![]() ![]() So neither Amalek nor Israel seems to truly fear God: The one because it attacks the weak, the other because it fails to protect them. ![]() The Jewish people have just experienced the Exodus, the fundamental lesson of which is to love and protect the vulnerable–and here is a segment of the people left totally unprotected and exposed to violent danger. How so? If Amalek is able to attack the stragglers in the rear, then somehow the weak and exhausted have been left vulnerable and exposed. But it can just as easily be understood to refer to Israel it is Israel who fails to fear God in our story. This phrase is usually (as in the translation offered above) taken to refer to Amalek: Amalek is undeterred by fear of God, so it allows itself acts of unspeakable savagery. In describing the scenario under which Amalek attacks Israel, the text tells us that one of the parties “did not fear God” (velo yerei e-lohim). ![]() To act in such an egregiously degrading way is to betray, as our text says, an utter lack of “fear of God.” Who Didn’t Fear God?īut if we read closely, we come upon a magnificent textual ambiguity (which is clear in the Hebrew, but difficult to capture in translation). This is the ultimate nadir of human behavior: There is no greater sin than attacking the utterly defenseless. The biblical text is exquisitely careful here to make these two critical points: First, that Amalek attacks Israel just as Israel first tastes the possibility of freedom and second, that it attacks the weakest among an already weak people. But it is an act of unimaginable barbarism to attack precisely that part of the vulnerable people that is most vulnerable–the “stragglers in rear.” It is an act of terrifying cruelty to attack a people who have known only sorrow and degradation for so long, a people exhausted in both body and spirit. And what happens? Another nation, utterly devoid of compassion, mercilessly attacks. Finally, after generations of unmitigated suffering, God frees them, and they take their first very tentative steps toward freedom. Imagine a people dehumanized and enslaved for literally hundreds of years, a people who have all but abandoned hope of ever experiencing freedom and liberation. In the Jewish imagination, Amalek is the quintessence of evil, and if we read these verses carefully, we can begin to see why. “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 a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Here, too, memory has a consequence, this one ostensibly much different in tone from the mandate to love the stranger: “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt–how, not fearing God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear” (Deuteronomy 25: 17-18). This time, we are called upon to remember the horrific behavior of the Amalekites: At the end of this week’s portion, we read a passage also recited on the Shabbat before Purim. Remembering Amalekīut the Exodus is not the only story we are enjoined to remember. The culmination of Jewish ethics is the commandment to “love the stranger” (Leviticus 19:34) because we ourselves “know the feelings of the stranger” (Exodus 23:9). Jewish memory is thus the source of Jewish ethical passion. ![]() Much of the Torah is an attempt to discern the implications of that experience: We were slaves and know the bitter taste of estrangement and degradation, therefore we set out to create a society in which no one is estranged or degraded. Most famously, the Torah enjoins us repeatedly to remember that we were slaves in the Land of Egypt and that God liberated us from slavery. Again and again, we are commanded to remember our experiences and to act in ways that honor those memories. My Jewish Learning is a not-for-profit and relies on your help Donate ![]()
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