This Shabbat is Shabbat Zachor, or Remember! It is the Shabbat that precedes the
festival of Purim. In the case of this
year, as you are probably aware, Purim begins immediately at the conclusion of
Shabbat, on Saturday night. We hope that
you will come tomorrow night at six, to celebrate this joyous festival.
The designation, Zachor, or ‘remember’ in the imperative
comes from the opening phrase of the traditional Maftir reading for the
day. The entire Maftir, from the
25th chapter of Deuteronomy, reads in translation as follows:
Remember what
Amalek did to you on your way out of Egypt.
When they encountered you on the way, and you were tired and exhausted,
they cut off those lagging to the rear, as they did not fear God. Therefore, when God gives you peace from all
the enemies around you in the land that God is giving you to occupy as a
heritage, you must obliterate the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. You must not forget.
We read this on the
Shabbat before Purim for an important reason.
The Rabbis saw Amalek, not only as an actual people, as players in one
particular drama chronicled in the Torah.
They also saw Amalek as a leitmotiv for the evil that, throughout
history, humans have unleashed against humans.
And specifically, for those who have been enemies of the Jewish people,
for no reason other than that we were the Jewish people. Haman the Aggagite, the villain of the Book
of Esther which we’ll read tomorrow, is seen as the essence of Amalek. As are Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and
Saddam Hussein. To name just a few of
the more recent examples.
What made Amalek,
and his later heirs, evil was not that they were the enemies of the People
Israel. Rather, that they were enemies
who were cowards. They struck Israel
from the rear when they were exhausted, killing women, children and the aged who
were lagging behind the main body of combatants. The text says they did this as they did
not fear God. That is, this vicious behaviour
is taken as evidence that they did not fear God. If they had, they wouldn’t so brazenly
have broken God’s law of decency in war.
I know that for some
of you listening to me, the phrase decency in war is dissonant. To bring decency, to something which is so indecent? But that is the genius of God whose will is
expressed through the Torah. Since man
is not going to stop making war, the Torah spells out the limits of cause
for, and of behaviour in war.
The swords into ploughshares thing, is a vision of the Messianic
Age. It is not an imperative for
unilateral disarmament in our age.
So Amalek represents
a cowardly enemy. We overcame him as
well as all the other Amaleks that followed.
Often at great price. In the
Shoah, the Nazi Holocaust, about half the Jews of Europe perished. And of those who survived, many – most – have
lived haunted lives in the shadow of their suffering. And how could one expect otherwise? But each time, with each Amalek, we had no
choice but to try to overcome, and so we did.
Our real weakness as
a people is that, whilst we are often quick to recognise enemies from without,
we tend to be blind to the enemy within.
And the enemy that lurks within is that which our Rabbis called, sin’at
hinam, or baseless hatred.
It was sin’at
hinam that divided the Jewish people and encouraged the Babylonians under
Nebuchadnezzer to destroy the Temple and exile the leaders of the People
Israel. And encouraged the Assyrians
under Anctiochus Epifanes to outlaw the Jewish religion and profane the rebuilt
Temple. And encouraged the Romans to destroy
it again after them. It is sin’at
hinam that creates internal strife in Jewish communities today. Even as, in the shadow of the Shoah, we
struggle to create a meaningful Judaism for future generations.
It is sin’at
hinam, baseless hatred that paralyses Jewish communities with the
putting-down of one ‘kind’ of Jews by another.
You know what I mean. When the
Orthodox put us down, and tell us that our form of Judaism is not
authentic. But the truth is that among
our Progressive Jews, here and elsewhere, I’ve heard equally derogatory, hurtful
sentiments toward the Orthodox.
It’s one thing
to advocate for your own form of Judaism.
To believe, and tell others, why you think it best embodies Jewish
values and the Jewish spirit. That’s not
a bad thing at all. It’s
self-evident that many of us would consider our own form of Judaism the
‘superior’ form. Just as many of us
would consider Judaism as a whole to be ‘superior’ to other religious paths. Other-wise, why would we have chosen our specific
path? Isn’t it a given that, if your
values are your guide, you would choose the path that best expresses those
values? And then, advocate for it on
that basis?
But to express
the kind of disdain that I sometimes hear of the Orthodox for the Progressive,
and vice versa, that comes from a different spirit altogether. It comes from sin’at hinam, and it
must be answered loudly and clearly: That’s
not helpful; that does not express our values.
We must respond to it without ambiguity. When we hear it aimed at us. And when we hear it aimed at others. It’s always wrong.
And what about the
way that we Jews relate to one another, as individuals, within our own
segment of the community? Even within
our own congregation we see sin’at himan at work sometimes. We should work to see the best in each
person. We should work to
understand that we each bring a different viewpoint, different talents and
gifts to the table. Instead, some of us
work hard to delegitimise others whenever there’s a disagreement. This too is sin’at hinam, baseless
hatred, and it is corrosive to the social and moral fabric of our community. When we partake in the evil fruit of sin’at
hinam, we negate all that matters in Jewish life. Look, sometimes we can’t help but fall
short. We’re sometimes going to fail to
live up to the lofty values expressed so eloquently in our Torah and in our
prayer book. But if we’re not constantly
working to live according to them, and helping others to do so as well, what
does that say about us?
Ever try to maintain
a steel-hulled ship? Steel corrodes –
forms rust – upon contact with moisture.
So the crew of a steel-hulled ship have to constantly paint, scrape, and
re-paint to prevent rust from overcoming the ship’s structure. But rust also forms inside the ship,
because the air inside tends to be moisture-laden. That rust is much harder to detect, yet just
as dangerous to the structural integrity of the hull.
So too sin’at
hinam. We’re good at recognising our
enemies from without. We have
finely-tuned antennae that often detect an external enemy upon the vaguest
sighting. Perhaps that’s not a bad
thing. Look, there are more than enough
malefactors out there. And our
experience is that nobody else is going defend us from them. But we need to be equally sensitive to the
‘enemy’ within. Sin’at hinam is
that enemy. Rust inside a steel ship is
harder to see than rust on the outside.
In the same way, sin’at hinam can easily sneak into the room and
afflict us before we know it. So we must
be sensitive to it. Whether we are its
targets. Or its perpetrators. Shabbat shalom.
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