Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation B’nai Israel
Thursday April 9, 2026
How do we create and retain memories in a world where we can upload everything to the cloud? A generation ago we needed to know dozens of phone numbers. Today we barely remember our own. In the time of the Mishnah and early Talmudic days, there were two types of Tannaim. One were the teachers and scholars and the other were effectively an oral scroll, recalling verbatim any previous discussion or text. Memory was a skill expertly cultivated and appreciated, yet today it seems far less important--until the internet and power are out and suddenly remembering how to read a map or finding our insurance agent’s phone number becomes far more important!
Today we observe Yizkor, coming together to remember those who are no longer with us, thinking of their stories, their lives, the essence of who they were. For many of us, those memories are around a holiday table, in a synagogue, on an opening day of baseball, school assemblies or vacations. As sacred as an ordinary day is, sometimes it is those days that are out of the ordinary that our minds are most keen on remembering. How do we create those memories for our children, grandchildren and beyond? How do we share our traditions, our legacy, so that they, too, will be lived in the future?
Together, we just celebrated the Seder, a multi-sensory educational experience. We all told the story. We all drank some grape products and ate some matzah. Did we act things out? Did we play games around the afikomen or, like Rebecca’s mom, teach our kids how to flip the jumping frogs into their grape juice? Did we have fun? Did we share how our families found their way to these blessed United States or St Petersburg?
Outside of the holidays, what do we do to connect as a family? In our house we eat dinner together as often as we can, play board games on Shabbat and Festivals, race one another on Mario Kart, try to read the same books so we can discuss them, maybe speak about the Torah portion or an ethical issue--but trying to speak about big picture ideas can be quite challenging. Sometimes, popular media can be incredibly helpful.
In our house, there are some TV shows we try to watch as a family. For some reason the eccentric consultant helping the cops in a police procedural seems to entertain everyone. Whether Elsbeth or High Potential, we can usually all agree. (When we run out of those, I wonder what they’d think of Monk, Psych, Bones or the Mentalist--apparently TV writers and viewers really enjoy entertaining characters that can solve crimes without having to follow those pesky police procedures and rules of evidence!)
High Potential features a quirky, incredibly brilliant and creatively dressed, single mom (Morgan) who consults with the LAPD. In a two part episode, she recognizes fraud surrounding a stolen Rembrandt. Ignoring the murders and fraud, the painting is owned by a rich tech couple, who bought it decades after the Nazis stole it from a Jewish family in Krakow. Miriam, a survivor of the Shoah, wants her family’s painting back, and her grandson, Ari, becomes the prime suspect in the theft. To her, the Rembrandt is not only the painting itself, but the representation of her family’s joyful, Jewish life in Krakow before the war, before the Nazis murdered her family and stole the priceless painting.
After car chases, explosions and a several week cliff hanger, including a double-crossing insurance recovery expert and potential art thief, the original is surreptitiously returned to the Jewish family, while the “legal” owners have legal troubles of their own after they are discovered as the ones who hired the thief in the first place!
In discussing the episode as a family, we were able to talk about doing the right thing in surreptitious ways vs publicly. We were able to discuss what property and ownership meant and if art’s provenance truly reflected ownership. We also were able to speak about the horrors of the Shoah and its implications to this moment.
I share this TV show with you for two reasons.
Jewish tradition teaches us the blessings of family.
Jewish tradition teaches us that memory, that stories matter.
No matter the technologies we use in our daily lives, Shabbat and Festivals give us the potential for analogue connecting. At the same time, as any parent knows, it can be far easier to have a conversation with our kids when they are not looking at us! Whether in the car, around a TV or looking at a sacred text, we can create opportunities for powerful discussion. We might imagine that serious conversations need to be in serious spaces, with clear planning and framing, but sometimes the most powerful moments can happen when we least expect them.
As we go into Yizkor, as we remember the stories of those who came before, let us think about the moments that inspired our connections to them. Let us consider the conversations that resonate to this day. Let us think about how we share their memories and bring them into our lives today and all the days going forward. Our loved ones are not trapped in the past, but rather are present with us, in our hearts, our minds and our stories.
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