Moral Clarity in an Age of Confusion: Shabbat Zachor 5786

This piece was first posted in Hanassi Highlights, 26 February. You can also read it in Hebrew translation, via ChatGPT, here.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt”l once drew attention to a deeply uncomfortable truth: modern Western culture has largely lost the concept of an enemy. We instinctively assume that hostility must be the result of grievance. If someone attacks, there must be something we did to provoke it. Surely hatred must be rational.

Parshat Zachor challenges that assumption.

The Torah commands us: “Remember what Amalek did to you… do not forget.” Amalek attacked Bnei Yisrael in the wilderness without warning, without provocation, targeting the weak and stragglers at the rear. There was no territorial dispute, no prior history, no political grievance. It was aggression for its own sake.

Strikingly, the Torah’s response to Amalek is vividly different from its response to Egypt. The Egyptians enslaved us, oppressed us, and decreed the murder of our children. Yet the Torah instructs: “Do not despise an Egyptian.” Why? Because, as Rabbi Sacks explains, “The Egyptians feared the Israelites because they were strong. The Amalekites attacked the Israelites because they were weak.”

Pharaoh himself said, “The Israelites are becoming too numerous and strong for us.” Their hatred, though immoral and cruel, was rooted in fear and self-preservation.

Amalek was different. They attacked not because they were threatened, but because they encountered vulnerability. That distinction is not merely historical. It is moral and theological. Amalek represents the phenomenon of evil that cannot be reduced to misunderstanding or insecurity. It is the hatred that seeks vulnerability and exploits it. It is the ideology that glories in destruction.

The Rambam explains that the mitzvah to remember Amalek is about sustaining moral clarity: “to remember always his evil deeds and his ambush… to arouse enmity.” The Torah commands us not to forget the existence of such evil. Forgetfulness breeds confusion; confusion breeds danger.

We no longer know who the biological descendants of Amalek are. Since the time of Sancheriv, former national identities have long been blurred. Amalek today is not a genealogical category but a moral one—a  symbol of those forces, in every generation, that seek the destruction of the Jewish people simply because we exist.

As we read Parshat Zachor, its message remains larger than any particular chapter of history. Jewish experience has repeatedly reminded us that not all hatred can be reasoned with, and not all evil can be explained away.

Amalek may symbolize hatred without cause—but Am Yisrael symbolizes covenant without end. On Shabbat Zachor we do not only recall an ancient enemy. We reaffirm our identity as a people sustained by memory and bound to a Divine promise that has outlived every empire that sought to undo it.

Our task is not simply to survive history, but to remain faithful within it -to carry the covenant forward with faith, dignity, and moral courage.

Shabbat Shalom!

When Tetzaveh is also Shabbat Zachor

This piece, from the Destiny Foundation archive, was composed by Rabbi Berel Wein zt’l and published back in 2017.

It is obvious from the context of the earlier readings of the Torah that, when the Torah states “and you shall command”, the “you” referred to is Moshe. Nevertheless, the name of Moshe does not appear in this week's reading. Many explanations, ideas and commentaries have been advanced over the ages as to why his name is absent from this parashah. 

Moshe’s name is so intertwined with the Torah which he transmitted to us that its absence strikes a perplexing and even jarring note. Since there are no mere coincidences or accidents of language and style in the Torah, the absence of the name of Moshe in this week's Torah reading merits our attention and understanding. 

There is an element of Moshe’s phenomenal modesty certainly present here. Moshe strove throughout his life to prevent Jewish belief from becoming the cult of the personality. He always made it clear that he was only the conduit for the transmission of God's word to the people of Israel and that the Torah was of Heavenly origin and not the work of his mind and pen. It would thus be completely in character for him to allow an entire portion of his teachings to Israel to appear without his name being attached to it. The Torah is represented by the great candelabra and the light that emanated from it. The fuel that fed that light—the pure olive oil—came from all of the Jewish people collectively and not from Moshe alone. It is completely understandable that the intrinsic modesty of Moshe would be reflected by the absence of his name being associated with this holy fuel and light. 

This week’s Torah reading coincides with the Shabbat of Zachor, which records that Amalek comes to destroy the Jewish people in their infancy as a nation. There has always been a tendency in the Jewish world to somehow ascribe the hatred of Jews by certain sections of the non-Jewish world to the acts, policies or personalities of the leaders of the Jewish people. In the story of Purim, the Jews of Persia blamed Mordechai for the decrees and enmity of Haman. But Haman certainly is not satisfied with destroying Mordechai alone. He meant to destroy Mordechai’s Jewish critics as well. To our enemies, the hatred is never exclusively personal. To them, a Jew is a Jew, no matter what or whom. 

The fact that this week's parashah coincides with Shabbat Zachor indicates to us that the problem is not Moshe or any other leader or individual Jew. Even when Moshe and his name are absent from the scene, Amalek and its hatred and violence towards Jews, are present and dangerously active. 

There is a tendency in the Jewish world to cast blame upon our leadership—national, organizational and religious—for all of the outside ills that befall us. Our leadership must always be held up to scrutiny and critical standards forpersonal behavior and national policy must be maintained. However, the outside forces that arise in every generation to attempt to destroy us do so even when our leaders are blameless and absent from the scene completely.

Two parshiyot, joined by a single thread: Zachor and Parah

At first glance the messages of Parshat Zachor and Parshat Parah—this week’s parsha—seem  to be unconnected. Parshat Zachor deals with the age-old enemy of the Jewish people, Amalek. In every generation Amalek assumes different guises but he is always there, threatening the very existence of Israel and the Jewish people. His threat is real and very palpable and he minces no words in declaring his goal: the annihilation of Jews. Parshat Parah deals with a completely esoteric spiritual matter, the laws and rituals of the purification of people who became tamei (ritually impure) and may not therefore participate in certain activities, including Temple worship and sacrifices. 

 Amalek and ritual purification appear to be entirely unconnected, being no more than part of the preparations for Purim and Pesach respectively. But there are no mere coincidences in Jewish lore. The Torah, Jewish tradition and custom are so multilayered that everything contained in them requires study, analysis and additional insight.

Study of the Torah makes one realize that every subject and custom is truly interlinked one with another at its deepest level. Superficial understanding is dangerous: it leads to wrong conclusions and false theories. Just as in modern medicine the physician relies on CT scans and MRI imaging to make a correct diagnosis, so too does the Jew have to search for the underlying principles that unite the Torah and Jewish life and make it an indivisible whole. 

I think that the common thread between Parshat Zachor and Parshat Parah lies in the irrationality of the elements in each of them. Amalek’s hatred of Israel over the millennia defies any rational explanation. Why should Norway and Sweden hate Israel so? Why do the Arabs not see peace as being to their advantage, as a chance to bring a better life to their millions? Why the hatred and incitement and the refusal to see things as they are and not as they somehow would wish them to be? 

It is by now clear that all the peace-making efforts here in the Middle East over the past many decades were based on a single error: reliance on rationality and practicality. They deal with a reality that can be rationally explained and thus confronted, compromised and eventually solved. But the Amalek conundrum is an irrational one. It is not given to explanation or reasoning. From the first unprovoked attack by Amalek on the Jews in the Sinai desert through the Holocaust and now the terrible threats and words of Hezbollah and Hamas, it is all simply insanity and irrationality. But that is the reality of an irrational world. And the Torah wishes us to realize that there are many things that are beyond our rational abilities to control. The Torah tells us to remember this lesson at all times. 

Parshat Parah is also based upon an irrationality. The Talmud points out that the ritual laws regarding purity and impurity, the power of the ashes of the red heifer to contaminate the pure and simultaneously purify the impure, are irrational. We have no explanation for them. They are the exception to the otherwise generally rational and well-reasoned structure of Torah life and ritual. The Torah purposely introduces into the structure of Judaism an element that lies beyond human comprehension. It does so with intent to impress on us the fact that Torah and its attendant halachic principles are not always capable of being fully comprehended by the human mind. There is always an area of faith that is beyond our reach and understanding. 

The Torah points out our human limitations; the finite can never quite reach an understanding of the infinite. Rationality is, as it must be, the basis for human actions and behavior. However, part of rationality is the realization that there is much that exists beyond our powers of rational thought. And the Torah emphasizes this by teaching us Parshat Parah. It also does so by linking Parshat Parah to Parshat Zachor it as examples of the underlying irrationalities that govern our world, society and even our faith and beliefs. Thus do these disparate parshiyot become linked in purpose and thought. 

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein

Surviving the threat of Amalek

This coming Shabbat is Shabbat Zachor, when we remind ourselves of the ever-present threat of Amalek and the imperative of blotting out this existential threat.  Rabbi Wein's devar Torah on this week's parasha is also posted on The Hanassi Blog, here -- but the words that we reproduce below were composed by Rabbi Wein some years ago. They are as current now as they were when he first wrote them.

The current spate of anti-Semitic media cartoons, op-eds and boycott movements serve to remind us that Amalek is alive and thriving as usual. There was a short period of time a few decades ago when many Jews were lulled into thinking that all this baseless hatred and nastiness was a thing of the past. Even the most naive among us today realize that this is unfortunately not the case. Therefore, remembering Amalek is a relatively easy commandment to fulfill today, One need only read a newspaper, listen to the radio or TV or view the internet to meet Amalek face to face, live and in person. 

How to counteract and deal with Amalek has been a continuing problem throughout Jewish history.  Apparently, no satisfactory permanent solution to the problem has ever been found. Perhaps that in itself is the basic lesson of the commandment of remembering Amalek. We must remember that the problem is unceasing and that it has remained insoluble for millennia. 

We should not be surprised or even overly discouraged by its sinister presence in our lives and world today. We must do everything possible to combat it but we should always remember that it is not given to pat solutions or wishful thinking. It is apparently part of the Jewish condition—our very terms of existence. 

The story of Purim is the story of Amalek contained, but not completely defeated or destroyed. Haman is hydra-headed and has always had disciples and followers. Haman and his sons were thwarted and hanged but that did not prove to be much of a deterrent to all the Hamans who have followed throughout history. 

 In terms of the destruction of Jews, Hitler was far more successful than was Haman, having killed six million Jews in five years of hate and terror. Yet Hitler destroyed Germany completely as well, with far more Germans than Jews being killed in that terrible and tragic war. 

 So again, one would think that the lesson of Amalek would have been learned by now. But the reality of Amalek is that it defies logic, self-interest and history and its lessons. Purim is our only hope in containing Amalek.  Purim is always hidden, unpredictable, surprising and unexpected. Yet it is also a constant in Jewish life and history. 

The survival of the Jewish people remains as the miracle of all history and that miracle is omnipresent in our current world. The existence and accomplishments of the State of Israel are offshoots of this constant and continuing miracle. Israel and its achievements give us a sense of Purim every day of the year. The miracle may not be superficially visible, but it is certainly present and alive. 

The Talmud's statement about the inability to distinguish between Haman and Mordechai is indicative of the mystery of Purim. Purim is not always what it appears to be at first glance. It is the hidden part of Purim that fascinates and confuses us. Our salvation is always unexpected and many times defies any form of human wisdom and expertise. 

Purim tells us never to despair or lose hope regarding our current difficulties and uncertain future. It is easy to fall into a funk when viewing all the difficulties that surround us. Purim preaches to us that such a dark attitude is inconsistent with Jewish faith and Torah values. That is why the rabbis stated that Purim is the only eternal holiday on the Jewish calendar. 

We will always need Purim and its message to continue to function and achieve. For without Purim present and operative, we fall into fearing that Amalek may yet, God forbid, triumph. So let us rejoice in the knowledge that Purim is here with us and all will yet be well for the nation and people of Mordechai and Esther. 

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein