We’ve just returned from the phenomenal Shabbat in the Heights. It was an amazing experience filled with inspirational talks, awesome experiences and culinary delights.

Part of the thrill of going to Crown Heights is catching up with old friends. Every time we walked down the street or into the synagogue, there was another family member or friend to introduce to everyone. Even the manager of the burger bar we ate in had served with my nephew in the IDF!

As happens with age, sometimes I would meet someone who greets me like an old friend, asking, “so, how are you?”—but I would be thinking to myself, “Who is this? I remember meeting him once, but I can’t remember what his name is or if it was in Yeshiva, summer camp or Ukraine or if they have visited in Leeds.”

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be celebrating the holiday of the Giving of the Torah, when the Jewish Nation received the Written Torah and on top of that, the “Oral Torah”—the part of the Torah that which had to be committed to memory. At the Giving of the Torah, every Jew from young to old was recruited for that sacred mission. 

But how do we do that? What are the methods and techniques of not forgetting the Torah? Ethics of the Fathers gives some tips, that are also relevant post Shabbaton, as it was a regular discussion among the participants about how best to take everything in. 

In the Recitation of the Shema that we say every day, the Torah commands us to teach the Torah to our children. But the phrase that the Torah uses is not “vlimadeta,” “and you shall teach” but rather, “vishinantom” which means both “repeat” and “sharpen.” It refers to something you repeat again and again. In order to remember the Torah, every parent needs to “sharpen” it and repeat it to their children again and again. 

There were Talmudic Sages who had various personal customs when it came to study repetition. Rabbi Chiya would review his studies every 30 days.  The famous Hillel said, “who can be called a ‘servant of G-d’? One who repeats his studies 101 times.” 

Another good technique to help us remember things we can learn from the Torah itself. The Torah wasn’t given to us to be a dry book of rules, with each line containing one law after another after another. Rather the Torah was written in the form of a story. 

When the Torah wanted to emphasize the gravity of “brotherly hatred” it tells us the story of Joseph and his brothers. 3,000 years later we get emotional all anew every time we read the story of how Joseph was sold by his brothers. Endless movies, plays and books of the story, and the story have succeeded in doing what hundreds of hours of lectures and speeches would never do. 

Another method of remembering that we learn from the Torah itself is from the notes.  

The standard preparation for a bar mitzvah is for the young man to prepare his “piece,” learning how to sing the words of his weekly parshah. The way we read the Torah is not to just recite it, but rather, to chant it. One of the main reasons for this is so that when we essentially turn the entire Torah text into one giant song, it’s easier to remember. And as we see clearly, a prayer that is commonly sung is remembered by everyone - like the Adon Olam prayer, or the first paragraph of Birkat HaMazon, the Grace after Meals prayer. What we sing, we remember. 

Statistically, memory problems exist more among men than women. While men may forget what we ate for breakfast in the morning, women on the other hand, remember everything - even what you want them to forget. Some psychologists suggest that since women are by nature more in touch with their emotions, every life experience is an emotional experience for them.

Men on the other hand, could have the very same experience, but they only think about it at the moment it occurs. They don’t get emotionally involved. With women, there’s that emotional connection to the event and this makes its mark on the heart, and so they don’t forget it.

One of the talks we heard at Shabbat in the Heights mentioned a story with the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe about the letters of the Torah being engraved in our hearts. Just like an engraved letter becomes an inseparable part of the stone, so too must the Torah become engraved in our hearts. We can accomplish this by connecting to the Torah in an emotional way. As long as our Torah study is merely intellectual, it’s all fine and good, but it never becomes part of our existence. But when our Torah study is an emotional experience, then it becomes something we never forget. 

We are currently seeing around the world, that people are ignoring the intellect and become emotionally attached to a cause that makes no sense and often goes against everything they stand for. Judaism needs to win not just the battle of the minds, but the battle of the hearts, both in the wider world, but also among our youth.

Shabbat in the Heights was an opportunity to connect emotionally to our Judaism. We have plenty of intellectualism. What we really need is to raise ourselves and our children with Jewish feeling. 

The Rebbe’s approach was that through the Mitzvah Campaignspeople can connect in a more emotional way than though something that they only learn. And what we love, we don’t forget.