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.
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 no context, and no meaning. Let my tongue cling to my palate if I fail to recall you, if I fail to elevate Jerusalem above my highest joy. The memory of Jerusalem somehow is linked to our current vigour as a people.