The Ba’al Shem Tov the founder of modern day Hassidism said “Forgetting is the beginning of Exile; Remembering is the beginning of Redemption.”
President Shimon Peres said in an interview with David Hume (2000) the following chilling words, “You know, they say the Jewish people have a long memory. What we need is a rich imagination today, because the things that are going to happen-or did happen already-are so revolutionary that the past becomes pale-irrelevant.” We are living in a world that glorifies the present and denies its responsibilities of the past. As a result we continue to get mired in the same erroneous conceptions and mistakes that have plagued us for generations. This is because destiny and time do not run in linear fashion but rather as a cyclical spiral ascending to its climax. Yet as the spiral ascends the same challenges reoccur and the same points of decision reappear. It is at those junctures that responsible and destiny driven decisions must be made or else the same mistakes will reoccur.