30 Days of Elul at Temple Beth El

Jews have six senses. Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing… memory.  The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. It is only by tracing the pin prick back to other pinpricks – when his mother tried to fix his sleeve while his arm was still in it, when his grandfather‘s fingers fell asleep while stroking his great grandfather’s damp forehead, when Abraham tested the knifepoint to be sure Isaac would feel no pain – that the Jew is able to know why it hurts. When a Jew encounters a pin, he asks: “What does it remember like?”
– Jonathan Safran Foer