Parashat HaShavua - Shabbat Zakhor
On the Shabbat known as “Shabbat Zakhor,” the Shabbat of remembering Amalek, we are also told to “blot out the memory of Amalek.” How does one “blot out” and “remember” at the same time?
On Shabbat Zakhor we read a Torah passage (Deuteronomy 25:17-19) that calls upon us to remember that which the nation of Amalek did to us after we left Egypt. Amalek attacked the children of Israel during their journey from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai. The Torah makes clear that this event is not just a historical attack against the fledgling nation of Israel. The Torah in Exodus states “God will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation,” “mi-dor dor” (Exodus 17:16) This language indicates an elevation of the fight against Amalek from a one-time battle to one that transcends time and place. The Torah is suggesting that the enemy that forced Israel into its first defensive war for survival represents something larger: an insidious and timeless threat to our core values.
This broader understanding of the threat posed by Amalek perhaps helps to explain the peculiar, somewhat superfluous, and possibly contradictory language of the command to remember Amalek that we read this Shabbat, which states not only to “remember that which Amalek did,” but also to “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:19)
The notion that we are to “blot out the memory” of a nation raises some rather troubling questions: Are the Torah’s values consistent with the destruction of a nation’s memory? How might Israel go about blotting out a nation’s memory? Is the Torah describing a physical battle or a spiritual one?
Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, a twentieth-century, Warsaw-born scholar, understands Amalek as a metaphor for an existential spiritual threat. In his magnum opus, Pahad Yitzhak, he recasts Amalek, not as an ancient nation, but as an enduring effort to widen the gap between generations. Picking up on the text’s emphasis on the intergenerational nature of this battle, “God will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation,” he says Amalek represents the effort to sow division between generations, isolating children from their parents and grandparents. This is the threat of Amalek, the creation of a disconnect between the past and present, an isolation of the wisdom of the past from the impact and potential of the future.
Rav Hutner explains that our obligation to “blot out the memory of Amalek” means engaging in the fight against the distancing of generations from one another. This battle is won, says Rav Hutner, by binding parents to children, and likewise, teachers to students. “This obligation means, above all, respecting one’s student as oneself… cultivating respect of the student in the heart of the teacher is a bond of devotion and empathy that leads to an intergenerational bond of student and teacher.” (Purim #18) In Rav Hutner’s view, the world becomes more redeemed by cultivating these bonds through mutual respect and devotion, which help bring the past, present, and future together. Children could become isolated from their parent, students from their teacher, through lack of understanding, respect or empathy, unless cultivating these bonds is focused on and prioritized.
Similarly, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes in The Insecurity of Freedom of the challenge and need to bind parents and children together. “...unless a fellowship of spiritual experience is reestablished, the parent will remain an outsider to the child’s soul. This is one of the beauties of the human spirit… Friendship, affection comes about by two people sharing a significant moment, by having an experience in common.”
The need to “battle” to bind generations together is a profound challenge for us in a school community. Creating bonds between teachers and students, and between parents and children are core to our mission. But this unity and connection across time don’t come automatically and must be tended. Both of the efforts above are worthy of our focus and attention: cultivating profound respect between teachers and students, as Rav Hutner wrote, as well as creating opportunities for the sharing of experiences between parent and child, as Rabbi Heschel wrote. These efforts build bridges across time -- “mi-dor dor” that have potentially existential impact on us and our mission. May the Shabbat of Zakhor inspire us to recognize the importance and necessity of these efforts.
Rabbi Benji Shiller
Co-chair, High School Limudei Qodesh Department