As Jews, we are very proud of our history.

History connects us to our past and gives us guidelines on how to live our lives.

By remembering our ancestors, it fills us with hope and encouragement for our present and future.

One of the High Holiday themes is remembrance.

In the Musaf of Rosh Hashanah, we refer to God as the One who remembers the creation of the world and everything that came after. Immediately after that paragraph, the prayer of Musaf continues by praising humans who do not forget about God.

I believe that this prayer teaches us that in order to create a relationship with Hashem, it is a two-way street where both parties remember each other. By doing so we build an unbreakable bond with the Almighty.

The same idea applies to our past. In order to remember it, we have to research and look into it. By doing so, we create a bond that will accompany us for the rest of our lives.

My mother who was born in Mogador, Morocco, told me on numerous occasions how she remembers that as a child she woke up during the month of Elul to the beautiful melodies that were bursting out from the synagogue that was next door to her house. It is a childhood memory that she cherishes and preserves. This description is something that accompanies me every time I recite Selichot, and it gives me a purpose and a reason to exist.

Thank God, Judaism has been around for thousands of years and each and every one of us should be proud of our past, thus preserving it as authentically as we can.

While we should be proud to be part of such a rich history and continue what we are doing, we have to ask ourselves what are we doing to ensure the continuity of our traditions.

I truly believe that in order to ensure its existence we have to take our traditions to heart, research them, ask about them, thus making it part of our lives, perpetuating it to our children and generations to come.

Tizku l’shanim rabot!

By Rabbi Ilan Acoca