New research shows that even in patients with severe memory loss—for example from Alzheimer’s disease—the emotions triggered by specific events can outlast the memory of the events themselves.
An article by lead researcher Justin Feinstein in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes their experiments: they showed films of events with strong emotional content. For a sad event, the scene in the film Forest Gump where Tom Hanks cries all alone over the grave of his dead wife Jennie. For a happy event, a scene from When Harry Met Sally.
A half-hour later, the Alzheimer’s patients couldn’t remember the film. But they still reported being happy or sad, depending on what film they’d seen.
So, what does it mean for us as educators? Why do we care? It’s about that old dichotomy, perhaps a false one, between intellect and emotion, between reason and revelation.
We’re trained in a great intellectual tradition. We are the People of the Book. That intellectual tradition has manifested itself with great achievements through history—Nobel prizes, secular accomplishment, achievements broad and wide of which our community is justifiably proud.
And we will retain that great tradition. We will remain the People of the Book. It’s our heritage, our culture, our destiny.
And yet there’s more. As we teach our children, as we bring them into our tradition of mitzvot, prayer, and deeds of lovingkindness, we will do well to remember the emotional content of what we teach. For it may well be that the emotional lessons are the strongest and survive the longest. So let us make a point to convey our emotional heritage as well: the warmth of home and family rituals that our children learn at Shabbat dinners and the Passover seder; the community they experience in school and synagogue hanging out with other kids at snack time or while learning about Jewish heroes; and the thrill they get from having a tangible impact on the world around them as they engage in even a small project of tikkun olam.
This is their emotional heritage. And their emotional heritage—whatever it is that we create for them—will indeed resonate for them, and will resonate from generation to generation.
