Experiential Memory: The Underlying Mechanism of Jewish Commemoration and Its Application in Education for Holocaust Remembrance

This article introduces “experiential memory” as a new theoretical construct to explain a paradox in Israeli remembrance culture: why ancient Jewish days of commemoration (Passover, Tisha B’Av, Purim, Chanukah) retain their power after millennia, while Israel’s national memorial days—especially Holocaust Remembrance Day—show signs of weakening despite being far more recent. Building on, and moving beyond, Halbwachs’ concept of collective memory and Carver and Kolb’s theory of experiential learning, the article defines experiential memory as a commemoration mechanism combining four dimensions simultaneously: a textual dimension (a fixed, communally read text), a physical-sensory dimension (embodied acts such as eating, fasting, or lighting), a communal dimension (shared enactment rather than passive observation), and a dimension of cyclical recurrence (annual repetition that renews rather than becomes routine). Through the analysis of Seder Night, Sukkot, Chanukah, Purim, and Tisha B’Av, the article shows how Jewish tradition integrates all four dimensions to embed memory in the body rather than merely in consciousness. It then diagnoses Israel’s national memorial ceremonies as structurally deficient—textually fragmented, physically passive (the siren rather than embodied action), and communally observational rather than participatory—which explains the repeated failure of efforts, such as Shinan’s Holocaust Scroll, to institutionalize a shared commemorative text. In its applied section, the article proposes principles for building an experiential mechanism for Holocaust remembrance as the last survivors disappear: shifting from observing to doing, establishing a shared constitutive text, introducing a mandatory physical-sensory ritual such as synchronized home candle-lighting, and relocating commemorative action to smaller communities such as classrooms and families. Particular attention is given to the education system as the most viable arena for implementation, and to broadening the Holocaust narrative to include Mizrahi and Sephardi experience, addressing the ethnic disconnect some parts of Israeli society feel toward the Holocaust. The article closes by framing the central challenge as sustaining living memory once eyewitnesses are gone, and suggests that Holocaust remembrance may eventually adopt the same experiential logic long applied to the Exodus: “in every generation”.