Jerusalem has no strategic significance. It has no commercial or
industrial importance, and it is not a cultural center. How has
this ancient city, unimportant as it appears, crept to the heart
of contention between Israel and the Palestinians over the
future of the land of Israel? Why should we care what happens to
Jerusalem? We need to begin by understanding the importance of
memory. Memory isn't history or dead memorabilia. By defining
the past memory creates the present. Repression of memory
creates mental disease. Health comes from memory's recovery.
Dictators consolidate power by altering memory. Stalin
airbrushed Trotsky and Bukharin out of photographs. Revisionists
deny the Holocaust ever happened. Why does it matter? In Hebrew,
the word for man is "zachar." The word for memory is "zecher."
Man is memory. People who suffer memory loss through illness or
accident don't just misplace their keys. They lose their selves.
They become lost and adrift in time, because without memory, the
current moment has n