There is an old Israeli joke of a Jewish mother who immigrated to Israel from Germany during the war. She is taking the bus through Jerusalem with her son Itzhak. She speaks animatedly to him in Yiddish and yet he keeps answering her in Hebrew. The mother insists he speak in Yiddish – ‘No, no, no. Answer me in Yiddish mein sun.’ Finally, an impatient Israeli leans over to her and exclaims: ‘Lady, why on earth do you keep insisting that the boy speak Yiddish and not Hebrew?’ To which the mother retorts with indignation and surprise: ‘Why, I don't want him to forget he's a Jew of course!’

What this joke pokes fun at is the way the past is revered as a primary signifier of identity. This chapter intends to examine the problem of how memorialization might create a connection to the past without reinstating the Oedipal shadow of an original trauma, one that forces out an illegitimate conjunctive synthesis by compelling us to identify with one particular subjectivity. In order to argue this it will be proposed the past is not so much a tangible terrain, a demarcated and identifiable space, or a monumental time that acts as a warning or reminder both in the present and for future generations, but an admixture of times that affirm the present and future and in so doing encourage a more nomadic subjectivity that identifies with a variety of subjectivities.