Do Not Forget To Remember - Parshat Vayeshev

(20) On the third day—his birthday—Pharaoh made a banquet for all his officials, and he singled out his chief cupbearer and his chief baker from among his officials. (21) He restored the chief cupbearer to his cupbearing, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand; (22) but the chief baker he impaled—just as Joseph had interpreted to them. (23) Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember (וְלֹֽא־זָכַר) Joseph; he forgot him (וַיִּשְׁכָּחֵֽהוּ).

וְלֹֽא־זָכַר - he did not remember him on that day; וַיִּשְׁכָּחֵֽהוּ - and he forgot him afterwards. Because Joseph had placed his trust in [the cupbearer] that he should remember him he was doomed to remain in prison for two years.

This verse also informs us that the chief butler subsequently forgot Joseph completely, he erased the incident from his heart. The Torah indicates that once one has decided not to remember something or somebody such a memory can be blocked out completely. Unless the chief butler had made a conscious effort to blot Joseph from his mind he would have remembered the incident from time to time. Perhaps the Torah wrote וישכחהו, he forgot him, in order to hint that this was a deliberate act of forgetting.

וְלֹֽא־זָכַר - he did not remember - Joseph had asked [the cupbearer] to remember his case as soon as he would come out of prison, but he did not remember. וַיִּשְׁכָּחֵֽהוּ -and he forgot - he kept forgetting him until Pharaoh had his dream which defied satisfactory interpretation and he was forced to remember him.

But take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously, so that you do not forget (פֶּן־תִּשְׁכַּח) the things that you saw with your own eyes and so that they do not fade from your mind as long as you live. And make them known to your children and to your children’s children:

Remember (זָכוֹר) what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt— how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the Eternal your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Eternal your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget (לֹא תִּשְׁכָּֽח)!