Not long ago I read Naomi Klein’s most recent book, Doppelganger. While I didn’t agree with everything, but one insight there I found eye-opening, and it will stay with me for a long time. It is that there is a distinction between preserving the memory of traumatic events, and preserving the trauma.
Again, there is a difference between keeping the memory of traumatic events alive, and keeping the trauma itself alive.
Ands Jews, and especially as Israelis, we overwhelmingly tend toward the re-traumatization. We work, very deliberately, not only to preserve the memory of what happened, but to keep the trauma very much alive in each of us.
As if it is a betrayal to lead a life without this ember of the trauma in our souls.
As if we are afraid that something terrible will happen if we heal.
Jewish prayers are full of this affirmation, as I was reminded not long ago, during my father’s shiva, when I was exposed to more prayer than I have experienced in many decades. Always remember that there is evil, that rises up against us in every generation, that only God saves us …
“But we see it proven again and again!” people say. After all, we received a terrible reminder not long ago; what could make it clearer?
Of course. There is no way that anyone – let alone a collective – could affirm so many times a day, for so long, that “this is how things are”, and have them change. Certainly not when the declared truth has to do with one’s self-perception. Anyone who has ever dealt with changing consciousness or creating reality knows this. It’s absurd to expect any different.
The point is that you can remember the past without preserving active trauma. We can respect the memory of those who went through terrible things in their lives and not insist on maintaining an inner reality as if we ourselves were going through them. This is one of the reasons to work with ancestral healing. And there are many other tools that can help us live good lives even if the previous generations could not.
But first we need to know that it’s possible. Even more, we need to know that it’s desirable.
What if it’s actually true, that in every generation they rise up against us, but we are not in a traumatized state of alert expectation? People are afraid it will catch them off guard, but the truth is the opposite. In a post-traumatic state, we are not reacting to a current threat, we are reacting to an old, possibly even ancient, threat, which is still engraved in our souls. We are not free to perceive what is unique about the current situation, not free to find the most effective response. When a large part of our attention is caught in the past, we are too busy to respond well in the present.
We can begin by noticing how our commemorations work to reactivate trauma. Then we can know that it’s possible to remember and also live a whole, healthy life. After all, this is what those remembered would want us to do.