Lest We Forget We Jews have a long memory. Something that
happened almost two thousand years ago comes back to haunt our
collective consciousness as if it happened yesterday. This is
what so impressed the French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte when he
looked in on a synagogue in Paris on Tisha BAv and saw Jews
sitting on the floor chanting lamentations and shedding tears.
After inquiring about the cause for their mourning and hearing
that it was the destruction of their Holy Temple in Jerusalem he
expressed astonishment that he had heard nothing about this
tragedy from his reliable intelligence sources. When it was
explained that this event took place close to 1800 years earlier
he reportedly declared that a people who can still mourn for
their Temple and their homeland after so many years have a real
hope for regaining them. Napoleon distinguished something unique
about the long memory of the Jewish people but could not truly
understand its meaning. A Jew mourns the fall of Jerusalem, the
destruction of the Beis Ha