By Nechama Shemtov
Last week, I attended the annual dinner of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. It was a powerful evening with close to 1,000 people in attendance. The speakers were varied — survivors, leaders and students. While each spoke from a different perspective, there was a shared thread that ran through the night: memory is not just about the past. It is what anchors truth in the present.
One statistic shared by Sara Bloomfield, the museum’s director, was as striking as it was unsettling. With 3 billion people on social media, a lie is 70% more likely to be shared than the truth. It’s not necessarily because people are intentionally spreading falsehoods, but because we are drawn to what is quick, compelling and easy to digest. The pace at which we consume and share information leaves little room for careful consideration, and over time, that begins to shape not just what we know, but what we believe to be real.
That idea was reinforced in the remarks of Merrill Eisenhower Atwater, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s great-grandson, who reflected on the role of memory. When memory fades, he said, truth is challenged. And when truth is challenged, reality itself begins to erode. It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens gradually, as facts become less clear and certainty begins to slip.
Amid all of this, one line from Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., stood out with particular clarity. Speaking on Jewish life and resilience today, he encouraged the audience, “Do not beg for sympathy. Command respect. Respect comes from strength and from truth.” It was a powerful reminder that truth is not something we shape to fit a moment, but something we stand firmly within.
As I was taking all this in, I had a conversation that, in a quieter but deeply personal way, reflected the same theme. A dear friend of mine had flown to D.C. for the dinner. Not long ago, she had been battling stage 4 cancer. Miraculously, she pulled through. I went over to say hello and asked her how she was doing. She initially responded with gratitude, acknowledging that she was thankful to be here and alive when many had feared otherwise.
But when I pushed a little deeper, she didn’t stop there. She continued, with complete honesty, to describe how difficult things still are. She spoke about her lack of energy, about the weakness she feels, and about the reality that she is not the same person she was before. She mentioned that she told her children that the mother they once knew is gone, and that they now have to adjust to a different version of her.
There was something profoundly truthful in that moment. It would have been easier to remain in the space of gratitude alone, to present a version of the story that felt more resolved and more comfortable for others to receive. But instead, she acknowledged both realities. She was thankful, and she was also struggling. She had survived, and she was still grieving what had been lost.
We discussed holding space for both realities. That doing so is not a contradiction, but an expression of honesty. Because real life is rarely made up of a single, clean narrative. More often, it is layered, complex, and at times, uncomfortable.
And that, in many ways, brought the entire evening into focus. The conversations about memory and truth are not only about history on a global scale. They are also about the way we live our own lives. When we simplify too much, when we reshape reality into something easier to process or easier to present, we risk losing the truth — not only in the world around us, but within ourselves.
Respect, as the ambassador said, comes from strength and from truth. That kind of truth requires us to resist the urge to flatten what is complex, to remain honest even when it would be more comfortable not to be, and to allow multiple realities to exist side by side when that is what is real. Jewish teaching reminds us that truth is not something we adjust to fit the moment, but something we are meant to live within, even when it stretches us.
Perhaps that is the quieter takeaway from an evening centered on remembrance. Not only that we must preserve memory so that truth is not lost, but that we must also be willing to live truthfully in our own lives. To acknowledge what is good alongside what is difficult, and to remain anchored in what is real, even when it is not simple.
Because in the end, truth is not always the easiest path, but it is the one that allows everything else to stand.
Nechama Shemtov is an internationally acclaimed speaker, educator, life/relationship mentor and community leader based in Washington, D.C.
