My faculties for recollection manifest true genius.
I can't remember large portions of the siddur and certain parts of bentching despite being an FFB.
I don't believe that there is a single mishna or omud gemora that I can recite Baa'l peh verbatim.
I can't recall which Mesikhta I learned during which year of my Yeshiva and Kollel education.
I have certain cousins who most definitely are my relatives but I can't remember just how we are related.
When I misplace things they usually stay misplaced until the following years Pesach cleaning.
I may have early onset Alzheimers. I have not been diagnosed but this much is clear; I can remember plenty of peoples faces whose names utterly elude me.
I would never remember my own simchas and vacations if not for the photos and/ or videos of them.
So where do I get off saying that I am a great Ba'al Zikoron??? Simple! Slights, put-downs and insults stay fresh in my mind for decades after they occurred. All you need to do is be פוגע in my kovod in the slightest and I will remember it vividly and in meticulous detail until I die or contact Alzheimer's, whichever is first. Not only do I remember the actual hurtful word, behavior facial expression or תנועה but like scabs growing on old wounds, I encrust these with embellishments that metastasize into full-blown mythologies of avla and עלבון. So much so that I give the impression of memory in sharper detail than I really possess.
What a photographic memory have I.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
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9 comments:
Did SoMeoNe recently insult you, or are you just now coming to grips with the gripings of yesteryear?
My frustration is that I can quote Star Trek and Simpsons like Rav Eliashiv can quote Gemara.
Somehow:
A) No. But I remember it as though it were yesterday
B) Not yet. But i can feel a whopper coming just around the corner.
Garnel: same idea; we forget the sublime and remember the ridiculous.
Ah, that's why I remember the gemara in Sanhedrin where the Chachamim wonder what the penalty is for self-sodomization...
I wonder if in today's age of digitized texts and google-like searching if it's even important or impressive that one can remember such things.
I remember having a rabbi who literally had a photographic memory (probably an eidetic memory if one wants to be precise). He could recite from memory large sections of tanach or gemara or rishonim or achronim, etc. He could even tell you where on the page the quote appeared. What was most interestic is as he recalled it and said it back, his eyes would move as if reading the page in his head.
I was beyond wowed by this ability.
The scholarship is certainly still impressive and necessary, but if someone just recalled "There's a line somewhere in gemara about this" he could do a quick search and find it within seconds or minutes. I wonder if the skill has lost its usefulness if not its luster.
My memory is terrible. Thankfully my wife's memory is excellent.
not if she remembers insults
Your rabbis ability is/ was impressive but I have a pet peeve with those savants who make a point iof mentioning every place in Shas a particular passage appears.
Other than showing off ones fantastic memory I fail to see the point of this habit.
Bray, knowing every place in shas something is said is important because context is always important; all contexts.
true. But unless the lecturer plans on expostulating on every single place in shas where the quote appears in order to show nuances of differences rooted in context it still strikes me as the human equivalent of a peacock spreading it's tail feathers.
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