Publication of Yosef Yerushalmi's Zakhor in 1982 inspired a generation of scholarly inquiry into historical images and myths, the construction of the Jewish past, and the making and meaning of collective memory. Here, eminent scholars in their respective fields extend the lines of his seminal study into topics that range from medieval rabbinics, homiletics, kabbalah, and Hasidism to antisemitism, Zionism, and the making of modern Jewish identity.

Essays are clustered around four central themes: historical consciousness and the construction of memory; the relationship between time and history in Jewish thought; the demise of traditional forms of collective memory; and the writing of Jewish history in modern times.