Shabbos Parashas Ki Seitzei - 5774

Shabbos Parashas Ki Seitzei - 5774 Rabbi Hal Miller It shall be that when Hashem your G-d gives you rest from all your enemies all around, in the Land that Hashem your G-d gives you as an inheritance to possess it, you shall wipe out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heaven--you shall not forget. [Devarim 25:19] The Torah does not legislate thought. What can it mean when it tells us to wipe out the remembrance of Amalek? Since we are also commanded to remember what Amalek did to us two verses prior to ours, our verse seems to be a contradiction to the previous one. What are we supposed to remember, and what are we supposed to wipe out? Ramban looks at the word 'remember'. He writes, "It might be thought that 'remember' means remembering in your heart. However now that the verse states 'you shall not forget', then mental forgetting has already been stated. How, then, am I meant to fulfill the command 'remember'? It means that you should speak it with your mouth." The Gemora (Sanhedrin [20b]) explains when this command applies. "It was taught in a Baraisa: R'Yose says, Israel was commanded to perform three commandments upon their entrance into the Land: to appoint themselves a king, and to eradicate the offspring of Amalek, and to build the Holy Temple." Rav Moshe Feinstein asks whether this applies today: "in our present exile we would be forbidden to perform the mitzvah of eradicating him even if we knew for certain which peoples belong to Amalek." He answers that "the point of this mitzvah is to remind us now that it is possible for any creature of flesh and blood to become as wicked as Amalek, and like him to deny Hashem's role in the world even though he sees irrefutable evidence of it." Rashi gives us a more concrete example of what Amalek is today. "Remember what Amalek did to you. If you were untruthful about measures and about weights, be worried about provocation by the enemy, as it says, 'Dishonest scales are an abomination to Hashem'." Rav Hirsch begins his comments, "if you, in just the opposite of all of these traits of Amalek, order all your doings in accordance with His Will", then tells how we will earn the land, and relates this anti-Amalek behavior to our mission in this world. Nechama Leibowitz finds a difference between the destruction of Amalek and any rule against killing that may be applied elsewhere. "But in spite of all the explanations the commentators in all ages have been puzzled and even thunderstruck by the specific command to wipe out a whole nation and blot out its memory, without reservation or qualification. Furthermore, and perhaps the solution lies in this direction, no other nation is described in the Torah by the phrase "and he feared not G-d". Such an outright condemnation of a whole people does not occur elsewhere. Evidently the criterion of G-d fearingness may be measured by the attitude of the subject to the weak and the stranger. Where the fear of G-d is lacking the stranger who is homeless in a foreign land is liable to be murdered. In our context Amalek is condemned for killing the weak and smiting the feeble because 'he feared not G-d'." What if a direct descendant of Amalek could be identified today? What if that individual was truly G-d fearing and observant of mitzvos? Does this command still apply to that individual? The answer is "yes, but that's not the point." Yes, any individual who directly descended from Amalek comes from a place where such complete acceptance of G-d is not possible, The point, though, is not that we must wipe out a people, or even an individual. We must wipe out what Amalek stands for, in particular within ourselves. As the nation that serves as an example to the rest of the world, it is our responsibility to eliminate from our own behavior the sins of Amalek. In particular, this was a lack of fear of G-d, as expressed by his attacks on the weakest of the people. Our job is to strengthen those who are weak, wherever we find them, and lead them to faith.