A few weeks ago, my rabbi made a statement that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. He referenced a Jewish mystical text teaching that memory resides in the same place as holiness.
I don’t know enough about Jewish mysticism to explore that idea theologically, but as a writer, a publishing executive, and a Jewish woman, I found myself asking a different question: Why has remembering always been considered sacred?
This year, two anniversaries only a month apart have occupied my thoughts.
On June 4, the world marked the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre when thousands of Chinese students and citizens gathered peacefully to call for greater freedom before tanks rolled into Beijing and forever altered the course of history.
One month later, Americans celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that boldly proclaimed that all people “are created equal” and are endowed with “certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
One date reminds us of freedom denied; the other celebrates freedom declared. Together, they invite us to reflect on something even deeper than freedom itself: What happens when societies choose to remember—or choose to forget?
Why has Judaism placed such extraordinary emphasis on remembering?
Every year, Jewish families gather around the Seder table not simply to remember the Exodus, but to relive it. Children spend weeks preparing questions, artwork, songs, puppets, and costumes. They are not passive listeners to history; they become participants in it. The story is handed from one generation to the next, not as ancient history, but as living memory.
Authoritarian governments have long understood that controlling the future begins with controlling the past. Books are burned. Newspapers are censored. Religious practice is forbidden. Family traditions are interrupted. Witnesses are silenced. Entire generations grow up knowing little about the stories that shaped those who came before them.
History teaches us that persecution is rarely satisfied with controlling behavior alone. Its deeper aim is to sever the connection between people and their identity. When memory is lost, oppression has achieved one of its greatest victories.
Yet history teaches another lesson as well. Memory is remarkably resilient. For thousands of years, the Jewish people have preserved their identity through stories told around family tables, prayers recited across generations, holidays that remember both suffering and deliverance, and an unwavering commitment to pass those memories to their children.
Across cultures and throughout history, other persecuted communities have done the same. Wherever human dignity has been threatened, ordinary people have found extraordinary ways to remember.
For more than 20 years, my professional life has centered on preserving another form of memory. As a publishing executive working with newspaper archives, I have witnessed the extraordinary value of journalism as the first draft of history.
Newspapers record events as they unfold. They capture eyewitness accounts, document injustice, and preserve voices that might otherwise be forgotten. Day after day, I have watched journalists capture moments they could not have known would one day become history.
But over time I came to realize that archives answer only one question: What happened? Historical fiction asks another: What did it feel like?
I came to realize I wasn’t writing about different histories at all. I was writing about the same human question: What allows ordinary people to preserve their humanity when powerful forces seek to erase it?
The answer is seldom found in grand political speeches or famous leaders. More often, it is found in ordinary people who refuse to surrender who they are. Parents who teach traditions to their children. Students who risk everything to speak the truth. Journalists who document events despite censorship. Families who keep telling stories that others would rather forget.
These quiet acts of remembrance become acts of courage. Today, as the world confronts rising anti-Semitism, ongoing religious persecution, attacks on freedom of conscience, and efforts to rewrite or suppress history, remembering is more than an academic exercise. It is a responsibility.
Not because every history is the same—they are not—but because every time we preserve the story of a persecuted people, we affirm a simple truth: Every human life possesses inherent dignity, and every community deserves to have its story remembered.
Freedom depends upon many things—laws, institutions, and courageous leaders among them. Yet it also depends upon something quieter—people who choose to remember and people who choose to tell the story. Without them, freedom becomes an abstraction, untethered from the lives and sacrifices that gave it meaning. Perhaps that is one of the most enduring acts of freedom we can offer one another—not simply the freedom to speak, but the freedom to remember.
I still don’t know exactly what the mystics meant when they associated memory with holiness. But I think I understand it better now.
Memory is where we keep the stories that shape us, the people who formed us, and the truths we dare not lose. It is how families become a people, how history becomes wisdom, and how love endures across generations.
Perhaps that is why remembering has always been considered sacred.
Every generation receives memories it did not create and stories it did not live. We do not own them; we are entrusted with them.
What we choose to remember—and what we choose to pass on—will shape the generations that follow.
