Don't Forget

Somewhat mixed Shavuot.  This can be an overlooked holiday.  I haven't been to a Tikkun L'Eil Shavuot as they are really not that in my community.  More either our Rabbi or in recent years a series of local clergy with or without their own congregations each giving their 20 minute presentations.  My congregation opened in its new home.  I didn't go.  The abbreviated format seemed too much like Junior Congregation.  In its stead, I watch Shavuot Services from Hampton Synagogue on JBS.  Mostly the Ordinary, almost no Proper, except the Torah reading of the Ten Commandments and a portion of Hallel.  Ruth and Akdamut and Yizkor give this festival its uniqueness.  All absent from JBS.  My shul apparently did Yizkor both days as attendance limitations required advanced sign-up with people, often elderly, encouraged to choose one day or the other.  Most would have chosen Yizkor if were only offered on the second day.

Hampton's Rabbi did a masterful D'Var Torah, though, one of great insight, pointing out the distinction between Remembering, or Zachor, and Don't Forget, or Al Tishcach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sd0bT8UGZk  

He indicated that we have monuments to commemorate our past, such as the Temple Mount and more obscure places whose disappearance or low profile moves us forward, such as Sinai whose place is unknown but whose Revelation shapes our beliefs and conduct.

I'm not sure Remember and Don't Forget really segregate quite that way.  We have Yizkor which is largely a remembrance of our personal lineage, but the Torah portion also had Zachor as the commandment for Shabbat, which certainly can be looked upon as either a weekly culmination or as a reset button in time moving head. And for Amalek, we get both, erase the memory and don't forget.  Or maybe that's more of what Rav Av was trying to convey with his Confederate Statue analogy, we erase the heritage of systematic abuse of people but move ahead by not forgetting either the vulnerable that exist today or the injustices that Constitutional Amendments and Civil Rights legislation only partially address.

And Shavuot food offers a small measure of uniqueness to the Festival even if the synagogue did not.  Lasagna in the manner of Artscroll's first sponsored cookbook Kosher by Design, and blintzes with cottage cheese filling using a cookbook mainly to affirm the portion of eggs to flour to milk.  Was going to make Gooey Butter Cake but only have the recipe online and neglected to print it prior to yontiff.  

Good to have Pesach, Omer, and Shavuot completed.