I consider myself very fortunate that due to quirk in the calendar, I do not need to write about Parashat Tzav this week. This is the Shabbat that precedes the holiday of Purim (which, in fact, begins immediately at the end of Shabbat this year), and so is the Shabbat known as Shabbat Zakhor, the Shabbat of "Remember!" It is so called because of the first word of the special passage we read as a maftir, Deut. 25:17-19:
Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt - how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. 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 as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!
This reading is followed by a special haftarah as well, I Samuel 15:2-34 (add v. 1 if you're S'fardi...), which describes a subsequent battle with the Amalekites under King Saul. Saul fails to immediately kill the Amalekite king, Agag, a task which falls to the prophet Samuel, and this failure marks the end of Saul's Divine favor as king. The connection to Purim is, even on the surface, fairly obvious. Haman is described in the Book of Esther, as soon as he is introduced in Chap. 3:1, as an "Agagite" - that is, a descendant of Agag (how Agag came to have a living descendant after the defeat and slaughter of his entire nation is a story for another day...), and hence an Amalekite.
Embedded in this passage, however, is also one of the great paradoxes of the Torah, which I am far from the first to observe. We are commanded to both "remember" and "do not forget" what Amalek did to the Children of Israel, and yet at the same time "blot out the memory of Amalek." How can we remember and not forget if the memory has been blotted out? A very similar paradox is at the center of our primary ritual for Purim, the reading of the megillah: we make noise every time the word "Haman" is read so that his name and his memory should be blotted out, but we do so as part of an obligation to read the story over, and thus recall Haman's evil, not only once but twice (in the evening and again in the morning) every year! What is more, the rabbis claim (Midrash Mishle 9:2) that while nearly all other holidays will cease to be observed in the Messianic era, we will still celebrate Purim - and presumably, still read out Haman's name - year after year.
A number of commentators (Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Bekhor Shor, Sforno, for example; see also Ramban) read the command to blot out the memory of Amalek in a very concrete, physical fashion, referring it not to the abstract concept of memory, but to the actual people who make up the nation of Amalek at a given time - that is, the command means that all of them, and all that belongs to them, must be destroyed. It is exactly this command that Saul is meant to follow when Samuel tells him, in I Samuel 15:3: "Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!" Ibn Ezra goes so far as to apply rabbinic legal language, stating that Deut. 25 is the general rule (klal), while Samuel's instructions to Saul constitute the details of how it is to be put into practice (p'rat; for any tax lawyers out there, think "tax code" and "treasury regulations").
A command to wipe out an entire people is a troubling command indeed. What is the severity of the evil of Amalek that engenders this command, and how else might we understand what it means to remember, and not forget, to blot out the memory of this people?
Nehama Leibowitz, one of the great biblical scholars of our age, suggests that the key accusation against Amalek is that this nation lacks the "fear of God." She looks for a common theme between this passage and three other times that the Torah makes reference to the "fear of God":
"I thought," said Abraham, "surely there is no fear of God in the place, and they will kill me because of my wife." (Gen. 20:11)
On the third day Joseph said to them, "Do this and you shall live, for I am a God-fearing man." (Gen. 42:18)
The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt has told them; they let the boys live. (Ex. 1:17; see also v. 21)
She asks, and then answers: "What is the common denominator of these contexts?... Evidently the criterion of God-fearingness...in all these four contexts may be measured by the attitude of the subject to the weak and the stranger. Where the fear of God is lacking the stranger who is homeless in a foreign land is liable to be murdered." (Studies in Devraim, p. 253). This, of course, is also one of the crucial themes of the Purim story; the authorial voice of the Book of Esther goes out of the way to identify the Jews who are in Persia as an exiled, dispersed, and fundamentally foreign people, both when Mordechai is first introduced in 2:5-6, and when Haman presents his genocidal plan to the king in 3:8. In this, Haman is indeed the true heir of Amalek.
What is intriguing about Leibowitz' analysis, however, is that these are not the only verses in Torah that refer to the concept of fear of God. Abraham, for example, is noted for his fear of God in Gen. 22:12 when he attempts to offer up his own son in the Akedah, and yet other usages exist. The other element that links these particular verses, according to Leibowitz, is that each appears "in connection with heathen people or individuals."
But not so fast. After all, one of these citations is presented in the mouth of Joseph. Yes, it takes place at a moment when his brothers do not yet know his identity and presume that he is an Egyptian, but we, the readers, certainly know when we read his claim to be "God-fearing" that his true origins are as a son (literally) of Israel. And what about the midwives? The Torah is (I would suggest deliberately) vague as to their identity and national origin. One tradition has it that they are Egyptian women, but another identifies them as Jewish, and more specifically as Moses' mother and sister, Yoheved and Miriam. It seems that Israelites too may find themselves in situations in which "the stranger who is homeless in a foreign land is liable to be murdered" - both in positions of power (Joseph) and in positions that call on one to resist power even at great personal risk (the midwives).
Seen this way, Amalek is not a specific people, or a particular person. The choice between fearing God and protecting the stranger and the powerless who need protecting, or not fearing God such that we are willing to "cut down all the stragglers," is a test all people, of all religions and nationalities face. Amalek is the darkest and most challenging side of our own human nature. What we must remember, and never forget, is that Amalek can lurk in each one of us. And it is our responsibility not only to look outside to fight injustice (though we must do that too), but also inside, and try to blot out the memory and presence of Amalek in ourselves.
Shabbat shalom.