I have been thinking about the word "commemorate". It means literally to "remember-with". The rituals you are describing are commemorative across time, and sacred place and object are meant to catalyze a kind of Jungian collective memory: "standing again at Sinai". But though we can pay intellectual lip-service to these commemorative markers, the fact is that they cannot tolerate too much cultural change. It is amazing how weJews have been dedicated to commemoration through centuries of dislocation, etc., but the velocity of change and crisis we are now in challenges all suc h places of memory, their objects, and their purposes. In some ways, this work you are doing, Amichai, is a kind of elegy the loss of the commemorative.
Outstanding post, sensitive, well researched, well written. Valuable contribution to torah.
I have been thinking about the word "commemorate". It means literally to "remember-with". The rituals you are describing are commemorative across time, and sacred place and object are meant to catalyze a kind of Jungian collective memory: "standing again at Sinai". But though we can pay intellectual lip-service to these commemorative markers, the fact is that they cannot tolerate too much cultural change. It is amazing how weJews have been dedicated to commemoration through centuries of dislocation, etc., but the velocity of change and crisis we are now in challenges all suc h places of memory, their objects, and their purposes. In some ways, this work you are doing, Amichai, is a kind of elegy the loss of the commemorative.