Who are we? Forgetting and Remembering Elul 2

To turn or return, we need to remember where we have been.  This is one reason why we begin the ten days of repentance with Rosh ha-Shanah, the creation of life and root of all being, instead of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

S. Y. Agnon (Days of Awe, 23-34) retells this parable about remembering from a midrash in Darchei Hayyim, The Ways of Life.

Once a king’s son sinned against his father, the king.  His father expelled him from his house.  As long as he was near his home, people knew he was a king’s son, and befriended him, and gave him food and drink.  But as the days passed, and he got farther into his father’s realm, no one knew him, and he had nothing to eat. He began to sell his clothing to buy food.  When he and nothing left to sell, he hired out as a shepherd. After he had hired out as a shepherd he was no longer in need, because he needed nothing.He would sit on the hills, tending his flocks and singing like the other shepherds, and he forgot that he was a king’s son and all the pleasures that he had been used to.

     Now it is the custom of the shepherds to make themselves small roofs of straw to keep out the rain. The king’s son wanted to make such a roof, too,but he could not afford one, so he was deeply grieved.

     Once the king happened to be passing through that province. Now it was a common practice in that kingdom for those who had petitions to the king to write out their petitions and throw them into the king’s chariot. The king’s son same with the other petitioners, and threw his note, in which he petitioned for a small straw roof such as shepherds have. The king recognized his son’s handwriting, and was saddened to think how low his son had fallen that he had forgotten that he was a king’s son, and felt only the lack of a straw roof.

     Our master ended: “It is the same way with our people:  They have already forgotten that they are each of them king’s sons [or daughters], and what they really lack. One cries he is in in want of a living, and another cries for children. But the truth, that we lack all the treasures we had of old—that is something they forget to pray for!”

Martin Buber retells a Hasidic version of this parable:

     Rabbi Shelomo of Karlin asked: “What is the worst thing the Evil Urge can achieve?”

     And he answered: “For a man to forget he is the son [or daughter] of a king.” [Tales of the Hasidim 1: 282]

Let us start by remembering.