In this week’s parasha, Devarim, we move into the final book of the Torah. At the edge of the Promised Land, Moses recounts the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness. But something is different; Moses changes the telling.

For instance, when the story of the spies first appears in the book of Numbers, G-d commands Moses to send men to scout the land. When Moses revisits the story, he remembers it differently, claiming that the idea came from the people. Moses speaks as himself, recounting his malleable story to an ever-changing “you.” Sometimes this “you” is all the Israelites who left Egypt, sometimes the 40-years-later generation, and sometimes just a small group among them.

What happens to a story after the experience is over? How do we talk about what happened, and who even is the “we” doing the telling?

Jewish memory collapses time and implores the individual to experience things they never really did. We were slaves in Egypt, we stood at Sinai, and we wandered through the wilderness. On Tisha B’Av, which follows the Shabbat on which we read Devarim, we mourn Temples we never saw and a city we never watched burn, and yet, despite the countless generations between, the “you” in each of these stories… is us.

In Devarim, Moses isn’t faithfully recording history, but processing forty years of wandering, loss, challenges, and revelations, and creating a story to be carried forward by the next “you.” Memories, and the stories that come from them, are never neutral. They change depending on who tells them, when they are told, and what they need the listener to grasp on to. The listener also reads into the stories to find what to take forward. This is Torah.

After forty years, Moses begins his final speech when they are on the precipice of what they have been seeking. They look backward because they can finally move forward. Their experiences are not erased. We remember their story and keep telling it.

Maybe that is why we read Devarim as we approach Tisha B’Av. Jewish history contains more than we could possibly hold as individuals, but we carry these inherited memories forward, mixing ancient experiences with our modern lives, telling the stories that have shaped us as a people and trying to make sense of it year after year. We remember the wilderness from its edge. We mourn Jerusalem because we dream of Jerusalem. We speak of destruction because destruction was not the end.

The “you” keeps changing as the story keeps being told. And, miraculously, we are still here to tell it.