15. Remembering The Temple: Commemoration And Catastrophe In Ashkenazi Culture

Abstract

This chapter attempts to shed light on this phenomenon by analyzing one example of it, the role of the memory of the destruction of the Temple in the commemoration of calamity and catastrophe experienced by Ashkenazi Jews living in medieval and modern times. The author focuses on much of a culture's identity depends on how that culture remembers, and chooses to convey, the catastrophes it experienced in addition to its positive achievements and accomplishments, and Jewish culture is no exception. But the leaders of the Jewish communities that experienced catastrophe confronted a dilemma. On the one hand, it was very important for them not to forget what happened, eternally to recall for all future generations the memory of their communities that were destroyed and their members who were killed, as they would have formulated it, al Kiddush Hashem , for the sanctification of God's name. Keywords: al Kiddush Hashem ; Ashkenazi Jews; catastrophes; God; Jewish communities