Never Forget - Zachor 5785

Amalek.  The word evokes many emotions.  Hatred, fear, disgust, memories of Haman and all the vicious enemies through the generations, and in the words of our sages, Chutzpah.  They were the ones who attacked just after we left Egypt and were on the way to Sinai to receive the Torah.  They had no reason.  We were not taking their land, we had no intention of attacking or hurting them.  They were just filled with hatred.   The same with Haman, and Hitler, and all the others.  The best way to describe that is baseless hatred and Chutzpah.

We would love to forget about all the pain they have inflicted, but the Torah tells us: Zachor!  Remember what Amalek did to you.  We are obligated to remember Amalek every single day.  It is embedded in our daily prayers.  And once a year, we are all required to attend the synagogue and listen to the Torah reading of Parshat Zachor - Remember.  This is happening this Shabbat, the Shabbat before Purim.

In the days when many Jews lived in small villages, and often alone on farms or running inns and bars, they would be sure to go into town for Shabbat Zachor to hear the Torah reading.  If you live too far to walk to a synagogue, I encourage you to spend this Shabbat close by. 

“You must remember what the nation of Amalek did to you when you were traveling after you left Egypt.  How, on the way, it attacked you by surprise, and mutilated all the weak ones at your rear. You were faint from thirst and weary... you must obliterate the trace of Amalek from beneath heaven. You must not forget.” (Devarim 24:17-19.)  There seems to be an obsession with remembering Amalek, we must never forget who they are.

There is an important spiritual component to this Mitzvah of constantly remembering Amalek.  We each have a little “Amalek” within us.  It  is the Chutzpah of our “Yetser Hara” - negative inclination, which rises against our best interests and tries to stop us from connecting to Torah.  The personal Amalek is what causes us to feel hatred for our fellow.  It is what cools down our  excitement for holy things.

Unfortunately, the need to remember Amalek and not forget is being driven home to us now.  We have seen what happens when we turn our backs on Amalek and allow wishful thinking and underestimation of pure evil to lull us into complacency.  Perhaps the reason the Torah requires us to remember and not to forget, two of the 613 Mitzvot, is so that we should never allow ourselves to let down our guard and be victims of their insidious hatred.

Some thought that if we are nice to Amalek we will appease them.  The reality is that pure evil is pure evil, and if we forget that, we do so at great risk.  There is nothing surprising about the current wave of hatred against us.  As the Torah says, we must never forget that it exists.

Remembering includes fortifying ourselves against the hate, spiritually as well as physically.  Our response to Amalek’s attempt to stop us from going to Sinai was to fight them, with Hashem’s help, and then strengthen ourselves and go as one to receive the Torah.  It is important for us to fight our personal Amalek and keep up our excitement for our heritage and our love for one another.  This will also help our heroic soldiers who risk their lives, and our activists around the world, to fight the Amalek who still wants to destroy us.

The Torah tells us that Hashem says that His name and His throne are not complete until Amalek is destroyed.  May that day come soon, when Moshiach comes and Amalek and everything he stands for will be forever gone, and we will celebrate the light and holiness of Hashem’s revelation.