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As a child visiting Ocean City, Maryland one summer with my family, I became separated from my parents as the boardwalk swelled with beach goers. I was picked up by a policeman, taken down to the station, and reunited with my parents. Though I received a reprimand for being inattentive, it was milder than I was expecting. The reason was that the same thing had happened to my father twenty-five years earlier on a summer day in Coney Island, Brooklyn. And he knew, as I do, that it just takes this happening once to learn your lesson well.
This week, with Purim starting Saturday evening and into Sunday, we observe Shabbat Zachor, the Sabbath of Remembrance. With a mere three-line maftir, we are bidden to remember the singular cruelty of Amalek, who attacked us in the desert in a rear-guard action.
The command concerning our relationship to Amalek is a paradox. On the one hand, we are commanded to “eliminate the remembrance of Amalek”. On the other hand, we are also commanded to read this passage as a way to “remember what Amalek did to you” when you left Egypt. The best rule of eliminating a phenomenon from the public consciousness is by never discussing it. As Brad Pitt once remarked, “The first rule of fight club is not to talk about fight club.”
What the Torah is saying is to recall the cruelty of Amalek, while also curtailing the effectiveness of Amalek. That is, when we are vigilant in defending ourselves against Amalek, he’s less likely to harm us.
The sages noted that, in the fuller account of Israel and Amalek recounted in Exodus 17, the Israelite complaint at Rephidim that “G-d is not among us” is juxtaposed with Amalek’s attack. In other words, Amalek strikes precisely when we ignore our own beliefs and principles. As we read in the 9th century CE Tanchuma (Ki Tetze 9:1):
It is comparable to a king who had a vineyard which he had enclosed with a fence and in which he had put a biting dog. The king said, “Whenever anyone comes to break through the fence, the dog will bite him.” One day the king's son came and broke through the fence. The dog bit him. Whenever he wanted to bring to mind the transgression of his son who broke through to the vineyard, he would say to him, “You remember how the dog bit you.” Similarly, whenever the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to bring to mind the sin of Israel - what they did in Rephidim, when they said (in Exod. 17:7) “Is the Lord present among us or not” - He says to them (in Deut. 25:17), “Remember what Amalek did to you.” (Deut. 25:18)
In other words, if we want to keep Amalek at bay – it’s best we not get Jewishly “lost”.
- Rabbi Scott Hoffman
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