Rememberance as Anticipation

Walter Benjamin was a Jewish philosopher who wrote this in 1940 as a prisoner in a refugee camp in occupied France: “We know the Jews were prohibited from investigating the future. The Torah and the prayers instruct them in remembrance, however. This stripped the future of its magic, to which all those succumb who turn to the soothsayers for enlightenment. This does not imply, however, that for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous, empty time. For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.”