Drasha for Shabbat Zachor

Remember Amalek – and Recognise Him in our Age

We have a string of special Shabbatot in the weeks leading up to the festival of Pesach.  Each of these special Shabbatot has a unique theme, with a special Maftir reading and a special Haftarah that support the theme.

                The Shabbat immediately before Pesach is Shabbat Hagadol – the Great Sabbath.  Traditionally, it is the rabbi’s opportunity to offer his community final instruction for keeping the special kosher laws for Pesach.

                Two weeks before that is Shabbat Hachodesh – the Sabbath of the Month.  That is, the month of Nissan, the month in which Pesach falls.  The name Nissan is considered related to nissim, meaning miracles, because important miracles occurred during the month.  We therefore take extra measures, on the Sabbath immediately before Nissan’s Rosh Chodesh to announce and prepare for the month.

                The Shabbat immediately before Shabbat Hachodesh is Shabbat Parah – the Sabbath of the Heifer, as in the Red Heifer.  The Maftir that week recounts the instruction for the Israelites to purify themselves with the ashes of a Red Heifer.  The lesson of this text is that we must purify ourselves, but in a spiritual way, for the upcoming festivals.

                We rabbis like these special Shabbatot, because they offer us an opportunity to veer from the weekly Torah reading in searching for a lesson for the day.  Because the Maftir readings are from a different place in the Torah, they provide an alternate text from which to draw a lesson.

                The Shabbat immediately before the occurrence of the festival of Purim, this Shabbat, is called Shabbat Zachor.  This morning, we read the special Maftir, from the 25^th chapter of Deuteronomy:

Remember 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 Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.  Do not forget!

                Of course, the Amalek referred to here is an enemy that attacked the Israelites in a particularly cowardly way.  It makes sense to remind ourselves of this enemy on the Sabbath immediately before a festival when we celebrate our victory over yet another cowardly enemy, Haman.  He, who would have destroyed us by enticing other Persians into being his mercenaries with a promise of booty.  Moses and the Israelites, according to God’s will as recorded in the Torah, defeated Amalek.  Later, as documented in the Book of Esther, came Haman.  And we have been privileged to participate in the downfall of other cowardly tyrants through history.  Yes, we have suffered – and some days, we could be forgiven for thinking that nobody in the world cares whether we survive or not.  But time after time when we have been on the brink of destruction and extinction as a people, God has granted us the strength and the cunning to rise up and defeat those who malefactors who sought to destroy us.  So it makes perfect sense to prepare for Purim with Shabbat Zachor.

                But there is an apparent paradox in the last verse of the reading.  To repeat, we’re enjoined ‘you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.  Do not forget!’  How can we blot out the memory, yet not forget?

                The answer from the traditional understanding of the text is that ‘blotting out the memory’ means blotting out any physical trace of Amalek.  And yet, not blot out the knowledge that he existed and of how he tried to wipe us out.  Destroy, yet remember.

Now, I know that is not a pretty thought.  It certainly does not appear to jibe with the need to love the stranger among us as ourselves, and the need to be a peacemaker.  But Amalek is no ordinary enemy. 

Any warfare between two peoples is regrettable and can hopefully be averted.  But warfare with a an enemy which will not meet you as equals on a field of battle, who insists on fighting a terror war against your civilians and your weakest at that…such is a contemptible enemy.  With such an enemy you cannot really make peace.  Such an enemy does not desire your territory or to bring you under his hegemony.  His aim is genocide.  Against such an enemy you have two choices.  He destroys you or you destroy him.  Oh, there’s a third possibility; you can try to contain him.  But this will almost certainly be a temporary measure, because an enemy of the sort of Amalek will never let you live in peace as long as he exists.

With the other kind of enemy, one can make peace.  The enemy who, even though you are locked in a struggle that may lead to the one party is vanquished, respects you as you respect him.

During my years of military service, I found that military men, even when they are enemies, tend to respect one another.  As soon as the political leaders make peace, the military join together in a fraternity of brotherhood and respect.  I was serving in the intelligence service as a Soviet analyst in 1988 at the time of the signing of the INF Treaty.  That was the agreement where the two biggest world rivals agreed to eliminate whole classes of nuclear weapons, those of intermediate range.  INF, in reality heralded the beginning of the end of the Cold War.  Almost as soon as it was signed, bitter rivals who had so recently been facing one another down, each hoping the other would blink first, were drinking and sharing fellowship together.  Some of my colleagues in the USSR-watching ‘business,’ actually got to travel to Russia on verification team missions and spoke fondly of the friendships they’d quickly formed with their Soviet counterparts.  I was busy in the school house during those days and didn’t personally get to participate in those missions, but I can tell you that almost everybody in the uniform of the USA felt breathless at the sudden change, at the thawing in the Cold War.  Of course, the general population felt it also, but for the military man, who had been ready to be killed by a Soviet soldier only months before, it was an incredible time.

Likewise, with the Iraqis once Saddam Hussein was eliminated.  When I went to Iraq in 2006, I found warmth on the part of Iraqi regular soldiers, for us Americans and our coalition partners.  Each of us was ready to defend his country’s interests with his life, but once peace had been made we only wanted to stand together against common challenges.  Had it not been for a stubborn insurgency, Iraq in 2006 would have been a rather safe and happy place – not just for coalition soldiers, but for Iraqi civilians as well.  The soldiers are gone, and all of our countries that participated are happy to be rid of the burden of Iraq.  But sadly, the lot of the typical Iraqi only gets worse and worse thanks to intractable enemies of peace who will not be satisfied until Iraq turns into another Iran.

With some enemies, the kind of peacemaking I’ve been talking about is impossible because there is no common regard and respect.  Hamas is a good example of the latter.  Because Hamas denies the Jews’ humanity and fights in a cowardly manner, it is difficult at best to imagine reaching some kind of peace accord with them.  With the Palestinians in general, perhaps.  Many Israelis have friendships with individual Palestinians that are based on mutual regard and respect, and a mutual desire to transcend the political morass that divides their two people.  But until the Palestinians in Gaza are ready to rise up against their Hamas political masters who launch rockets indiscriminately against residential areas, and hide those rockets underneath schools and hospitals, then there is probably no way to make anything that could be described as ‘peace.’  Hamas are, unfortunately akin to Amalek and will never be a party to a real peace agreement.

This is why we are told to remember Amalek, especially since we blotted out every physical trace of him.  And why we juxtapose the memory of Amalek with the festival that remembers Haman, another enemy whom we blotted out physically.  We are well-advised to remember the lessons of the conflict with Amalek.  With some enemies you can make peace.  But with others, their behaviour informs you that peace with them is not possible.  You can destroy them.  Or they can destroy you.

Again, not a happy thought.  But it’s not a happy world, either.  We can pretend that everything is just fine.  That all enemies can be made into our friends if we’ll only reach out to them in friendship.  That someday soon, we’ll all be linking arms and singing, We Are the World.  But that will only happen in our dreams, until the time of universal redemption that we call ‘The Messianic Era’ comes.  So in the world as it exists, we must be careful not to expose ourselves to the enemies that would just as soon stick a knife into our backs as shake hands.

Amalek was, presumably, a real people, an historical fact.  But Amalek is also an archetype for the kind of enemy that strikes the non-combatant and denies your humanity.  Amalek the people is historical.  But Amalek the type is all around us.  In every age there is a potential Amalek.  It is our task to work for peace.  To make peace with others whenever possible.  But it is also necessary to recognise the Amalek in our own age and to remain vigilant.  It is our task to recognise the enemy with whom peace is impossible.  Recognise, and not let him destroy us.