Studying history can be highly significant. A hint to studying history is found in the words זכור ימות עולם, remember the days of yore.
In 1997, R' Berel Wein moved to Israel and went to get an Israeli driver’s license. During the driving test, the examiner blurted, "Rabbi, you are a good driver." R' Wein inquired as to what prompted the comment. The examiner explained, "Before you pulled out of the parking space, you first looked in the rearview mirror to make sure that there was no oncoming traffic. No one here does that."
R' Wein observed that this encapsulates a problem in contemporary society. We fail to look in the rearview mirror of Jewish history. We focus only on what is ahead of us and do not pay sufficient attention to the events of the past. Many people think that the Jewish world began when they were born in the city they were born in. We pull out of our parking spaces and drive forward into the traffic of our present and future circumstances with hardly a glance over our shoulders, which at times can have cataclysmic results. We can proceed successfully with our lives if we have a clear unobstructed view of the rearview mirror, of our history as a nation. By understanding where we originate and what we have collectively endured in the past, we can hope to comprehend what our role is in today’s world and what it is that we need to be doing.