Religion and Memory in Judaism

Religion means link or agreement between humans.
But this link is also an emotion imbued with memory.
In the Jewish tradition, a master must transmit on behalf of whom he has received it is that he states, and go back as far as possible in the chain of transmission.
Moses is the oldest historical referent, as initiator of the memorial reading. This is how the Torah student hears “Rabbi Akiba say on behalf of Rabbi Yoshua what heard him from Rabban Yohanan …” this student enters an emotional bond that is not conditioned by time . In Africa, there is everywhere this culture of the sacralization of memory. But this is not pastism. In Judaism, Faith and Knowledge are mingled.
Knowledge is the path taken by memory, nourished by the emotion of the extra-temporal connection with past generations. Religion is always ancestor worship, or ancestor knowledge. The implicit reverence of Memory-Emotion makes spaces that it creates a sacred context. All speech of the origin becomes sacred. Even the Big Bang plays this role in contemporary discourse. And to justify itself, this discourse also uses a chain of transmission of knowledge dating back to ancient times. This is as old as humanity, everywhere we find myths of origin. Religion means link, or agreement, between humans. But this link is also an emotion imbued with memory. Every black Jew child must remember the 7 generation names that preceded him. One of the things we can say about religion is that it is an emotion that draws to the depths of memory.
In this sense, there would be a short-term emotional memory for family, friends, the couple, and a long-term emotional memory, which draws on the depths of the past, to maintain and develop bonds that transcend the length of time. an individual life. In this context, seniority is essential. Thus the students of the sacred texts become intimate characters who lived centuries before, if not millennia before. And to justify itself, this discourse also uses a chain of transmission of knowledge going back to Sinai. But this link is also an emotion imbued with memory. This attachment to ancestral links is real in many other African communities. The truths to which the ancients have devoted their existence have escaped oblivion by the study of their descendants. Memory and history are not always consistent. It happens sometimes that Memory carries universal truths by the vehicle of metaphor, symbol, or rite. There are metaphors that have survived the centuries, and that perpetuate their teachings to this day, from which we can understand our personal stories. It is the fact that these memories have passed through generations that makes them important to the point of continuing to meditate. Religious emotion is universal; human beings pray, as birds sing. Their songs may be different, but the spiritual impulse that animates them, the appeal of Emotional and Transgenerational Memory are everywhere. It is this feeling that opens a person to the choice of a personal journey in religious life. We join the tree to the memory of a line of Sages, who can go back very far, and they become relatives and relatives, almost as our friends and immediate relatives. Often in a religious setting even the other members of the family have the same veneration for these Sages. Everybody lives with souls of all times in their intimacy. Religion without Memory is a near impossibility. Even the hope to be sacralized and must refer to a promise. The religious vow is the expression of fidelity to a story. This story is not necessarily ours, in the physical sense. Nobody lives in the Book, it is made of pages, but the Book gives life to all. In this sense it is true that the Sages have attained immortality. The emotion that animated them, which they transmitted through the centuries, still arouses souls in the same wonder. Even if the vessel comes from another continent at another time, the words of the sage, of ancient memory, can awaken his consciousness to the point that he joins wholeheartedly in the study of this Memory. How does this memory express and analyze things, and what questions are asked by its teaching. These questions are those that allow us to see forward and our way of living side by side with the unknown. Reading the Book of Job, we understand how the transmission of a story is a call. The Sages who took care to pass us the language of this history made this choice to bind us to the memory emotion which makes us aware of our own life. They invite us to pray to the Author of the Book of Our Lives, Unfathomable Author, as His Name Beyond Human Language, and the story of Job has been passed on so that these questions can be part of the emotional memory, so that to consecrate this questioning.