara asks:
How do you know that when we speak of “remember[ing] what Amalek did to you” (Devarim 25:17), we are talking
about reading a text? Maybe it means ruminating upon this matter, pondering it, contemplating it? No, such a presumption
should not cross your mind, for the baraita [in Sifri] says: Perhaps when it says “Remember” it means you should
remember this in your heart? But we know that it is otherwise, because when the verse says, “You shall not
forget” (Devarim 25:19), it has already addressed itself to the area of forgetting in one’s heart. What then is the additional
dimension of “Remember?” That you should verbalize it. (Megilla 18a)
An obvious question obtrudes here. We are told “lo tishkach,” you should not forget. We presumably would have understood
that your knowledge of the facts should be at a level whereby it is stored in your memory, subject to recall. If you would be tested
– who is Amalek? what did he do? – you will know the answer. But whether presently you actively recall it is another matter; that
is not included in “lo tishkach.” We would therefore have said that the command of “zakhor” then comes along and teaches: Not
only should you not forget, but you must think about it. However, the gemara says otherwise. The whole realm of one’s inner
awareness is covered by “lo tishkach.” Had the Torah not stated “zakhor,” we would already have known that one must actively
think about it, but we would not have known that one needs to verbalize it.
Clearly then, if a person has stored in his memory this information about Amalek, but does not actively consider the matter,
then he is already transgressing the prohibition of “lo tishkach.” Knowledge is thus fully compatible with shikhecha. Shikhecha in
the context of that gemara clearly is not to be understood as total forgetting, but simply heise’ach hada’at. One knows about
Amalek, but it is unpleasant to think about him, and consequently one would prefer to keep the information about Amalek as a kind
of historical island in his memory, but go on to other activities. That is precisely the prohibition of “lo tishkach.” You have to think
about it, and you have to surmount this shikhecha in part by active narrative and in part by permanent, ongoing reflection.
The Rambam is very clear on this point. When he explains the mitzva of remembering Amalek, he says:
It is a mitzva to remember always his evil deeds and his ambush (according to another reading: his enmity) in order to
arouse enmity to him, as it says, “Remember what Amalek did to you.” From tradition they learned: “Remember”
verbally, and “do not forget” in your heart, i.e. it is forbidden to forget his enmity and hatred. (Hilkhot Melakhim 5:5)
While the gemara says that “zakhor” comes in addition to “lo tishkach,” the Rambam suggests that the two are complementary.
What “zakhor” adds to “lo tishkach” is the verbalization, the objectification, the expression and, therefore, the degree of force and
vivacity which comes through verbalization. On the other hand, verbalization cannot be constant, and the dimension of constancy
comes from “lo tishkach.” Thus, if we speak of heise’ach ha-da’at, that too is a category of shikhecha.
3 With regard to R. Yochanan’s view, it is entirely possible that he rejects the whole notion of heise’ach ha-da’at as adversely
affecting the sanctity of teruma and kodashim. But not necessarily so. It is conceivable that R. Yochanan would agree that in some
sense there is an adverse effect, but not to the point that one cannot eat them at all.
4 As a matter of fact, Chazal in certain places regarded normal processes of forgetting as being beneficial.
The midrash (Kohelet Rabba 1:13) says that God has done us a great kindness by causing us to forget. If a person did not forget,
then presumably he would learn Torah once and then assume that since he now knows it, he will move on to other things. He would
have the knowledge, but would lack the ongoing existential and experiential relation to Torah.

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I compare the above rationalist approach to a more mystical reading below

What Do We Forget, and What Do We Remember?5

There is “darkness” in the soul, and this is what produces the trait of shikc’hah, forgetfulness. The
Hebrew word for “darkness” is c’hoshech, which has the same letters as the Hebrew
word shoc’hac’h, to forget. So there is a connection between darkness and forgetfulness. What is
the connection? When something is revealed out in the open, we don’t forget it; we remember it.
When a person is consciously aware of something, it is revealed to his mind, and he remembers it.
But when something is hidden and concealed from us, it is apt to be forgotten.

This is our nature: when something is revealed to us and in front of our eyes, we remember it. This
is the deeper meaning behind “Shivisi Hashem L’Negdi Tamid”, “I place Hashem before me
always” – because Hashem is always in front of us, we are commanded to always remember Him.
We can remember Him precisely because He is in front of us. But when something is not in front
of us, we are able to forget it.

Thus, when something is concealed from us, it can be forgotten. If something is revealed to us, we
don’t forget it.

So the trait of forgetfulness is created from “darkness” in the soul: when something is concealed
from us, it is forgotten, just as the darkness conceals things from our sight.

How Forgetfulness Is Rooted In Earth

From all of the elements, earth is the darkest element, and it produces darkness inside the soul. For
this reason, the trait of forgetfulness, which comes from darkness in the soul, is rooted in the
element of earth.

Forgetfulness is termed by our Sages as reminiscent of death. The Sages said that had the first set
of Luchos (Tablets) never been broken, the Torah would never have been forgotten from the
Jewish people.[2] Forgetfulness first appears in the world with this episode – the breaking of the
first set of Luchos.

The sin of the Golden Calf was like the sin of Adam happening all over again. At Har Sinai, all of
the Jewish people returned to the level of Adam before the sin, and with the sin of the Golden Calf,
we were once again cursed with death, just as Adam was cursed with death after the sin. The
breaking of the Luchos, which happened as a result of the sin of the Golden Calf, is what enabled
us to ever forget our Torah learning; thus, forgetfulness and death are connected concepts.

The first set of Luchos rectified our ruined element of earth (a result of the sin of Adam), and had
the Luchos not been broken, there would be no such thing as forgetting the Torah. Once

5
https://www.bilvavi.net/english/understanding-your-middos-14-forgetfulness

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the Luchos were broken, we returned to our fallen element of earth – the curse of death, along with
the possibility to forget Torah.

We also find that the dead are forgotten after some time; Hashem decreed this is a law of our
nature, that the dead are eventually forgotten from our hearts.[3] The deeper meaning behind this
is that when the body returns to the earth, it is able to be forgotten.

If a Torah scholar forgets his learning when he gets old, the Sages warn that one should still be
careful to honor him, for he is like the broken Luchos, which still retain their sanctity[4]. The
simple reason for this is because even though right now he doesn’t know the Torah, the Torah used
to be in him, so he should still be honored, because he used to learn Torah. But the deeper meaning
of this is that the broken Luchos are the source of forgetting one’s Torah learning; had
the Luchos not been broken, a Torah scholar would never forget his learning. He wouldn’t get old
and lose his memory, because there would be no such as death; and he would never be able to
forget at all. The entire reason why there is forgetfulness in the world is due to the breaking of the
first Luchos.

The curse of death, which came along with the possibility to forget, made man return to the earth
he came from, for the curse of death is described as “To earth you shall return.” Therefore, when
one returns to his element of earth, he is able to forget; if one leaves his element of earth, he leaves
the possibility of forgetfulness.

The Maharal wrote that our ability to remember comes from our spiritual source, while our ability
to forget comes from our materialistic aspects. This further brings out how forgetfulness is rooted
in our element of earth.

Forgetfulness Caused By Fire, Water and Wind

As we explained in previous chapters, a problem stemming from the element of earth can also be
stemming from any of the other three elements (fire, water and wind) that are also present in the
earth. Therefore, we can find how fire, water and wind can be involved in causing forgetfulness.
However, since forgetfulness is mainly rooted in the element of earth, it is mainly the element of
earth that is responsible for forgetfulness.

Fire causes forgetfulness as follows. The Sages said that “Whoever gets angry, he forgets his Torah
study.”[5] Additionally, they said that “One who is conceited, forgets his Torah study.”[6] We
have already mentioned earlier that both the traits of anger and conceit are rooted in the element
of fire. Conceit stems from the heat in fire, and anger stems from the dryness in fire.

Forgetfulness is really caused by the element of earth, so what does it mean that conceit and anger
can cause one to forget his Torah learning? It means that conceit and anger can bring out the
element of earth in the person, and once the element of earth is activated, forgetfulness can ensue.
The dryness of fire, which is the root of the trait of anger, returns a person to the dryness of his
earth element. And when a person is conceited, he is also returned to his element of earth, because
“Hashem lowers the conceited.”

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Where do we find that wind can cause forgetfulness? When the Tower of Babel was being built,
Hashem confused their languages. It would seem simply that Hashem made them forget their
languages so they were each speaking different languages to each other, but the Gemara states that
the forgetfulness was because the air on the tower caused them to be forgetful.[7] In other words,
the air, which is the element of wind, is what made them forgetful.

But although the element of wind was a factor here, it was still the element of earth which mainly
caused them to be forgetful. They stacked up many bricks in order to build the tower, and from
this giant pile of “earth” they came to the elevated heights of the tower in which the air made them
forgetful. So it was really the earth which brought them to this situation of forgetfulness. The air
by itself, without the tower made by the earth, would not have been enough to make them forgetful.

Where do we find that water can cause forgetfulness? The Sages say that one of the things which
causes forgetfulness is when a person drinks bathwater.[8] Again, it is not only the water here
which is causing the forgetfulness – it is the earth. The person is dirty with dust of the earth on his
body, so he needs water to wash it off. Drinking such water causes one to be forgetful; but it is
only because such water was involved in removing the earth upon his body.

We have seen how fire, wind and water can all be factors in breeding forgetfulness, yet it is always
the element of earth which allows it to happen.

Fixing Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness can be removed using the elements of fire, wind or water. We will also see how even
earth can be used as a subtle way to fix trait forgetfulness for which it is mainly responsible for.

How Fire Can Remove Forgetfulness

It is obvious how the element of fire can be used to remove forgetfulness.

Forgetfulness, as we explained, is rooted in darkness in the soul that stems from the element of
earth. When something is in front of our eyes, it is not forgotten, and when something is concealed
from us, it is apt to be forgotten. Thus, the element of fire is the antithesis to darkness in the soul,
because fire illuminates darkness and thus it removes forgetfulness.

How Wind Can Remove Forgetfulness

Wind can fix forgetfulness as follows.

The Gemara says that one should verbalize the words of Torah he is learning, and then he will
remember it better.[9] When a person verbalizes his learning, he is using the power of speech,
which is rooted in the element of wind, because speech is called ruach memalelah (“a talking
spirit”), related to ruach\wind. When one speaks the words of Torah he is learning, he takes the
words of Torah and brings them out of their dormant state into their active potential.

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When earth remains dormant, its potential is left unutilized. It remains concealed, thus it breeds
forgetfulness. When one verbalizes his learning, he has brought the words of Torah into their active
state, and thus he remembers the words.

How Water Can Fix Forgetfulness

How can the element of water be used to fix forgetfulness?

The Gemara[10] say that one should review his learning, even if he forgets them and even if he
doesn’t know what he is saying, for it is written, “My soul will review, for it is hungry.” The simple
understanding of this Gemara is based on the words of the Zohar and the Arizal, that a person will
be reminded all of his Torah learning in Heaven after he dies; for this reason, a person should learn
Torah even if he will forget. But the deeper understanding of this Gemara is that when a person
learns Torah out of a desire for the words, he will remember it better. Desire is rooted in the
element of water, so we see that the element of water can help a person remember his learning.

We have mentioned thus far three ways in how to rectify the trait of forgetfulness that is rooted in
the element of earth.

Examining The Root of Forgetfulness

Here is another statement of our Sages about forgetfulness. “A fetus in its mother’s womb is taught
the entire Torah, and once it enters the air of this world, an angel comes and strikes his mouth, and
causes him to forget the entire Torah.”[11]

Let us reflect into what this means.

What is this “angel” that strikes a baby and causes him to forget all the Torah he was taught? It is
brought in the writings of the Arizal, and in other sources as well, that the angel appointed over
forgetfulness is called “the Samech Mem”[12]. The Hebrew letters samech and mem are 60 and
40, which add up to be 100. There is another statement of our Sages, “One who reviews his learning
100 times is not as prominent as one who reviews his learning 101 times”.[13] The number 100 is
the value of the word Michael - the angel appointed memory, for “To my right, Michael.”

Soon, we will delve more into this.

We can also ask: Once the baby enters the air of this world, he forgets all the learning he was
taught. Why is the emphasis here on the “air” of the world, and not simply on the fact that he enters
the world? The answer is based upon the concept brought earlier, that the air on the Tower of Babel
is what caused them to become forgetful. We see from this that the air of this world – in and of
itself - is a cause for forgetfulness.

What is the depth behind this?

The Gemara reveals that when the Luchos were given, the letters mem and samech in the Luchos
were floating in the air, through a miracle[14]. All of the letters carved onto the Luchos were not

24
hollow, so the Luchos were able to hold them, whereas the letters mem and samech have holes in
between them, so there was nothing to connect them in place. The fact that these letters did not fall
out was a miracle. That is the simple meaning of this Gemara. The deeper meaning, though, is that
the stone of the Luchos was made of the element of earth, and since Hashem Himself had hewn
these Luchos, it was the perfected kind of earth.

The facts that the letters mem and samech remained standing in the Luchos, and the fact
that mem and samech are the letters in the name of the angel which causes forgetfulness (The
“Samech Mem”), are one related subject. When the Luchos were broken, the
letters mem and samech which had stood through a miracle are now the very letters which cause
forgetfulness [when combined]!

Before the Luchos were broken, when the letters mem and samech stood through a miracle, these
letters were actually able to provide memory [of one’s Torah learning], for they were the
handiwork of Hashem, and not the work of a human. The letters mem and samech were on their
own, detached from the Luchos, whereas the other letters on the Luchos were craved into the
stones, attached to the element of earth. Thus, the original set of Luchos, before they were broken,
contained a level of Torah that could not ever be forgotten, because they were a perfected kind of
earth. The letters samech and mem were in the air, thus they were part of the element of wind, and
not earth; whereas the other letters were part of the element of earth, a perfected kind of earth [for
they were hewn by Hashem Himself].

When the Luchos were broken, the letters mem and samech remained afloat in the air, but instead
of a miracle sustaining them, they were simply drifting in the air. Ever since they were broken,
when the element of earth has become impaired, the angel appointed over forgetfulness fights not
only the element of earth, but even the element of wind it wages war against.

Thus, there are two sources for evil forgetfulness. One source is the impaired element of earth,
which came onto the scene after the Luchos were broken. An additional source of evil forgetfulness
is the “air” of this world – “once a fetus enters the air of this world, an angel strikes him and causes
him to forget all his Torah learning.”

As long as a fetus in inside the mother, an angel teaches him the entire Torah. There, the Torah is
not transmitted to him in writing, but orally. When a baby enters the world, he enters the place in
which things have to be written down in order to be remembered. This is the forgetfulness that
the “air” of this world causes.

Thus, just as earth is the root of forgetfulness, so is the “air” of this earth an additional cause of
forgetfulness.

To illustrate how air is related to earth, we find a halacha in the laws of Shabbos that if one throws
something over the ground, even if it never touched the ground, it is considered as if he has carried
from domain to domain, even though the object did not stop in a public domain. The airspace of
the ground has the status of the ground, to make him liable of the melachah (forbidden labor) of
carrying on Shabbos. From here we see that air above the ground is like a part of the earth
underneath it.

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Applying this to the current discussion, after the sin with the Golden Calf and the Luchos were
broken, forgetfulness not only stems from earth, but it can stem from the air in earth as well. We
can see this from physical earth and wind, when they meet. Wind blows on the earth and causes
the dust to swirl into the air, and then the wind becomes blackened.

This is the meaning behind how “The air on the tower of Babel caused forgetfulness.” The lesson
of it was that not only does earth cause forgetfulness, but that air as well causes forgetfulness; and
we see this from the fact that when a baby enters the world, the “air” of this world causes him to
forget all his learning.

So there are two sources of forgetfulness: when it comes from earth, and from the air of the earth.
The second source, air of the earth, represents the total level of forgetfulness [because it was a
concept that was introduced as a result of sin].

The more subtle understanding of this is that earth and wind are opposites, and there is a rule that
“opposites always bear the same root”; thus, if forgetfulness is rooted in earth, it must be rooted in
wind as well.

The Depth of Forgetting One’s Torah Learning

The two kinds of forgetfulness that exist are parallel to the two kinds of forgetfulness which we
deal with: the general trait of forgetfulness that exists in all of Creation, which is when we simply
forget something; and forgetting our Torah learning.

The Torah warns us explicitly: “Guard it very carefully, lest you forget these words.” The Gemara
learns from here that it is a sin to forget one’s Torah learning.[15] There is a difference between
the regular kind of forgetting and the forgetting of one’s Torah learning. The regular kind of
forgetting is rooted in our element of earth, but forgetting one’s Torah learning is rooted in the
element of wind.

It seems simply that there is no difference between regular forgetting and forgetting one’s learning,
and that it’s the same habit to forget. When a person forgets how much money in his bank account,
isn’t it the same kind of forgetfulness which makes him forget his Torah learning?

But the truth is, that forgetting one’s learning has nothing to do with the regular bad habit of being
forgetful that we are familiar with. It comes from a difference source in the soul. Regular forgetting
comes from earth, while forgetting one’s Torah learning comes from the area of wind in the soul.

The Torah is called a “wind”, for it is called the “ruach” (spirit) of Hashem, and ruach is wind.
We are also commanded to speak words of Torah, and speech is rooted in wind. Thus, we are
specially commanded not to forget the words of Torah.

Of Amalek, we are commanded to remember what they did to us, and in addition, we are
commanded not to forget what they did.[16] The Sages learned from this apparent redundancy that
we must never forget in our hearts what they did to us, and we are commanded as well to verbalize
what they did to us, and that is how we remember.[17] We can see from here as well the two kinds

26
of forgetting: when there is forgetting rooted in earth [when our heart forgets the episode of
Amalek], and forgetting that is rooted in wind [when we don’t verbalize the episode of Amalek].

Total Forgetting Vs. Confusion

There is an opinion in the Sages[18] that the Torah will one day be forgotten from the Jewish
people; Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai disagreed: “G-d forbid to say that the Torah will be forgotten
from the Jewish people! It is written, “For it shall not be forgotten from His offspring.” Although
there was a prophecy that there will be Torah forgotten from the Jewish people, Rabbi Shimon Bar
Yochai explained that the prophecy meant that the study of clear Mishnah and clear Halacha will
not be concentrated together in any one place.

We see that our Sages disagreed as to what it means that the Torah will be forgotten from us. The
Sages were of the opinion that people will simply forget the Torah, while Rabbi Shimon Bar
Yochai said that it will not happen, only that there will be a lack of clarity.

The rule is that “Both of their words and their words are the words of the living G-d”[19], so
whenever our Sages disagree, both views are always correct. Let us try to understand both of the
differing views and how they are both correct. What is the root of forgetting one’s Torah learning,
and what is the root of a lack of clarity toward one’s Torah learning?

When a person simply forgets his Torah learning, this comes from any other kind of forgetting that
we are familiar with. As the generations go on, the spiritual level of the generations decrease; this
is the concept of yeridas hadoros, “descent of the generations.” What are we further descending
into? The element of earth. The Sages state that we will be lowered until the depths of the earth,
and then we will eventually be redeemed. It is for this reason that the Sages were of the opinion
that the Torah will be forgotten from the Jewish people; since we are further and further descending
into the element of earth as the generations go on, and earth is the root of forgetfulness, there will
be forgetfulness towards the Torah. That is one kind of forgetting.

But the other kind of forgetting, as we explained, stems from the element of wind. This is the kind
of forgetfulness that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was referring to, that the Torah will not be simply
forgotten, and that it will merely become unclear to people. Even in the later generations, in which
we have become very entrenched into the element of earth, we find that people are still
remembering the Torah; the words of Torah are being spoken from our lips, and that is a guarantee
that we will remember it. It is just that there is confusion about the words of Torah. “The clear
Halacha and the clear Mishnah will not be concentrated in any one place.” This is referring
specifically to the second kind of forgetfulness, to “forget” one’s Torah learning – in the sense that
one is not clear in his learning. This is the kind of forgetfulness rooted in the element of wind.

The basic kind of forgetting that we are familiar with is rooted in the element of earth. For example,
Hashem decreed that “the dead are eventually forgotten from our hearts”. It’s possible that a person
forgets his learning in the same way. A person can surely forget his learning, as we know. But
what does a person forget when he forgets his learning? He forgets the external layer of the Torah.
The inner essence of the Torah, the “ruach Hashem” (spirit of Hashem) which the Torah is called,

27
is never able to be totally forgotten. The only kind of forgetfulness one can have with regards to
the inner essence of the Torah is the lack of clarity in his learning.

Thus, forgetfulness stemming from earth is when a person simply forgets something, and
forgetfulness stemming from wind is when a person is confused and unclear.

To illustrate, we have a mitzvah to remember the episode of Amalek. Nowadays, there is

no mitzvah to erase Amalek, because ever since Sancheriv mixed around the countries of the
world, we are not sure who is from Amalek.[20] The depth behind this is that the mixing up and
confusing of the nations of the world is a subtle way of how we “forget” Amalek. There is nothing
we can do about this, though, because it is all coming from a confusion, being that Amalek is not
concentrated in any one place.

Wind, which causes movement, has the power to mix around things with its movements. This is a
power that can be used either for evil or holiness. It is used for good when it mixes together things
in order to harmonize them and connect them, and this is the concept of the Northern Wind, which
we spoke about earlier[21]. It is used for evil when it mixes things around and causes confusion;
when wind lifts the dust into the air, it becomes blackened, and this manifests in terms of our soul
when we lack clarity in our learning.

We have explained how forgetfulness stemming from earth is a kind of forgetfulness that is total,
and forgetfulness stemming from wind is when there is confusion and lack of clarity.

Forgetfulness Rooted In Wind: When There Is A Removal of Daas

The second kind of forgetting – forgetting one’s Torah learning, which stems from the area of
wind in the soul – can be explained based upon the following Gemara: “The words of Torah are
not forgotten unless there is hesech hadaas (a removal of one’s daas\thoughts).[22] When a
person takes his mind off something, he comes to forget it.

The simple understanding of this is that as soon has hesech hadaas [when he stops thinking about
something holy], he forgets about spiritual matters and falls back onto his physicality, and his
physicality is awakened, which does not allow for his Torah learning to be remembered. If this is
the definition, though, then it is forgetfulness that stems from earth.

But there is another way to understand forgetting one’s learning, which comes from hesech
hadaas. As long as a person retains his daas (his real, thinking spiritual mind), he has order in his
thoughts. Daas creates order in one’s mind; when one loses his daas, [when he takes his mind off
holiness], confusion in his mind is created.

The Sages state that “Moshiach will come with hesech hadaas”. It is written of the
redemption, “The voice of my beloved, behold, it is coming, skipping over the mountains, jumping
over the hills.”[23] When there is holy hesech hadaas, the holy “jumping” will come – the jumping
of Moshiach. But when the power of “jumping” is used for evil, like when there is a lack order in
one’s mind and his mind is therefore jumpy, this is an evil kind of jumpiness, and it creates the
evil trait that is forgetfulness.

28
How do we see that jumpiness\skipping is linked with forgetfulness? We see this from
the mitzvah to give shikc’hah to the poor. Any forgotten sheaves of grain are entitled to the poor;
when the owner skips over some of the grains and leaves them behind, the remaining leaves
become shikc’hah, and they must be given as a gift to the poor.

This is the kind of forgetfulness that stems from wind in the soul: a lack of order in the thoughts,
which causes confusion in the thoughts, resulting in hesech hadaas. It is a removal of one’s daas.

Rectifying Forgetfulness: Connecting To The Reality of the Creator

How can forgetfulness stemming from wind become fixed?

There are two approaches. The simple antidote for this is for one to return his daas, which has
become removed him. The more a person increases his daas, the more he chips away at his
forgetfulness.

There is a deeper approach, though, based on a Midrash[24], which states that since we received
the Torah from Moshe Rabbeinu, who was a human being, we therefore forget the Torah, because
it was given to us by a human. In the future, we will receive the Torah directly from the mouth
of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and this will be a Torah that will never become forgotten.

Earlier, we explained based on the words of our Sages[25] that forgetfulness began with the
breaking of the Luchos. But now we have seen from the words of our Sages the deeper root of
forgetfulness: it is because our current Torah is the Torah we received from Moshe Rabbeinu, and
since Moshe was human, it is possible to forget the current Torah.

The reason for this is because when we were first about to accept the Torah, there were members
among us who did not wish to hear it from Hashem Himself, because they were afraid, so they
asked that it be given by Moshe Rabbeinu instead. What was their mistake? What is wrong if they
just wanted to hear it from Moshe? It was because they did not wish to hear the voice of Hashem,
and that was why they turned away Hashem’s voice in favor of Moshe’s voice. This deviation on
their part was already the root of forgetting the current Torah.

Thus, the root of forgetfulness did not begin with the breaking of the Luchos; it really began with
the will of the people to hear the Torah from Moshe instead of wanting to hear it from Hashem.

What is the difference if we hear the Torah from Moshe or if we hear it from Hashem? The
difference is, that only on Hashem can we apply the verse, “Kiss me with the kisses of Your
mouth”, which refers to the verbal relationship that the Jewish people has with Hashem. Had they
wished to hear Hashem’s voice – as we will in the future – they would have achieved the ultimate
rectification. It would perfected their element of wind (speech), because to hear the voice of
Hashem is the ultimate level of speech that the soul can achieve.

Hearing the Torah from the mouth of Moshe, by contrast, did not perfect their element of wind,
because although man received a breath of life from Hashem that enables him to speak (“ruach
memalelah”), ultimately, our power of speech comes from Hashem, Who breathed into us the

29
wind in our soul that enables us to speak. To hear the Torah from Hashem would have made us
never forget the Torah, for it would have been the perfected element of wind\speech. Instead, we
chose to hear it from Moshe; our element of wind therefore did not reach its completion, and that
is why we are able to forget the current Torah we have.

Hearing a human speak, even to hear words from Moshe Rabbeinu, does not bring us to the
perfected kind of speech. We can see this as well reflected in the fact that Moshe had difficulty
with speech, for his mouth and tongue felt heavy upon him. When Moshe went up to Heaven to
receive the Torah, every time he learned it, he forgot it, until it was given to him as a gift. The
depth of this was because his power of speech was damaged, and that allowed him to forget.

The only way to avoid forgetting the Torah is when it is heard directly from Hashem. When one
hears Hashem’s voice, he never forgets it. “Forever, the word of Hashem, stands in
Heaven.”[26] When one fulfills the possuk of “My words which I have placed on your mouth”, he
merits the end of the possuk – “It will not be forgotten from your mouth, and from the mouth of
your offspring, and from the mouth of the offspring of your offspring, forever.” The “word of
Hashem” that is the Torah is the root of all speech, and the breath of life that Hashem breathed
into man, which enables man to speak, is what can ultimately reveal to man that “The One who
has blown, blows from Himself.” In other words, when one reveals how his power of speech is
really rooted in the Creator’s speech, the words that emanate from such speech can never be
forgotten from the person.

Thus, the deep way to nullify the trait of forgetfulness is through connecting oneself to the reality
of the Creator. We will explain this.

Man, by essence, can only live the present moment. The past is gone, and the future is not here
yet. The only one who exists both in the past, present and future is Hashem. Since man’s past and
future is not here in the present, man can forget. By contrast, Hashem, Who “was, is, and will
always be”, cannot ever be forgotten. This is a clear fundamental.

All of Creation is only temporary, and that is why they can be forgotten, for the very essence of
all creations is a temporary existence, and that is the reason behind why forgetfulness can take
effect on creations. A created being, a person, is limited and temporary, and that is why he forgets
as well as become forgotten. A person’s words are here one second and they are forgotten a second
later.

However, if a person makes sure as he is speaking to become connected to Hashem, Who “was,
is, and will always be”, then he is connected with the eternal, and he is connected in his speech
with the unforgettable. The unforgettable is nursed forth from an ever-constant source, and there
can only be one source that is ever-constant (and thus unforgettable): The One Who was, is, and
will always be.

30
A Kind of Torah Learning Which Is Never Forgotten: Learning Torah
Modestly

The Sages said that “one who learns Torah in the synagogue with modesty, is one who will not
forget it quickly.”[27] What is the meaning of this? It can be explained according to the concepts
developed until now: When one learns Torah modestly, meaning, when he connects himself to the
“One who sits in the upper concealed chambers” – when he reveals the trait of modesty in the soul
(see Understanding Your Middos #013 - Modesty), he connects to the ultimate Modest One that
there is: Hashem. Hashem is clearly revealed through His actions, but His essence is hidden from
us. When one learns Torah modestly, he connects himself to the reality of the Creator, Who is the
epitome of modesty.

This is also the depth behind the statement of the Rambam, that “One does not learn most of his
wisdom except at nighttime.”[28] For our purposes, the meaning of this is that when one learns
Torah at nighttime, when it is dark, a time in which there is more modesty, he connects himself to
the true Modest One, Who was, is, and will always be.

When a person learns Torah without modesty, darkness can descend upon him, and thus he can
come to forget his learning, because he is bound to the present moment, which is temporary; he is
not connected to the past, and he is not either connected with the future, for he is not eternal. But
when one learns Torah modestly, he essentially has taken the concealment (hester) that gets created
from forgetfulness and darkness, and instead, he reveals modesty through it. This is how he
connects himself to the Creator - and of the Creator it is said, “There is no forgetfulness in front
of Your Throne of Glory.”

Concealment (hester) is a force in Creation, and it is up to man’s power of free will to choose if
he will steer it towards holiness or for evil. When one learns Torah without modesty, he doesn’t
access concealment for the purpose of modesty, and instead, the concealment will negatively come
upon him, in the form of forgetfulness. But when one learns Torah modestly, he takes the force of
concealment and reveals the modesty in it; and he will remember such Torah learning, forever.

This is how darkness of the soul is rectified: through using the power of modesty. In the beginning
of this chapter, we brought from the words of our Sages that modesty is exemplified at nighttime.
Now we can understand this with greater depth: it is because such a person takes the nighttime,
the power of darkness, and transforms it into the holy power of modesty.

The simple understanding of this is that the person (in the times of the Gemara) would wait until
nighttime to relieve himself, so that his private affairs should be done discreetly and not in broad
daylight. It is because the nighttime is the tool a person could use as a tool to reveal the higher
kind of modesty – to connect oneself to the reality of the Creator. A person who waited until the
nighttime to relieve himself (in the times of the Gemara) was someone who knew the secret of
modesty: to connect oneself to the Creator.

When a person is connected to the Creator, he remembers his Torah learning as well, and he
doesn’t forget it.

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Holy Forgetfulness: How Forgetting One’s Learning Can Be Constructive

There is an additional point to mention here, which is needed to complete the discussion.

Until now, it was explained, from many angles, about the negative side to forgetfulness, and that
the power to remember is the side of holiness.

However, on a deep note, there is also a way how forgetfulness can be used for holiness. There is
nothing in Creation that is always good or always evil; each force in Creation that exists can either
be channeled towards holiness, or towards evil. It’s all a question of how we use each
thing. Therefore, even forgetfulness can be used positively, so there is a holy way to utilize the
trait of forgetfulness. There is both a simple and deep approach in how to use it for holiness.

The simple way of how forgetfulness can be holy is contained in the words of the Midrash: “It is
for the good of man that he learns Torah and forgets it, for if he would learn Torah and never forget
it, he would learn Torah for only two or three years and then return to his labor, and he would
never pay attention to it for all his life. But since man learns Torah and can forget his learning, he
will make sure not to remove himself from the words of Torah.”[29]

In other words, since we are apt to forget our Torah learning, that makes us feel responsible to
review our learning, and through reviewing our learning, we become more deeply connected to
our Torah learning. Thus, in a sense, forgetfulness is an indirect cause for us to become more
connected to the Torah. It reflects how “From the wound itself comes the recovery.” Forgetfulness
is a destructive power, but it also acts as a catalyst to cause us to review our learning.

The element of earth can take things and return them to their root. Forgetfulness, which stems from
earth, causes us to connect to our root.

But the deeper understanding is as follows. Our memory is an ability of our mind, which contains
our daas. When a person merits to reach the depth of the soul, which is above even his daas – and
this is referring to the statement of our sefarim hakedoshim that “the purpose of knowledge is to
know that we do not know” – he reaches the power of holy forgetfulness. He “forgets” his daas,
because he is above it.

It is there that a person merits a complete forgiveness of his sins.

There is something very hard to understand: If Hashem doesn’t forget anything, how can He
forgive our sins? The deep answer is, though, that when a person goes above his regular intellect,
he has access to the holy kind of forgetfulness.

Herein lies the secret of how the entire Creation will receive its rectification. As long as a person’s
sins are “remembered”, there would be no concept of teshuvah. But when a person does teshuvah,
he is above memory, and that is why his sins aren’t remembered by Hashem.

32
Of course, Hashem does not ever forget to reward our good deeds. Rather, what is meant here is
that teshuvah is the novel concept that there is an area in our soul above memory: holy
forgetfulness. It places a person above the regular rules, which are within daas, and there, there is
no “memory.”

Forgetfulness is produced from hesech hadaas (a removal of daas), and there is a holy kind
of hesech hadaas: “Moshiach will not come except with hesech hadaas.” This represents the holy
kind of forgetfulness [to “forget” our daas, because we will be above daas].

How To Use Forgetfulness For Holiness

Now we will give a practical example of this concept.

When a person learns a part of the Gemara and he doesn’t understand it, what should he do? He
should empty out his thoughts and approach it as if he has never learned it before, and then start
again from the beginning of the Gemara, anew. This is the holy way how to use the power of
forgetfulness.

Every time there is forgetfulness, it is an opportunity for a person to realize that he must begin
again anew. This is also the depth behind teshuvah. When a person does teshuvah, it does not mean
that Hashem has remembered the sin; He erases it completely! Hashem “forgets” the sin. This is
not the regular kind of forgetting we are familiar with; it is the deepest kind of holy forgetfulness.

In the depths of the soul, there exists an ability to use “forgetfulness” for holiness: the power for a
person to begin again anew.

Similarly, when Rebbi Zeira left Bavel for Eretz Yisrael, he fasted 100 times so that he could forget
all that he had learned in Bavel, in order for his mind to be clear to learn Talmud
Yerushalmi.[30] Here we see the concept of holy forgetfulness, that when a person needs to have
a new beginning, he needs to utilize his power to forget, even when it comes to the words of Torah.
This is the depth that lays behind holy forgetfulness.

In Conclusion: Repairing Forgetfulness

All new beginnings require a person to forget what was until now, in order to begin again anew.
Thus, the depth of fixing forgetfulness is not just through remembrance, but through accessing the
higher and holier kind of forgetting: the power to start from a new beginning.

Thus, the way to fix forgetfulness involves both accessing our power of remembrance [which is
acquired through connecting with Hashem, and then we never forget what we learn, and this is
also exemplified through the trait of modesty], as well as the higher way, which is to access the
holy kind of forgetfulness [starting again anew after one forgets his learning].

33
[1] Berachos 62a

[2] Eruvin 54a

[3] Pesachim 54b

[4] Berachos 8b

[5] Nedarim 22b

[6] Yevamos 105b

[7] Sanhedrin 109a

[8] Horayos 13b

[9] Eruvin 54a

[10] Avodah Zarah 19a

[11] Niddah 30b

[12] Also known as “Samael”, usually connected with the “Sitra Achara”, “The Other Side” [the forces of evil and impurity].

[13] Chagigah 9b

[14] Megillah 3a

[15] Menachos 99b

[16] Devarim 25: 17-19

[17] Megillah 18a

[18] Shabbos 138b

[19] Gittin 6b

[20] Yoma 54a

[21] For more on the “Northern Wind” and how it manifests in the soul, see Understanding Your Middos #07 (Internal
Hardening) as well as ‫ – רוח צפונית‬079 ‫רוח‬-‫מהות המדות‬-‫(דע את מידותיך‬English translation not yet available).

[22] Taanis 7b

[23] Shir HaShirim 2:8

[24] Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:4

34
[25] Eruvin 54a

[26] Tehillim 119:89

[27] Yerushalmi Berachos 5:1

[28] Rambam Hilchos Talmud Torah 3:13

[29] Koheles Rabbah 1:13

[30] Bava Metzia 85a

Multi Store Model of Memory

Jamie Taylor, Alex, wwrite:6te:

Sensory Memory
This is the first port of call for information. It gets its name from the fact that the information it
receives is sensual (visual, auditory, smell, touch). The encoding (type of information) is either
iconic or echoic (see below). The capacity is said to be vast but the duration, however, is only
0.25 to 2 seconds.
Iconic storage is for visual information, you can see the iconic storage in your sensory memory
by closing your eyes, and for a very brief moment, you will see an 'after image' of what you were
looking at. Another store in sensory memory is echoic storage which is auditory or sound
information. Information from sensory memory is passed to short-term memory by attention i.e.
taking notice of something.

Below is a study by Sperling (1960) into sensory memory.

Aim To investigate the capacity of the iconic memory.
A three by four grid of numbers was flashed for 0.05 seconds. Followed by a
Method
high, medium or low pitched tone to indicate which row was to be recalled.
On average, the participants were able to recall 80% of the letters on the cued
Results
row.

6
https://scienceaid.net/psychology/cognition/multistore.html.

35
 Since the participants didn't know which row was going to be called beforehand
Conclusions but still managed to recall it well, you can assume that at one time all of the
information was held in the sensory memory. But it decayed very rapidly.
The work by Sperling is the basis of the view that sensory memory stores are
Evaluation
large but decay very rapidly. lasting 250 to 500 milliseconds.

Short Term Memory

Short term memory is much shorter than you might think, only lasting up to 30 seconds and
having a capacity of 7 +/- 2 (seven plus or minus two, i.e. 5-9) items. And the encoding is
mainly visual and acoustic. We can, however, often hold much larger amounts of information
in a process known as chunking, whereby the information is consolidated into 'chunks' of
information. In the example below, you will be able to remember the bottom row of acronyms,
but remembering the same information individually, as in the first row, is much more difficult.

Below are the details of a study into short-term memory (STM) that was conducted by Peterson
and Peterson (1959).
Aim Find out what the duration of STM is
Participants were shown a trigram (three letters e.g. FGL) and asked to recall it
after varying times.
Method In between seeing the trigram and recalling it, the participant did a distraction task
to prevent them from rehearsing it and moving it to long-term memory. This
involved counting backward in threes.
80% recall after only 3 seconds
Results
The recall reduced with time until only 10% after 18 seconds.
If rehearsal is prevented then the information vanishes from STM after only a
Conclusion
few seconds.
Evaluation Poor ecological validity since trigrams are an artificial thing to remember.

36
Primacy-Recency Effect
This is a well-known experiment that demonstrates the multi-store model well. In the experiment,
participants are read a list of words and then have to recall them either immediately or after a
distraction. The graph below shows the general trend in results found with this.

The results show that recall of the first and last words are best, whereas recall for the middle is
poor. However, when the distraction is employed, then recall of the last words is just as poor as
the middle. This is because, in immediate recall, the first words are in the long term memory
because they have been rehearsed and the last words are still in the short-term memory. The
words in the middle are more difficult to recall because the subjects were too busy rehearsing the
first, to remember them well.

The results with the "after distraction task" proves the last are remembered easier because of loss
of short term memory. This happens because the distraction stops the rehearsal and provides a

37
 time break. In this way, recall of the last words is poor. It has become lost from memory because
the process was interrupted before it arrived at the long-term memory and is displaced from the
short-term memory.

What was I saying? Oh, right, Absent-mindedness…

Your keys are not at the regular spot where you usually place your keys. It takes a long time for
you to find them. Does this seem familiar? When things like this happen, you might wonder if
there’s something wrong with your mind. In fact, it is a common phenomenon called absent-
mindedness.

Absent-mindedness is a cognitive bias that happens when people “zone out” and make mistakes
in daily life (Broadbent, Cooper, FitzGerald, & Parkes, 1982). The mistakes can be anything
related to a lack of attention, e.g., walking in a room and forgetting why you came in, dropping
something unintentionally, or throwing your phone in a trash can and keeping the coffee cup
(which happened to me once). Absent-mindedness is where attention and memory come together,
even though they seem to be two separate things.
How is absent-mindedness related to attention? Before answering this question, we need to know
that our attention has a limited capacity (Sanbonmatsu, Strayer, Biondi, Behrends, & Moore,
2015). One theory suggests that when our limited attentional resource is occupied, the rate of
absent-mindedness may increase (Fisher & Hood, 1987). This means that if you are talking to a

38
friend while walking down the street and paying little attention to your surroundings, you might
end up bumping into someone if that person is being absent-minded as well!

Absent-mindedness due to the lack of attention can also happen in shops, which possibly causes
unintentional shopliftings (Reason & Lucas, 1984). For example, as Reason and Lucas (1984)
mentioned in their study, a man went into a store to buy a pair of sunglasses and some toilet papers.
Before this, he had broken up with his girlfriend. He selected a pair of sunglasses and put them in
his pocket automatically. When he checked out with other items, he forgot that he had those
sunglasses in his pocket. Apparently, his limited attentional resource was heavily engaged by his
breakup other than shopping, which leads to his unintentional shoplifting. Would stressful events
like this increase our chance of being absent-minded? After analyzing hundreds of examples,
Reason and Lucas (1984) suggested that stresses influence attentional control. This means that the
more stress you are suffering from, the more likely you would involuntarily fix your attention on
the event that causes the stress (Reason & Lucas, 1984).
Now we know that absent-mindedness has something to do with attention and its limited capacity.
How about its relationship with memory? Interestingly, absent-mindedness is one of the “seven
sins of memory” (Murray, 2003). Attention plays an important role in memory – we forget because
we weren’t paying attention in the first place. To understand the relationship between attention
and memory better, we should first talk about how memory is formed. Storing information in
memory is called encoding which requires attention. If you don’t direct attention to it or just attend
to it superficially, the information won’t get encoded, and you probably will not remember it
(Sanbonmatsu et al., 2015). Going back to our example at the beginning, you can’t remember
where you put your keys because you did not pay attention to their location when you threw them
there. If you successfully encoded the information, it will go into long-term memory, and you are
more likely to remember it.

Absent-minded errors can occur at retrieving memories as well. For example, you drive past the
store on your way home and it fails to remind you to get groceries. The store did not trigger your
attention, so you forget about your grocery shopping plan. Evidence has shown that people who
self-reported as absent-minded did worse in prospective memory tasks, implying that attention
plays a role in retrieving prospective memories (i.e., memory for future intentions like meeting

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someone or getting groceries) (Mäntylä, 2003). This is an interesting theory suggesting that
prospective memory can also account for some absent-minded mistakes (Cornish, 2000).

So far, we’ve covered how absent-mindedness may happen. A quick sum up – when you are not
paying attention to the task at hand, the memory is not encoded and stored, which means you’ll
have a hard time recalling the task. Since we’ve learned about the relationship between attention
and memory, you may be wondering what strategies we could use to alleviate the effect of absent-
mindedness (even though we can’t make it go away). The levels of processing theory suggests that
the strength of a memory trace is determined by how the original information was processed (Craik
& Lockhart, 1972).
This means that how well you will remember something has to do with how deep you processed
it. For example, if you want to remember the word “cat,” you should first pay full attention to this
word, process it semantically (i.e., a cat is an animal that can meow), and probably connect it with
your pet cat or a cat you are familiar with. Testing and keyword mnemonic are also effective study
strategies. Here’s some more useful ways to adapt to absent-mindedness:

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Next time when you forget where you put your car keys because you were watching TV, you may
realize and think “Aha! That’s absent-mindedness, a cognitive bias!” You may also notice that you
see absent-mindedness everywhere, which can lead to another cognitive bias – frequency illusion.

References
Broadbent, D. E., Cooper, P. F., FitzGerald, P., & Parkes, K. R. (1982). The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) and its
correlates. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 21(1), 1-16. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8260.1982.tb01421.x

Cornish, I. M. (2000). Factor structure of the Everyday Memory Questionnaire. British Journal of Psychology, 91(3), 427-438.
doi:10.1348/000712600161916

Craik, F. I., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning &
Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 671-684. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80001-X

Chua, S. (2015, May 28). Imagining adaptations for absent-mindedness [Digital image]. Retrieved April 26, 2018, from
http://sachachua.com/blog/2015/05/leaning-into-absent-mindedness/

Fisher, S., & Hood, B. M. (1987). The stress of the transition to university: A longitudinal study of psychological disturbance,
absent-mindedness and vulnerability to homesickness. British Journal of Psychology, 78(4), 425-441. doi:10.1111/j.2044-
8295.1987.tb02260.x

Reason, J., & Lucas, D. (1984). Absent-mindedness in shops: Its incidence, correlates and consequences. British Journal of Clinical
Psychology, 23(2), 121-131. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8260.1984.tb00635.x

Mäntylä, T. (2003). Assessing absentmindedness: Prospective memory complaint and impairment in middle-aged adults. Memory
& Cognition, 31(1), 15-25. doi:10.3758/BF03196078

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Murray, B. (2003, October). The seven sins of memory. Retrieved April 26, 2018, from
http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct03/sins.aspx

Sanbonmatsu, D. M., Strayer, D. L., Biondi, F., Behrends, A. A., & Moore, S. M. (2015). Cell-phone use diminishes self-awareness
of impaired driving. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23(2), 617-623. doi:10.3758/s13423-015-0922-4

As a medical student (like Keats) I often walked Hampstead Heath this wonderful green patch
in the middle of London’s NW boroughs. I would go to Keats house where he lived for two years
before going to Rome. I was drunk with the British 19th century romantic poets who understood
the fragility of life and the intoxication of romance yet also a sense of the sublime.

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.[3]

"When I Have Fears" is an Elizabethan sonnet by the English Romantic poet John Keats. The 14-
line poem is written in iambic pentameter and consists of three quatrains and a couplet. Keats
wrote the poem between 22 and 31 January 1818.7

Themes and language

"When I Have Fears" primarily explores death, the fear of it, and what it prevents Keats from
doing. Using the phrase "cease to be" shows an emphasis on the life Keats will miss out on rather
than simply death itself. The repetition of "before" represents the anxieties Keats has about what
he cannot achieve before death. He fears he will no longer be able to write, witness the beauty of
the world, or experience love or fame once he dies. While the poem ends with a slight resolution,
with "Love and Fame" no longer mattering to Keats, it is a resolution found in isolation and

7
It was published (posthumously) in 1848 in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats by Richard Monckton Milnes.

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excessive thought. The two do not matter to Keats because death is inevitable and will prevent him
from making those achievements, so they sink away from Keats.
References to nature also appear throughout the poem, including harvesting grain, the night sky,
clouds, and the shore. Nature is a common theme in Romantic poetry, but in Keats' poem it
demonstrates how essential and natural writing is to his being. The shore and water that love and
fame sink within represent an expanse of fears that sit before Keats, giving the natural world a
darker theme in those lines.
The theme of creating coincides with references to nature and beauty. The first quatrain equates
writing to harvesting grain. Thoughts are tangible items to be grown into "high-piled books," as
Keats feels he can allow his ideas to flourish if he only had a long enough life. The second quatrain
contains more abstract concepts. Stars, cloudy symbols, shadows, reflect the intangible beauty of
the world which Keats can also not attempt to understand because of a life cut short. The couplet
shows abstract concepts of Love and Fame becoming tangible, though they sink to nothingness as
Keats realizes he has no time to achieve them.[6]

Analysis
The first four lines express Keats' fear that he will die before he has written all the works he hopes
to, "before [his] pen has glean'd [his] teeming brain." The symbols of the night sky and clouds that
Keats "may never live to trace" can represent many things. The first is simply Keats' desire for
literary expression and interpretation of the world around him. Another, though, is more
philosophical. Keats' use of "shadows" can connect to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which then
represents his desire to understand life itself. The "magic hand of chance" may further represent
fate as a function of life. Keats is condemned to a short life by chance, and because of that he will
remain unable to trace or understand how fate functions.
The "fair creature of an hour," according to Richard Woodhouse, the man who advised Keats'
publishers on legal and literary matters, refers to a woman Keats encountered at Vauxhall Gardens.
Keats' reflection on this woman may represent his preoccupation with beauty and his fear of no
longer witnessing beauty, in the form of a woman or nature, once he dies. She also represents
Keats' fear of loss and being unable to experience love once he dies.
The final three lines where Keats stands alone and contemplates the end of life may represent a
passive acceptance that life must end. Love and fame do not matter and cannot be achieved anyway
once Keats dies.

Biographical connections

Keats, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, is often cited as fearing his own death. The fear
may come from Keats' work as a medical student, where his sympathy for patients, as his
friend Charles Brown believed, hindered his work. Keats was aware of the harm that could come
to patients if he made any mistakes. Keats' fear of death is also present for his own life, not just
his patients.
This fear is evident on his gravestone, with the words "Here lies one whose name was writ in
water." The epitaph, which Keats requested on his deathbed, reflects Keats' fears of death and
anger with fate, as "When I Have Fears" does. The last three lines of the poem which describe "the

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shore" and state, "Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink" may relate to the reference to water
in Keats' epitaph. His name will sink in water as the fame of writing will.

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