Pamięć w tradycji żydowskiej i chrześcijańskiej

Abstract

Memory in Jewish and Christian Tradition

The memory has a special meaning both in the Jewish as well as the Christian tradition. It differs from other religious and cultural traditions. Its heart comes from the commandments Zakhor, Remember which means the permanent actualisation of the events which founded and essentially shaped the identity of Jews and Christians. The notion of zikkaron (memorial) reveals the duty to be in relation with the past in function of the present and the future in order not to be separated from God. Thus these two traditions allow to their believers to discover and not to lose the very sense of the human life with its most challenging aspects as suffering, weakness and death. Probably the most influential event in the history within this path of reflection was the Shoah, erroneously named Holocaust, the catastrophe which happened to the Jewish people in result of the Nazi ideology. If we don’t include this horrifying genocide into the Jewish, Christian and human history as a subject of a deep biblical and profound thinking, we cannot avoid two traps: to be fixed and lost in the past or to lose our memory and identity.