Why I didn't watch the Oct 7th Footage but my daughter did: Eikev

I didn't watch the horrific footage from October 7th. But my 18-year-old daughter did. When I questioned why she would expose herself to such horror, she replied, "I never want to forget. I want it to be imprinted in my memory. My brothers and sisters endured it - I have to carry the weight of that trauma in my mind." I was awed by her maturity and ethical clarity, yet also ambivalent about her exposure to such traumatic images. Her response touched on that complex inheritance of memory and its mandate we cradle as a Jewish people.

Dara Horn’s People Love Dead Jews captures this tension. She urges us to confront the horror of Jewish persecution without sanitising it into feel-good lessons about human nature. And she’s right. The world has already forgotten “never again.” As antisemitism resurges, “never again” is happening again.

But while Horn’s critique may be instructive for non-Jews, I wonder what message it offers us, as Jews. Because while the world forgets, we remember. We carry the images of 1945-and now, heartbreakingly, 2023. We hear the ancient hatred of the Crusades echo on today’s campuses. We’ve seen trusted neighbours and colleagues become silent bystanders-or worse. These memories live in our bones, passed down like DNA.

But should this be the essence of our Jewish identity? Should we be a people defined by our collective suffering rather than by our rich heritage? How do we strike a balance between being paralyzed by trauma and forging a Jewish identity that transcends mere survival? What kind of memory should guide us as we navigate this uncertain moment?  And perhaps the most pressing question: How do we fight antisemitism without the dead jew narrative? 

Perhaps the answer begins not with them, but with us. Not outward, but inward. Strengthening our identity, clarifying our purpose, and recalibrating the way we remember.

This challenge sits at the heart of Parshat Eikev, where three Hebrew words echo throughout the text: שכחה (forgetting), לב (heart), and זכרת (remembering). As the Israelites prepare to enter the land and build a future civilisation, the Torah offers a powerful insight-perhaps even a survival strategy: memory is the secret to resisting moral and historical entropy.

"Remember the entire journey that the Lord your God took you on these forty years in the desert..." (Deuteronomy 8:2 ) Moses reminds the people.

And later: "Remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the strength to achieve greatness, in order to uphold His covenant."(Deuteronomy 8:18)

These verses reveal two guiding principles of sacred memory: the history of our long journeys through many wildernesses, and our mandate to bring God's covenant to life in the society we build. Jewish destiny means carrying memory not as a burden, but as a compass; not just reacting to hatred, but living with purpose and vision. The truest answer to antisemitism is a vibrant Jewish life- rooted in the past, but always facing forward. It is the delicate dance between history and memory.

When history turns into what Rabbi Sacks called “his-story”-detached and impersonal-rather than zachor, my story, it shifts from transformation to mere preservation, and loses its ethical mandate. Only when memory is made personal can it shape who we are and who we are called to be.

The Parsha's opening word, eikev (עקב), means "as a result of," but its literal meaning-"heel"-offers a clue to our complex relationship with memory. The word echoes our forefather name Jacob (Yaakov), who emerged from the womb grasping his brother's heel (ekev). Jacob embodies the tension between moving forward and looking back, between remembering and forgetting.

He tried to outrun his past- the betrayal of Esav, the weight of deception-but it followed him wherever he went. On the eve of his reunion with his brother, he wrestles not just with a mysterious stranger, but with his own history. Only then does he receive a new name: Yisrael—yashar –el one who stands ‘straight with God’. He remains Yaakov, but he also becomes Yisrael. That duality, wrestling with our past while walking upright as Gods people into the future, is the key to a full whole Jewish identity.

Parshat Eikev teaches that Jewish memory must be more than a catalogue of suffering. Yes, we must remember Egypt, Spain, Germany, October 7th, Pittsburgh, Paris, and beyond. But survival alone cannot define us. We do not defeat antisemitism merely by enduring, we prevail when we flourish. And flourishing means standing tall ‘yashar’ with God, as Yisrael: armed with a rich legacy of Jewish wisdom and choosing to be part of an eternal people that transcends time and history, and pulses with life - shaped by its teachers, poets, revolutionaries, and dreamers.

So, in a way, both my daughter and I were right. I, shaped by memories of diaspora antisemitism, wanted to protect her from being haunted by images of dead Jews. She, born into sovereignty, wore her Judaism with pride and insisted on imprinting the cost of statelessness deep in her consciousness.  She understood something essential: that memory is not the end goal. It is the beginning.

Because we are not here only to remember. We are here to live. To build. To carry our name-Yisrael-with strength and dignity. A people who ‘wrestle with man and God but prevail”. (Genesis 32:29)

Shabbat Shalom

To Listen to a podcast conversation of Parshat Eikev: Episode 178 - Parshat Ekev: Communication Is the Foundation - Matan - The Sadie Rennert