From “Next Year in Jerusalem” to “Jerusalem of Gold,” Jewish memory has often functioned less as nostalgia than as preparation for the future.

There is something slightly unusual about the Jewish relationship with memory. Most people remember the past in order to preserve it. Jews often remember the past in order to move toward the future.

This is not the sort of thing one notices immediately. Judaism contains many ordinary-looking activities that, upon closer inspection, are quietly peculiar.

Take the phrase “Next year in Jerusalem.”

For nearly two thousand years, Jews concluded the Passover seder with those words. Not “Remember Jerusalem.” Not “We once had Jerusalem.” But “Next year.” That is an astonishing thing for a scattered people to say repeatedly across centuries.

It is not nostalgia. Nostalgia looks backward wistfully. “Next year in Jerusalem” leans forward. It assumes that history is still open. That return, repair, redemption, or renewal remain possible even when circumstances suggest otherwise. Judaism, in this sense, has always practiced a kind of directional memory.

Shabbat offers another........

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