I begin this
week's essay with a quip I once heard about what a
mistake it is in an halakhic work to just say
that some common problem- talking in shul, for
example-- is prohibited, since no one pays attention.
If, on the other hand, the rule were only mentioned in a
side note as a stringency that particularly religious
people take upon themselves… well, then, we might make
some headway. I think of that idea on Parshat Zakhor
since we make such a big deal about its being an
obligation imposed by the Torah. To make sure that
everyone has the opportunity to fulfill this mitsvah,
many shuls not only have a reading in the
morning, they have additional ones immediately following
davening and at Mincha (either before or after).
Without discouraging anyone from hearing the reading of
Zakhor, it is still worth our while to develop some
perspective on the issue.
First, it is not clear that one has to hear Zakhor
read from a Torah scroll in the presence of a minyan
in order to fulfill the obligation. Rambam, for example
(Hilkhot Melakhim 5:5 and Sefer haMitsvot, Aseh 190),
makes no mention of either of these two. The same
applies to Ramban (in his commentary to the end of Parshat
Ki Tetsei), who only discusses a requirement to tell
the story often enough to pass the memory of Amalek and
the need to wipe them out on to the next generation.
Following them, Sefer haHinukh (Mitsvah 603) is not even
sure that we are required to mention this story once a
year. He recognizes the custom to have it publicly read
once a year, which he suggests may be based on a
tradition unknown to him, but he only views someone as
having transgressed this mitsvah if that person
spends his entire life without having mentioned the
requirement to destroy Amalek out loud.
There are, of course, those who disagree, and see the
reading as a mitsvah de-oraita.
Tosafot in Megillah 17b certainly does so, and the Taz
(685;2) cites others who take that so seriously that, if
forced to choose, they prefer hearing Zakhor with a minyan
to doing so for the Megillah. The plain sense of the gemara
(Megillah 18a) seems to agree with this opinion, since
the gemara uses the verses in the Torah about
remembering Amalek to prove that the Megillah must be
read from a written book, and cannot be recited by
heart. Nevertheless, the Shulkhan Arukh only says that
"some" see Zakhor as de-oraita.
Considering its murky halakhic status, it is
worth comparing our assiduousness about this mitsvah
to others of much clearer provenance and
significance.
Further, the mitsvah of memory is an adjunct
to the mitsvah of wiping out Amalek (even if, as
many contend, that mitsvah will not become active
again until the times of Mashiah), which means that we
have to remember Amalek to create a specific emotional
reality. Rambam says it best in Mitsvat Aseh 190, where
he says we must "remember what Amalek did to us…
and to hate him at all times, and to rouse our souls
with various sayings so as to make war on him… so that
our hatred of him should not diminish through the length
of time." The mitsvah, then, is not to mouth
the words of the warning about Amalek, but to recite
that warning often enough (and, presumably, sincerely
enough) to maintain a true hatred of Amalek.
From sporadic conversations on this issue, I believe
we have already failed in that last regard, that the
vast majority of us do not, in fact, bear any hatred
towards the nation known as Amalek, nor would we easily
and comfortably wage war on them should the opportunity
arise. Let me therefore suggest a reason for the
requirement to wipe them out, if only to possibly aid us
in fulfilling our mitsvah of zekhirat Amalek.
When God took us out of Egypt, He did so in a
consciously public fashion, so that all the nations of
the world (or, at least, the region) would hear and be
awed by his power. Indeed, Hazal suggest that before
Amalek came along, no one dared to fight with the Jews,
lest what had befallen Egypt also happen to them. Had
that state continued, the Jews would have taken Eretz
Yisrael unopposed. They would have established a kingdom
run by Torah law, with a Temple that was the most
concentrated place of God's presence on Earth. In that
scenario, the entire world would have continued to
recognize God's rule.
I am not saying Mashiah would have come all the way
back then, but the road that needed to be traveled to
the end of days would have been much shorter. Our
problem with Amalek, then, is not that they attacked us,
it is that they derailed human history, and forced us
(all of us, Jew and non-Jew alike) to stumble through
thousands of years of trying to get back to where God in
His mercy had placed us right after the Exodus. And
that, it seems to me, is worth a little bit of hate.
If we couple that understanding of our hatred of
Amalek with a note about our obligation to destroy them,
I believe we can come to a comfortable understanding of
the issue. Rambam, Melakhim 6:4, assumes that members of
Amalek could avoid death by accepting the 7 Noahide laws
and a certain kind of servitude to the Jews (as could
the seven Canaanite nations); Rabad allows them to live
only if they fully convert to Judaism. Both, however,
agree that in theory a member of Amalek could save
his/her life, by dedicating the rest of that life to
publicly accepting the Kingdom of God and living a life
in obedience to that kindgom. The requirement to destroy
them, then, is only for so long as they insist on
foisting their perverted values on the world, values (we
should constantly remind ourselves) that made the road
to the Kingdom of God remarkably longer than it had to
be. With best wishes for a true memory of Amalek ,
Shabbat Shalom.
