Author: devora

Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin’s Unlocking the Torah Text – Bereishit, co-published by OU Press and Gefen Publishing 

To Appease or Not to Appease

Context

Yaakov adopts a subservient attitude towards Esav both prior to and during their fateful reunion. The patriarch initiates communication with his brother, repeatedly refers to Esav as “my lord,” plies his brother with gifts, bows down to him again and again and, in general, diminishes himself before his older brother.

Questions

Was Yaakov right or wrong in assuming this subservient posture towards his brother? Should a potential enemy be met with conciliation or strength? Where does diplomacy end and self-debasement begin?

Approaches

Once again, rabbinic authorities stake out dramatically disparate positions as they consider Yaakov’s actions.

–A–
Numerous commentaries are strongly critical of Yaakov’s approach to his brother. One source in the Midrash, for example, contends that Yaakov’s plan was flawed from the very outset: “Rav Huna applied the following verse: ‘One who passes by and meddles in strife that is not his own can be compared to an individual who takes a dog by the ears’…. God said to Yaakov: ‘[Esav] was going on his way and you dispatch a delegation?’”

Rav Huna maintains that Yaakov was unnecessarily asking for trouble simply by initiating communication with Esav. The patriarch should have quietly slipped back into the Land of Israel without alerting his brother.

Building on Rav Huna’s observation, the Ramban claims that the destructive potential of Yaakov’s behavior becomes tragically evident centuries later in Jewish history. During the period of the Second Temple, the Hasmonean kings of Judea repeat the patriarch’s mistakes when they willingly initiate and enter into a covenant with the Roman Empire. This covenant, contends the Ramban, invites the Romans into our lives, opens the door to Roman domination of Judea and directly leads to the subsequent downfall of the Second Jewish Commonwealth and to our nation’s exile from the Land of Israel.

The Ramban’s remarks acquire even greater poignancy in light of the rabbinic tradition which identifies the Roman Empire as the spiritual heir to Esav. The Talmud, Midrash and numerous other sources, including the Ramban himself, often refer to Rome as “Edom,” the biblical nation descended from Esav.

Another Midrashic source goes even further in its condemnation of Yaakov’s behavior. Noting that, during the encounter, Yaakov refers to his brother Esav by the title “my lord” no less than eight times, the rabbis state: “At the moment when Yaakov referred to Esav by the title ‘my lord,’ God proclaimed: ‘You have debased yourself and called Esav “my lord” eight times. By your life! I will establish from his descendants eight kings who will rule over their nation before even one king reigns over your children.’ As the Torah states: ‘And these are the kings who ruled in the land of Edom before a king reigned over the Children of Israel.’”

Finally, the Midrash Hagadol connects Yaakov’s obsequious approach to his brother to a series of disastrous losses eventually experienced by the Jewish nation. “Yaakov bowed to Esav seven times, therefore seven [cherished
locations/institutions] were forcibly taken from [his children]: the Sanctuary, Gilgal, Shilo, Nov, Givon, the First Temple and the Second Temple.”

These sources and others not only condemn Yaakov’s behavior but see within that behavior seeds of disaster and tragedy that will affect his children across the ages. [Note: For a discussion concerning the effect of the actions of parents upon the lives of their children see Lech Lecha 4, Approaches A.]

–B–
At the opposite end of the spectrum are those rabbinic authorities who not only defend Yaakov’s conciliatory approach to Esav but believe that the patriarch sets a skillful example of diplomacy which we are meant to follow.

Looming large in this camp is the major historical figure Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, editor of the Mishna (the first authoritative written compilation of Jewish Oral Law) and leader of the Jewish people in the Holy Land during the second century of the Common Era. Less than two centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple at the hands of the Romans, Rabbi Yehuda developed a friendship with the Roman emperor, Antoninus. The extensive Midrashic and Talmudic record concerning this fascinating relationship includes the following interchange between Rabbi Yehuda and his secretary, Rabbi Aphes:

Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi said to Rabbi Aphes: “Write a letter in my name to his Majesty the Emperor Antoninus.”

He [Rabbi Aphes] arose and wrote: “From Yehuda the Prince to his Majesty the Emperor Antoninus…”

Rabbi Yehuda took the letter and tore it up. He then instructed [Rabbi Aphes] to write: “From your servant, Yehuda, to his Majesty the Emperor Antoninus…”

He [Rabbi Aphes] objected: “Why are you debasing your honor?”

Rabbi Yehuda responded: “Am I any better than my elder, Yaakov? Did not Yaakov say [to Esav]: ‘Thus says your servant, Yaakov…’?”

Using Yaakov’s behavior towards Esav as a model, Rabbi Yehuda eschewed his own personal honor in his dealings with the Roman monarch. Through such diplomacy and discretion, Rabbi Yehuda maintained good relations with the Roman authorities and was able to protect the interests of the Jewish population under Roman rule.

Another Midrashic authority is even more direct in his suggestion that Yaakov’s approach to his older brother serve as the model of appropriate behavior towards authority: “Rabbi Yonatan said: Anyone who wishes to placate a king or ruler but is unfamiliar with his ways and tactics should place this chapter [the chapter chronicling the encounter between Yaakov and Esav] before him and learn from it the arts of conciliation and appeasement.”

For his part, the Sforno underscores approval of Yaakov’s behavior through a brief but telling reference to two Talmudic passages. He first cites the rabbinic observation concerning the curse pronounced by the prophet Ahiya the Shilonite: “The Lord will strike Israel as the reed is shaken in the water.” This curse is preferable, claim the Talmudic Sages, to the blessing of the evil sorcerer Bilam who prophesized that the Jews would be “as the cedars.” A reed survives by bending in the wind while a cedar stands firm and is uprooted. Yaakov’s example teaches us, says the Sforno, that we must be flexible enough to bend – to humble ourselves, in order to escape the sword of Esav’s descendents.

The Sforno goes on to quote the powerful claim of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai, the architect of Jewish survival at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple: “Had it not been for what the zealots did (responding to the Romans with resistance rather than negotiation), Jerusalem would not have been destroyed.”

Finally, the Talmud itself frames the concept of diplomacy in halachic terms by simply stating: “It is permissible to offer false flattery to evildoers in this world.” Reish Lakish traces the source of this legal ruling directly to Yaakov’s behavior towards Esav.

–C–
Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch adds new depth to our understanding of Yaakov’s behavior towards Esav by contrasting this behavior with Yaakov’s earlier interactions with his father-in-law, Lavan.

Earlier, when Yaakov confronted Lavan’s deceit, the patriarch responded with strength rather than subservience. The contrasting conciliatory attitude that Yaakov now exhibits towards Esav, says Hirsch, stems from his own sense of guilt over his taking of the birthright and the blessing from his older brother: “Better to endure corruption and injustice for twenty years (as did Yaakov at the hands of Lavan) than stand one moment before an individual who we know has been injured by our hands and who is incapable of understanding the circumstances which…might mitigate our guilt.”

Yaakov can deal with the evil that Lavan represents. He has difficulty, however, confronting his own complex feelings of guilt as the reunion with Esav approaches. Even though he may have been justified in his actions towards Esav, Yaakov knows that his brother will never really understand.

Points to Ponder

Once again, an ancient rabbinic debate concerning an even more ancient Torah text speaks to our time with uncanny relevance. As the global confrontation with terror increases in intensity – as the nations of the world confront rogue regimes armed with nuclear capability; as the State of Israel, always on the front line of civilization’s struggles, wrestles with the next steps to be taken in the ongoing confrontation with implacable foes – the questions loom large.

What is the correct approach to be taken in the face of hostility? Will conciliation avoid further conflict or be interpreted as weakness on our part and lead to increased danger? How far can diplomacy go in ensuring our safety?

The rabbinic debate concerning Yaakov’s actions reminds us that no single approach to an enemy is always correct. Each situation calls for its own response and, even then, we can never be certain we are on the right path. Constant ongoing assessment of the circumstances facing us, careful application of both the principles of strength and diplomacy, and a willingness to change course midstream when necessary will all be required if we are to successfully meet the challenges of our day.

Excerpted from Rabbi Dr. Norman J. Lamm’s Derashot Ledorot: A Commentary for the Ages – Genesis, co-published by OU Press, Maggid Books, and YU Press; edited by Stuart W. Halpern

The Stone on the Well – Boulder or Pebble?*

In reading this sidra we are puzzled by some extraordinary incidents there recorded. Jacob, we read, had chanced upon a group of shepherds waiting to water their sheep from a nearby well. And on it there rested a stone – an even gedola, a stone big enough to cover the mouth or opening of the well (Genesis 29:2). When Jacob notices the shepherds lingering, he tells them, Why don’t you go ahead, remove the stone from the mouth of the well and water your sheep? It all seemed so terribly simple to the naïve Jacob. But they answered: “Lo nukhal,” we cannot, it is impossible, until all the herds gather and the other shepherds help us. Jacob was puzzled by their attitude, and he thought he might be able to remove the stone – and, in the Bible’s eloquent simplicity: “Vayigash Yaakov vayagel et ha’even me’al pi habe’er” – he went over and rolled the stone off the mouth of the well…just like that!

We can well imagine the attitude of the shepherds when Jacob walked over to the well. “Look,” they probably sneered, “look who’s going to play the big hero – Jacob, the batlan, the luftmentsch!” And we can also imagine their amazement – and their embarrassment – when this same Jacob walks up to the stone and effortlessly rolls it off. The stone appeared to Jacob, say the rabbis, “kemelo pi kevara ketana,” as big as the hole of a strainer. What to these mighty muscle men appeared to be a boulder, appeared to Jacob to be a mere pebble!

This narrative certainly is remarkable. Jacob’s feat of strength and the shepherds’ apparent weakness requires some explanation. Why could Jacob do it? And, even more important, why couldn’t the shepherds? What does all this mean, and what is it that the Torah is trying to teach us?

The be’er, the well, was interpreted in many different ways by our rabbis (Genesis Rabba 70:9). Some said that it refers to Zion – the love for the Jewish home. Others would have it mean the feeling for Jewish ethics, when they say that it refers to Mount Sinai. Still others say that it is the well that accompanied our forefathers – referring to the tradition of the Jew and his sense of continuity. In essence, what our rabbis are trying to tell us is that the be’er is the well of the Jewish personality, the source of the forces of opportunity and accomplishment which well up in the Jewish soul and beg to be released. It is a man’s talents and his innate abilities which seek expression. But we see so many people, you might say, who never amount to much despite the fact that they have a wealth of talent and ability. True – their talents are never released because there is a stone on the mouth of their well, there are difficulties – hard, cold, and rocky – which must be rolled away first. The stone represents the difficulties in the way of each and every person in his desire to set free the forces which lie in the great well of his personality and being. And it is his attitude to this stone, his approach to these difficulties, which determines whether he will be able to roll it away, like Jacob, or be forced to keep the well covered, like the shepherds.

Yes, it is the attitude which counts the most. It is the idea which gives birth to the fact. The reason the shepherds couldn’t roll the stone away was that they were convinced they couldn’t do it. Listen once again to the Bible’s words: “Lo nukhal,” they said, “We cannot. It’s impossible.” When a man thinks that a particular task is impossible, then for him it becomes impossible.

Jacob, however, had no such difficulty. He didn’t think that it was impossible. He thought that a man certainly could remove the stone from his well. He therefore went over and, without further ado, simply moved it out of the way. He thought it was possible, and so for him it became possible.

The same rule holds true for most of us. If we face the stone on our individual wells – the difficulties which keep us back from doing those constructive things which we want to do, and we imagine that stone to be a boulder – then that is what it is, and try as we might it cannot be budged. Our “lo nukhal” attitude makes of it an “even gedola.” Approach it, however, with the attitude that it is only “kemelo pi kevara ketana,” that the stone is only a pebble, and it can be rolled away as easily as a pebble. What you think is impossible becomes impossible. Think of it as possible, and the odds are that you can do it.

Here is a man who would like to get himself an education. He must continue at night school for two more years in order to get his degree. It is his opportunity to open up the well of his hidden abilities. But there is a stone which lies on that well and threatens to choke it. He must have time for his club, he must finish his office work, he must keep up his social contacts, he must have some rest. “Lo nukhal,” sorry, I can’t do it – it’s impossible. And so the stone becomes a boulder, and for him it is now a virtual impossibility to get a degree. The “lo nukhal” made a boulder of the stone, and he cannot surmount it.

On the other hand, take a man like the late President Roosevelt. In the prime of his life he was cut down by crippling polio. What a stone! What a rock! And yet we know, from the many biographies written of him, that his attitude was anything but that of resignation, anything but “lo nukhal.” He was going to beat it. It was for him only “kemelo pi kevara ketana” – and so the stone became not a boulder but a pebble, and he removed it, allowing all the world to benefit from the treasures stored up in the well of his personality.

The story is told of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the famous World War i commander, who reported to his headquarters the following message: “My right flank is in retreat. My left flank is encircled. My center is caving. I am ready to attack.” Here was a man who could not say “lo nukhal,” and so the stones became as pebbles, and he won.

And what is true for individuals is true for communities, and for this community in particular. Of course there are stones on our well. This is not primarily a residential area, the interest in religion in general is waning, and so on and so forth. Look at it that way, and the stone is as formidable as a boulder, and we might as well give up before we start. Think of it, however, as of minor significance, remember that within walking distance of this synagogue there live a minimum of over four thousand adult Jews, and your stone becomes not a boulder but a pebble. As long as we don’t say “lo nukhal,” “we can’t, it can’t be done, it’s impossible,” the well can be tapped to good use.

And so, getting back to Jacob, his show of strength was of the mind and not of the muscles; it was a matter of attitude, not sheer brawn. And it was this very same attitude, this “never say die” attitude, which made him perform such miracles all his life. Thus the ivory-tower scholar, the“yoshev ohalim,” was able to turn shepherd for fourteen long years, to work for Rachel whom he loved. Thus the “ish tam,” the naïve student, was able to outsmart Laban in his own game of trickery and deceit. Thus was he able to envision a ladder rising into heaven. All this – because he never said “lo nukhal,” “impossible.”

The Vilna Gaon, according to a folk legend, was once asked how one becomes a Vilna Gaon. And he answered, “Vil nur, vest du zein a gaon,” “If you only will it, you can be a gaon.” Just don’t say “lo nukhal.”

And Jacob’s reward was ample. When he crossed the Yabok passage with his family and then went off by himself, an angel appeared out of heaven and began to grapple with him. The angel, who according to tradition represented “saro shel Esav,” the patron angel of Esau, wrestled with him on those bleak Mesopotamian plains until morning. It was the battle for spiritual supremacy – who will ultimately control the destiny of the human race: Jacob, with his religion and faith and decency, or Esau, with his treachery and faithlessness and sinister intrigues? Jacob, fleeing from Laban after having been tricked into fourteen years of hard labor, and fearful of an uncertain future, could easily have been the pessimist and conceded to saro shel Esav. But that was not for Jacob, who rolled the stone from the well and never said “lo nukhal.” And so, it is the angel who concedes to Jacob, and – and this is remarkable – in the very same expression of “yakhol.” The Bible relates: “Vayar ki lo yakhol lo,” the angel saw that he could not gain the best of him. Jacob would not surrender, Jacob had never learned the words “lo nukhal.” How significant and how complimentary, therefore, the encomium which God bestows upon Jacob when, changing his name, He says to him, “Ki sarita im elohim ve’im anashim, you fought with angels and with men, vatukhal, and you won, you prevailed.” There was no “lo nukhal” on your tongue; you did not regard any great and noble task as impossible – “vatukhal.”

The limits of a man’s ability are much greater than most men think they are. Tremendous forces churn incessantly in the well of human nature and particularly in the Jewish soul. The stone upon that well can either block it, or the stone can be cast away. What a man does with that stone depends on what he thinks of it. He can be a peasant and, in primitive fear, imagine it a boulder and choke off his life’s mission. Or he can be a Jacob and understand that the stone is only a pebble; cast it off, and eventually grapple even with angels – “vatukhal” – and win.

---

*November 29, 1952.

Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin’s Unlocking the Torah Text – Bereishit, co-published by OU Press and Gefen Publishing

Finding Yitzchak

Context

Yitzchak, the second of the three patriarchs, emerges as the most enigmatic. In stark contrast to the dramatic lives of both his father, Avraham, and his son, Yaakov, Yitzchak’s life (aside from the Akeida) seems unremarkable. He is characterized in the text as a passive man, buffeted by events, who rarely seems to take the initiative.

Questions

Who was Yitzchak? What were his challenges? Above all, what were his contributions to the patriarchal era and to Jewish history in general?

Approaches

A
The Torah is not a history book, and therefore does not provide us with full biographies of the personalities who populate its pages. We are given only the information that God deems necessary for the fulfillment of the Torah’s basic mission: the transmission of a Divine moral and ethical code to the Jewish people and the world.

Nonetheless, we can piece together pictures of our ancestors, based upon the information contained in the text. Incomplete as these pictures may be, they are nonetheless instructive. A better understanding of our ancestor’s lives, times and trials provides us with critical lessons concerning our own challenges today.

Careful study of the terse narrative of Parshat Toldot reveals patterns and themes within Yitzchak’s life. By analyzing these patterns we can catch a glimpse of the enigmatic second patriarch.

B
The first phrase of Parshat Toldot reads as follows: “These are the generations of Yitzchak, the son of Avraham; Avraham gave birth to Yitzchak…”

At first glance, the text seems not only redundant but unnecessary. We already know that Yitzchak is Avraham’s son. Why then, does the Torah find it necessary to repeat this fact not only once, but twice, in this introductory passage? Clearly the text is underscoring the fundamental relationship between the two patriarchs.

Who was Yitzchak? In many ways, the answer is that he was his father’s son. This relationship defined Yitzchak’s life and behavior.

Over and over again, we find Yitzchak experiencing the same circumstances as his father and repeating his father’s actions. Avraham and Sara were childless until God miraculously interceded; Yitzchak and Rivka are childless until God miraculously intercedes. Avraham had two sons, only one of whom would carry on his legacy; Yitzchak has two sons, only one of whom will carry on his legacy. Avraham confronted famine; Yitzchak confronts famine. Avraham dug wells; Yitzchak uncovers his father’s wells and then digs his own. Avraham asked Sara to pretend that she was his sister upon entering the territory of the Philistines; Yitzchak asks Rivka to pretend that she is his sister upon entering the territory of the Philistines. Avraham contracted a covenant with Avimelech; Yitzchak comes to an agreement with Avimelech.

The parallels are nothing short of astounding. Avraham clearly casts a powerful shadow over the life of his son.

C
So strong is the influence of Avraham that Yitzchak’s very relationship with God seems to be dependent upon his father. This fact is clearly mirrored in God’s conversations with the second patriarch: “And the Lord appeared to him [Yitzchak] and said: ‘Do not go down to Egypt…. Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and I will bless you…. and I will uphold the promise that I gave to your father, Avraham. And I will multiply your children as the stars of the heaven…. Because your father, Avraham, listened to my voice and observed my traditions, commandments, statutes and laws.’”

Later God reprises the refrain: “And the Lord appeared to him that night and said: ‘I am the God of your father, Avraham. Do not fear for I am with you and I will bless you, and multiply your children for the sake of my servant Avraham.’”

God bases his promises to Yitzchak on the merit of Avraham, rather than upon Yitzchak’s own merit. Is it possible that God understands that Yitzchak is unable to relate to his Creator, unless it is through the medium of his father’s memory?

The rabbis poignantly describe the overwhelming influence of Avraham on Yitzchak’s life in the following Midrashic passage quoted in the Talmud:

“And Avraham was old, well on in years”: Until Avraham’s day old age did not exist. Because of this fact, people who came to meet with Avraham would (in error) meet with Yitzchak, while those who came to meet with Yitzchak would (in error) meet with Avraham. Avraham, therefore, requested mercy from God, and old age was instituted.

In typical Midrashic fashion, the rabbis identify a fundamental problem facing Avraham. So identical are father and son that the patriarch is compelled to request from God the one gift essential for Yitzchak’s development: the personal space needed to allow Yitzchak to define his own identity.

D
As powerful as Avraham’s influence on his son may be, there are clear textual indications that Yitzchak successfully struggles to emerge from behind his father’s shadow.

The Torah discusses in detail the wells of water that Yitzchak digs. Some scholars accept this narrative on the level of pashut pshat. The text, they say, is describing the difficult effort of developing actual sources of water in Canaan, an effort that remains critical in the land of Israel to this very day. Others suggest that the wells be understood in Midrashic fashion. Water, they say, is often used as a symbol of Jewish tradition. The wells dug both by Avraham and Yitzchak refer to aspects of that tradition.

Whatever approach we choose, it is significant that Yitzchak not only uncovers the wells that his father dug and “calls them by the names that his father called them,” but also creates new sources of water and struggles with the Philistines concerning their ownership. Yitzchak certainly respects and reveres his father’s accomplishments. When the second patriarch digs his own wells, however, he moves beyond his father’s actions as he struggles to define his own personal historical role.

Similarly, Yitzchak’s agreement with the Philistine king, Avimelech, differs in significant ways from the flawed covenant that had been contracted in Avraham’s time. Yitzchak apparently learns from his father’s mistakes and is much more cautious in his dealings with the Philistines. (See Toldot 2 for a full discussion of the contrast between the two agreements.)

In these and other instances we catch a glimpse of the second patriarch’s efforts to move out from under the towering shadow of his powerful father and define his own unique identity.

E
Yitzchak’s personal struggles for self-definition become even more significant when seen against the backdrop of his unique place in Jewish history.

Yitzchak is the first Hebrew child. He is, therefore, the first individual within our history to face the challenge of preserving the Mesora (Jewish tradition). This challenge begins with the two steps of receiving and transmitting.

Yitzchak, unlike Avraham, receives his divine instruction not only from God, but from his parents. He must respect and absorb what his parents teach, often a considerable challenge.

God, for example, tells Avraham to climb Mount Moriah on the occasion of the Akeida. Yitzchak, on the other hand, receives no such commandment directly from God. His instructions are received from his father, Avraham. Nonetheless, Yitzchak faithfully follows his father’s instructions even to the point of potentially sacrificing his own life.

Upon receiving the tradition from his parents, the second patriarch must also successfully transmit that tradition to the next generation. Much of Yitzchak’s story centers on this particular task as he makes the difficult journey, with the help of his wife Rivka, towards understanding the true nature of his two children, Yaakov and Esav, and the legacy appropriate for each (see Toldot 3, Approaches c).

We often make the mistake, however, of defining Mesora simply in terms of the receipt and transmission of tradition. There is a pivotal additional step that must take place. To fully participate in the process of Mesora, an individual must receive tradition, make it his or her own, and then pass it down to the next generation.

Our ritual heritage is not simply the sum total of the hard-and-fast laws of the Torah, nor only the result of rabbinic interpretation and emendation. There is a personal component that involves us all. Jewish belief and practice change in subtle but significant ways as they course through the life of each Jew in every generation. We all contribute, consciously and unconsciously, to the complexion of our tradition. As a result, the Mesora that we pass down is different from the one we received. We each leave a personal mark upon our heritage.

On a national level, this phenomenon can be seen in the changing face of Jewish tradition throughout the journeys of our people. The communities of Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Morocco, Russia and countless others have each left an indelible and individual mark on the nature of our heritage. Judaism is richer and more beautiful for all of those communal contributions.

On a personal level, many of our own memories can prove the point. Judaism is not only the laws of kashrut and Shabbat, but the experience of a family Pesach Seder, the aroma of a grandmother’s gefilte fish, the kiss of a parent after the blessings on Shabbat Eve and so much more. Yitzchak’s efforts to define his own identity acquire greater urgency when seen in light of his unique place at the head of the chain of Jewish tradition. If the process of Mesora is to fully take root, the second patriarch cannot simply be a carbon copy of his father. He must actively determine and make his own contribution to the unfolding saga of his people. In this way he sets the stage for generations of Jews to follow, each of whom will be challenged to receive a tradition from their parents, make it their own, and hand it down to their children.

F
No discussion of Yitzchak’s life would be complete without mention of the Akeida as a formative experience. Yitzchak’s existence is undoubtedly shaped by the traumatic events that take place on the summit of Mount Moriah.

The rabbis point to two significant consequences of that overwhelming episode:

1. Yitzchak’s blindness was caused by the tears of the angels, which fell into his eyes as he lay bound on the altar.
2. Yitzchak is the only patriarch never to leave the land of Canaan. As he prepares to travel to Egypt in the face of famine, God appears and prohibits the journey. The rabbis explain that Yitzchak was considered a pure sacrifice. No other land was worthy of him.

Each of these rabbinic observations may well connect to one specific aspect of Yitzchak’s life that develops as a result of the Akeida. The dramatic events on the summit of Mount Moriah transform Yitzchak into the first “survivor” in Jewish history.

In this role the second patriarch becomes the paradigm of Jewish martyrdom across the ages. The rabbis in the Midrash refer to Yitzchak as “the first of the bound,” while the Talmud quotes Chana (who witnessed the brutal murder of her seven sons at the hands of the tyrant Antiochus) as saying, “My sons, go tell your father, Avraham: ‘You erected one altar; I erected seven.’”

It is only natural for someone who was a powerless victim of a deeply traumatic event to gravitate to strength and power in others. This phenomenon is evidenced today in the powerful bond between survivors of the Holocaust and the State of Israel. These individuals understand better than others the price to be paid when a people stand alone and stateless in the face of danger; and they appreciate beyond measure the way that the State of Israel has changed the nature of Jewish experience throughout the world.

Is it possible that Yitzchak’s “blindness” to the true nature of his sons, Esav and Yaakov, can be traced to the effect of the Akeida on the patriarch’s psyche? Perhaps, as a survivor, Yitzchak gravitates so powerfully to the physical strength of his older son, Esav, that he fails to see the faults that accompany that strength. Yitzchak, the passive patriarch, sees in Esav all that he, himself, is not; while Yaakov, the quiet son, is too similar to his father to be fully appreciated.

Yitzchak, as a survivor, can also not be allowed to leave the land of Canaan, even with a promise of return.

Survivors cannot live on dreams and promises. Only the concrete allows them to persevere. This fact is, once again, reflected today in the lives and accomplishments of Holocaust survivors throughout the world. Their drive to succeed – to build families and careers – and their invaluable contributions to their own communities and to the State of Israel reflect an overwhelming desire to create a new concrete reality. Only such a reality allows them to endure in spite of the horrific memories of past trauma.

Yitzchak, who would always live with the memory of his father raising the knife above him as he lay bound on the altar, could not be asked to leave the Land of Canaan. Only the concrete reality of living on his land would enable him to succeed.

Excerpted from Rabbi Dr. Norman J. Lamm’s Derashot Ledorot: A Commentary for the Ages – Genesis, co-published by OU Press, Maggid Books, and YU Press; edited by Stuart W. Halpern

Down the Up Staircase*

For over a thousand years, the weekly Torah portions have been known by their present names with only minor changes. According to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, these titles are “Torah names,” headings to which the Torah gives special significance, for they somehow reveal the inner essence of the whole of the sidra.

This Torah portion is called Lekh Lekha, which means, “Get thee out,” be active and move. Literally, the idiom means, “Go to yourself,” return to your spiritual identity, climb up the ladder to spiritual heights, reach your own soul in your ascent. A Jew must never be static. He must be dynamic and progressive in his service of the Lord, in moving himself and history in the direction of God. This, then, is the essence of all that is related in this sidra. Thus, we read of how Abram goes to the land of Israel. He is not traveling as a sightseeing tourist with first-class accommodations. His journey is a symbolic conquest. As Nachmanides points out, Abram’s journeys in Canaan prefigured the Jewish possession of the land by actual possession when he staked out the territory. All of this is part of Abram’s “going,” his lekh lekha.

However, there are several important incidents which spell not progress but decline. The foremost failure or setback is the verse: “And there was famine in the land and Abram went down to Egypt” (Genesis 12:10). This is not merely an incidental decision to change residence. Psychologically, it was a major crisis for Abram. He had left Canaan with the divine promise, “I shall make you into a great nation and I shall bless you.” Some blessing! He had just come to Canaan, and instead of bringing with him prosperity, he had become the harbinger of hunger, and he was already fleeing the land.

What a disappointment – history’s first oleh had become history’s first yored.

Religiously, too, Abram’s descent to Egypt was frustrating, almost abortive of his whole mission. His journey to Canaan was meant to be a kiddush Hashem, an act of sanctifying the divine Name by making the one God available and accessible to humans. The Midrash compares the situation to an open box of incense. If it stands in a corner, no one can smell it and it is of no use. But if you take it and move it about in the middle of the room, then your motion causes the odor to be wafted and to benefit all who are present. So God said to Abram: “Move yourself from place to place in Canaan, and thus will your name be made great in the world” – and through your reputation will the divine Name be sanctified and the divine message be known. The journey to Canaan was to be the launching of Abram’s religious career. However, if Abram “went down” to Egypt, that canceled out his mission and vitiated his message.

Domestically, this descent to Egypt was the cause of many troubles for Abram. For in Egypt there took place the abduction of Sara – she was kidnapped and taken into the harem of Pharaoh. So our sidra relates troubles as well as triumphs.

And, spiritually and historically as well, we are faced with problems in this sidra. We know the principle that our rabbis laid down, “Ma’aseh avot siman levanim” – the deeds of the fathers are the symbol of the recurring patterns in the lives of their children. But some Jewish teachers, especially Hasidim, taught that this does not mean only that the lives of the patriarchs were symbolic of the historic patterns of their descendants, but that the patriarchs actually participated in the history that came after them, that their actions were the commencement of Jewish history. Therefore, “And Abram went down to Egypt” means not only that Abram’s descent to Egypt was a historic symbol of the later Egyptian exile, but that it was in some way itself the beginning of that terrible and bitter exile.

If that is the case, and such were the blows suffered by Abram and Sara, how can we account for the name Lekh Lekha, which indicates progress, growth, and advancement?

The answer provided for us by the Lubavitcher Rebbe is, in essence, this: Sometimes descent is for the purpose of ascent; often you must go down in order to go up to an even higher level than that at which you began. Some failures are merely temporary; they are the future successes in disguise. Sometimes the setback is instrumental to later success. Often you must retreat in order to move on, in which case the retreat is preparatory and part of progress and advance.

Therefore, “Vayered Avram Mitzrayma,” Abram’s going down to Egypt, led to and was part of “Vaya’al Avram miMitzrayim,” Abram’s going up again from Egypt. His going down was part and for the purpose of his later going up.

Even Sara’s abduction to the harem of Pharaoh served such a function. One of the great Hasidic teachers has taught us that Sara’s chaste conduct in the court of Pharaoh was so exemplary that it became the model for Jewish conduct through the centuries of exile in foreign lands. The descendants of Sara, inspired by her model, refused to assimilate. They did not permit the purity of their faith be defiled, they protected the honor of their emuna in God.

So “vayered” is part of “vaya’al,” the descent leading to the ascent is all part of lekh lekha, of general progress. Or, to use a metaphor more familiar to us from the popular literature of recent years, sometimes you go down, but it is only going “down the up staircase”; your decline is merely a part of the procedure of ultimate ascent. So it is with our national life. Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery. At the time Joseph, and later all the brothers, thought that this event was an unmitigated disaster. But, as Joseph later told them when he revealed his identity to them, “The agony of my slavery was part of the divine plan to save the entire family now.” He went down – but it was on the up staircase, which led even higher.

The same is true with the State of Israel today. Often we are plunged into a gray mood when we consider our international and even internal situation. The constant attrition, the state of no-war-no-peace, the ever-impending threat of greater warfare involving the great powers, the increasing isolation of Israel from neutrals and friends – all this is not calculated to encourage great cheer on behalf of those who love Israel. Nevertheless, we must never permit ourselves to lose our sense of balance. We are only humans, and therefore our perspectives are limited. Even we, in our present situation, can begin to appreciate that quite possibly our present situation is the best of all, that the alternatives may be far worse, that what is happening at the present may be propaedeutic to something much greater, much nobler, much happier. Our present descent may well be part of an ultimate ascent. May God grant that!

And the same holds true for personal life. Life is full of crises. No human being can be spared trauma in his existence. If we lose heart and are discouraged and become crushed, then our pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We lose sight of opportunities, and we almost wish ourselves into a plunging descent. But if we look at our situation as descent for the sake of ascent, if we adopt a more sanguine attitude, then our optimism becomes self-fulfilling as it sensitizes us to the creative possibilities in descent. So let us leave the pessimistic views to the anti-Semites. Recall what Zeresh, wife of Haman, told him when his star began to dim: “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is one of the children of the Jews, then you shall not prevail over him but you will fall completely” (Esther 6:13). There was a descent which was permanent. Jews must take a different attitude. For ourselves we must learn to endure the descent as integral to the ascent, as but a temporary setback, preparation for a greater rise.

How often has a middle-aged man, suffering a heart attack, been told by his physician: How lucky you are! This is a warning which may well save your life and prolong it. The same is true for business or professional or academic setbacks. It may be a warning, it may save us from more disastrous adventures, it may teach us something whereby we will better be able to attain our ultimate goal.

This message is not simplistic, unrealistic, or happy-go-lucky. On the contrary, I am pleading for a more sophisticated and higher realism: the confidence and rational understanding that, caught in crisis, man is often prone to depression because he takes an overly dim view, because he is limited emotionally and his vision is therefore curbed; the knowledge that life is never all up or all down, but a series of zigzags – and he never knows when he is zigging or zagging; the faith that while our own personal perspective is limited, that we can only begin to discern events and their true proportions in retrospect but never in prospect, that from the perspective of God what seems to us like descent is really for the purpose of ascent. Because we are so affected personally by our own situation, we tend to exaggerate, and we do not know that we are doing so or in what measure. In the depths, it is hard to realize that you have gone down in order to go up. But it is an act of faith – and intelligence as well.

So, Lekh Lekha, both by content and by name, leaves us with this encouraging message: If we suffer, whether it be illness, financial reverses, or any form of domestic misery or loneliness or frustration, remember “descent for the purpose of ascent.” I do not mean that things will always get better, but they often do, little as we expect it. Let us then not despair. Let each of us, in his or her own situation, bear this in mind – not as a palliative or peace-of-mind preachment, but as part of emuna, part of Jewish faith.

Then it will be true of us, as it was said of Abram in this sidra: “And he (Abram) believed in the Lord, and He accounted to him as tzedaka, as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). By this is meant that God considered Abram’s faith as a special act of righteousness. But the word “tzedaka” derives from the word meaning “justice.” We might therefore translate the verse as: “And Abram believed in the Lord, and God accredited it to him and justified his faith.”

When we will have faith that the downturn is part of an up-going, that the descent is for the ascent, and that faith will prove tzedaka, our confidence will be vindicated and justified, and indeed aloh na’aleh. The call of Lekh Lekha, of climbing ever higher, will be ours to achieve.

---

*October 30, 1971.

Excerpted from Rabbi Dr. Norman J. Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays

The Starry Night*

“Religion should change with the times.” I am sure that everyone in this congregation has, at one time or another, been accosted by this ubiquitous slogan. I know that I have had to contend with it ever since my first youthful venture outside my native Williamsburg.

“Religion should change with the times.” This is the kind of profound platitude that everyone who utters it thinks he has invented. Like so many other clichés, which at first sight seem to possess so much wisdom and upon reflection prove utterly vacuous, this popular motto is thoroughly banal. It offers simple bromides for enormously complex problems. It issues a fog of vague and imprecise but terribly up-to-date sentiments, where clarity and analysis are called for. It has as much to offer to religious philosophy as “twinkle, twinkle little star” has to contribute to the science of astronomy.

Does this mean that we are “against change”? Of course not. To be against  change is to be against life, because we are always moving, always changing, always either growing up or growing down, progressing or retrogressing. Change is the law of the universe. Life is always in flux. A great Greek philosopher once said that life is like a river, always changing and moving, and, because of its constant motion, you cannot step into the same river twice. Whereupon another Greek philosopher offered his opinion that so constant a state of flux is it in, that you cannot step into the river even once.

So we do not deny that life does change, and we do not even piously wish that it would not change. But we do maintain that intelligent human beings try to balance change and continuity, motion and stability. Just as complete immutability spells petrifaction and stagnation, so does constant changeability imply  fickleness, unreliability, and irresponsibility. Thus, for instance, all of us want our children to change: to study, to grow physically, to better their characters, to improve their personalities. We want them to be weaned from us protective parents, to have their own careers, to marry and build their own homes, and to make their own reputations in life. But we also want them to be stable, always to remain honorable, responsible, loyal, to keep a word and a commitment once made, and to maintain throughout life their love for parents, brothers, and sisters. Is anyone ready to abandon these qualities with the facile argument that honor should change with the times? Or love should change with the times? Or friendship, or character, or integrity?

Certainly there is change. But a man cannot spiritually or psychologically survive change that is so radical, so abrupt, so unceasing that there is no continuity or stability in his life. He must have something in life that is fixed, some reference point by which to measure new ideas, new promises, new demands, and new phenomena.

That fixed point is Torah. The psalmist sang, “Thy word is a lamp unto my foot and a light unto my path” (Ps. 119:105). Of course, we use our feet to tread on different paths in life. We live neither in a forcibly imposed East European ghetto, nor in the voluntarily self-isolated communities of Western Europe, but in the open and pluralistic and technological United States—and it is an exciting and adventurous life. Our feet stake out new paths constantly. But the lamp and the light for our feet and our paths are the same—Torah and mitzvot. Without them we stumble, we lose our way, and our adventure turns into a horror, and the excitement into unbearable anxiety.

The more a society is in a state of change, the more it needs some anchor of permanence to give it a sense of stability. When I don my tallit or tefillin, when I hold my lulav and etrog, I suddenly am aware of myself as standing in the grand tradition of my parents and my grandparents and their grandparents before them. I perceive myself as part of a great and noble historical continuum which emerges unshaken from the vicissitudes of the various ages. These observances are both symbol and essence of my roots. And, indeed, in the performance of the Jewish mitzvot, I am aware of my roots such that no matter what winds may buffet my branches, no matter what storms may swirl about me, I remain firm and stable. I feel like a tree, not like a mushroom which appears out of nowhere and disappears into nothing. Thus, the tallit and the tefillin, the lulav and the etrog, kashrut and Shabbat, are more important here and today than they were in Volozhin or Pressburg or Hamburg of a hundred years ago. Our life in these times is obsessed by veneer, by the appeal of the new and the fashionable, by the attraction of tomorrow’s style. Marshall McLuhan, for all his sensationalism, has enunciated a truth in his famous statement that “the medium is the message.” Considering the proliferation of the various new media in our times, our minds are bombarded by all kinds of novel and evanescent messages, so that the timeless verities are displaced from our consciousness. We have become the generation of the spiritually dispossessed, and our own permanent values have turned unstable and illusory. We are thus perpetual adolescents, internal transition. With all our scorn for the hippies, we must acknowledge in gratitude that they point to a problem that is ours: they, on the margins of society, are the psychopathic symptoms of our inner pathology, our inner emptiness, our inner sickness. We are so caught up in change, so enamored of motion, so mercurial in our spiritual orientation, so volatile in our ethical lives, so fickle in our culture, that we are left without identity, without self, without reality. And it is against this emptiness that the hippies attempt, so pathetically, to reassert the eternal and stable truths of love and beauty and simplicity. It is a pity that their “flower power” has no roots.

In a society of this kind, we need Torah more than ever before. We need a religion which does not change with the times, but which offers the permanence and stability we crave. Religion should not be a mirror that reflects the crazy whirl of life’s mad currents. It should be a rudder that keeps us afloat, that tells us where we are going and guides us there, that helps us attain perspective and prevents us from being overwhelmed by the empty foam of life. Were religion to change with the times, it would not be worth the effort to stay religious!

I believe that this idea is implicit in a remarkable statement of the Rabbis of the Midrash (Yalkut Shim‘oni, Psalms, 682). They taught that ein Melekh ha- Mashiah ba ella litten le-umot ha-olam . . . sukkah—the King-Messiah will come to the world only to teach the nations of the world about the sukkah. How strange! For over two thousand years, Jews have pined away for the Messiah. For the last eight hundred years or so, we have sung daily of our hearts’ deepest yearnings and proclaim courageously our ani ma’amin, our belief and our faith that the Messiah can come at any time, any day. And what for? To teach the gentiles how to build a sukkah! Did not the prophets conceive of the Messiah so much more nobly? Isaiah taught that the function of the Messiah would be to beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning forks. Micah taught that the Messiah will establish the House of the Lord on the mountain in Jerusalem so that all nations will proclaim, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord” (Mic. 4:2). And the Rabbis of the Midrash? That the Messiah will come, gather up the nations in the UN, and teach them the prosaic laws of how to build a little sukkah!

What did they mean? I suggest it is this. The sukkah is a symbol of change. The Rabbis refer to it as dirat arai, a temporary abode. Its very flimsiness is an index of its temporariness. It is a symbol of the makeshift booths which our  ancestors used on their journey through the Sinai wilderness. It implies, therefore, transition, transience, impermanence. The very insignificance of its defannot, or walls, and the requirement that the covering, or sekhakh be impermanent are further indications of sukkah as a symbol of change and transition. Now, transition is a dangerous period. Consider adolescence and the early years of marriage, or historical transition from one age to another, or economic change and displacements. At a time of this sort, disaster dogs us at every footstep, calamity is just around every corner, and man is threatened by being swept up in change and losing his moorings. A world of this kind needs a Messiah; it needs his lesson of how to survive the sukkah! The Messiah will teach the world what the Jews always should have known; that we can and must find stability in the midst of change and movement. The Halakhah teaches us that in order for a sukkah to be valid, the covering, or sekhakh, must not be too tightly packed. Specifically, we must be able to see the stars through the sekhakh. Like the ancient mariner who without instruments was able to guide himself by the stars, or like the contemporary interplanetary satellite which moves unerringly through the vast and open reaches of empty space by latching on to a star, so man, caught up in an ever-moving and ever-changing sukkah of life, must be able to see the stars through the sekhakh. That star is—Torah, faith, God.

When the artist Van Gogh was asked about his famous expressionistic painting The Starry Night, he said, “I felt a need of—shall I say the word?—religion, and so I went out and painted the stars.” It is the very permanence of the stars and the solace they offer to an unstable society that makes them the symbol of religion. It is this fixity amidst flux that Torah offers and that the Messiah will teach.

The religion of Torah, therefore, does not change with the times. It is not subject to the whims of the public opinion poll. Its strength derives from its perennial reliability.

Nevertheless, we must also stress a corollary: that while Torah is changeless, it must always be relevant to a changing society. It must not be so changeless that it has nothing to do with man, who is always in a state of change. Judaism must address man in his changing conditions; it must speak to man of values and faith, of loyalty and honor and meaning, as they apply to his times and his society. But Judaism cannot do this if the teachers of Torah turn their backs on the rest of mankind. This is what we mean when we appeal for the relevance of Orthodox Judaism, and this is our argument with those in our own camp who would cut themselves off from modern society completely. The stars can guide man only when they are visible. If clouds of distrust and diffidence cover the stars, they are of precious little use to man. So the advocates of Torah must speak to modern man in his own idiom; they must respect his intelligence and feel with him in his misery.

When the Rabbis of old complained that Torah munnahat be-keren zavit, Torah lies neglected in a hidden corner (Kiddushin 66a), they did not mean for us to crawl into that corner with it and turn our backs on the world. Rather, they meant for us to take Torah out of that keren zavit and bring it into the center of the world scene, into the maelstrom of daily events, into the midst of the raging torrents of the times, and with it to offer man abiding faith and enduring stability.

Of course, by the same token, overemphasizing relevance can destroy the stable character of religion of which we speak. When you are too relevant, you turn religion into a newspaper; and nothing is as meaningless as yesterday’s news…Torah, therefore, must not be a sealed book written in an ancient and undecipherable language, nor must it be a running commentary of religious journalese. It must be the Sefer Hayyim, the Book of Life. That is a difficult task—to be permanent and yet relevant, changeless and yet germane. It means that while affirming the unchanging nature of Halakhah, we must be able to explain it in terms of a changing society; that while teaching the timeless truths of Torah, we must relate them to issues that are timely. Above all, we must not be afraid to say that we do not have all the answers, and yet we must never cease searching for them.

---

*5728/1967

 

The full excerpt can be found in Rabbi Norman Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays

 

Excerpted from Dr. Erica Brown’s Jonah: The Reluctant Prophet, co-published by OU Press and Maggid Books

The Book of Jonah, simply put, is misnamed. This is not the account of a prophet. although an unusual Hebrew prophet stands at its center. This is a book about God, a God associated with a particular nation, Israel, who expands His divine embrace to include non-Jews, animals large and small, and vegetation. Nowhere since the first chapters of Genesis do we find, in so few pages, mention of the world’s totality and God’s utter and urgent concern for the whole of creation. Jonah will serve as God’s ultimate foil in this magical story, just as the sailors, the king of Nineveh, and the animals become foils for the prophet. Jonah’s personal theological crisis will become the platform upon which God models divine compassion, urging Jonah to become more godly, more like his Creator. God serves Jonah as parent, friend, mentor, and teacher. God’s props – from a fish to a storm to a gourd to a worm – are the teaching tools by which God patiently encourages the prophet to confront his ugliest self, predominantly his churlish disregard for a universe outside of his narrow, parochial concerns.

The world around Jonah is in constant flux. A group of sailors became a group of believers. A city and its king transformed themselves. A tree grew and died overnight. Everything and everyone changed, including God – but the prophet did not change. For this reason, we have no idea what happened to Jonah when the words written about him end, unceremoniously, as if in mid-sentence or mid-story. There are only so many chances given to a person who fails to believe in personal transformation, let alone radical collective change. But more than the transformations personal or collective that appear in the book, it was God’s ability to change that was the source of Jonah’s caustic resentment.

We read this book on Yom Kippur not because of Jonah but because of the God of Jonah. If God can change, we can change. If God recruits all of nature to fight human  nature in the story of one individual, then surely we can all overcome the barriers to compassion, the niggling resistance to being different than we are, and the narcissistic pull that keeps our own worlds small and limited. Jonah was unmoved, but perhaps we will read his book as his critics and be moved precisely because he was not. Maybe we will see in the God of Jonah, the God of each and every one of us, a God who cares for us intimately and personally, a God who marshals the world’s resources for our reformation, who asks us questions that force introspection. Can we adjust, adapt, amend, refine, and modify who we are on this holiest of days because God also changes? Or are we, like Jonah, secret believers, that nothing ever changes, least of all who we are? The God of Jonah changes; that should be motivation enough. It was not enough for Jonah. Will it be for us?

 

Excerpted from Rabbi Dr. Norman J. Lamm’s Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays

The Sense of Shame*

We moderns have, to a large extent, lost the ability to feel ashamed. Young people grow up with an attitude of sneering cynicism, and moral restraint is treated like an anachronism, an outdated inhibition. Shame is unknown. Our theaters and our entertainment places glorify profanity and immorality. But we are not shocked; we no longer have shame. Television, radio, newspapers, and magazines often publish the kind of pornography that once would have occasioned wide embarrassment and a public outcry; but today we accept it as inevitable, and no one is ashamed. People come to weddings in the synagogue dressed immodestly; Jewish organizations openly and aggressively flout the most sacred Jewish traditions; Jews, especially college professors, proudly proclaim their religious ignorance from the rooftops—and for all this there is no shame.

And yet, bushah, or shame, is an integral part of teshuvah, repentance or the genuine Jewish religious experience. Maimonides counts bushah as one of the fundamental aspects of repentance, the dominant theme of this holiday. It is mentioned repeatedly in our Selihot prayers and on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. If, then, we are ever to change for the better, if Judaism is ever to advance and Torah ever to triumph, the first thing we must do is recapture the ability to blush; we must relearn the art of feeling ashamed.

What is shame? Our inquiry is not merely for a dictionary definition. The problem of what it really is has been discussed by some of the world’s greatest  literary figures, psychiatrists, and philosophers. Allow me to present to you the findings of one writer who recently devoted a whole book to the subject (Helen Merrell Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity, 1958).

Shame is the feeling of a sudden loss of identity. Every man has a picture of himself as he likes to think of himself and have others think of him. When he suddenly stands exposed as something less than that, something inferior, not at all the kind of person he thought he was and others thought he was, when he is astonished at how he has fallen short of his own ideals, when his own image of himself is cruelly jolted and disarrayed, and another, unpleasant identity is revealed—that is shame.

Shame is thus a reaction to the blow to our self-esteem, the discrepancy between our exalted view of ourselves and the sudden revelation of a lower, more vulnerable, and less worthy self. Shame is therefore relative to a person’s standing in the eyes of others and, even more, in his own eyes. Mr. Average Citizen who cheats a little on his income tax is engaging in a mischievous national sport; there is no shame attached to it. But the elected official who won office on a platform of “honesty in government” and who is so apprehended—he is filled with shame. The college sophomore who cannot solve a differential equation may feel bad. The math professor who suddenly forgets how to do it is ashamed.

If you have a high image of yourself, then you feel shame when you fail that image. If you have a low image of yourself, shame is improbable, for your self-identity has not been questioned. The root of the sense of shame is as old as the human race itself. The first human couple experienced it. In the beginning, Adam and Eve were naked, but ve-lo yitboshashu, “they were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25). Later, they sinned— and they futilely looked around for something to cover themselves with, for now they were ashamed. Ashamed indeed: they thought of themselves as worthy, Adam as the yetzir kappav of God, the creature of God’s own hands; Eve as the em kol hai, the mother of all life (Gen. 3:20). They inhabited Paradise; they were the most perfect of God’s creatures; they spoke with God. Suddenly, rudely, crudely, they were shocked by their own failure, by their inability to resist a miserable piece of fruit—and so they were ashamed. A new and cheaper self was exposed.

And how wonderful and invaluable, how civilizing, is this sense of shame! For when we experience it, we are shaken by our failure to live up to the ideal picture of ourselves, and so we are compelled to change our real self, just discovered, and transform it so that it will conform to the higher, more ideal image we entertained. This, indeed, is the essence of teshuvah, repentance. That is why Maimonides teaches that after the sense of bushah or shame comes repentance, which attains its highest expression when a man is be able to say, “Ani aher, ve-eini oto ha-ish—I am another, I am no longer the same man” who committed those evil follies (Hilkhot Teshuvah 2:4). I have transformed my identity, my very self, my whole character, so that now I really am the person I originally thought I was! No wonder the Sefer Hasidim taught that ha-boshet ve-ha-emunah nitzmadot; ke-she-tistallek ahat, tistallek havertah, “shame and faith are intertwined; take away one, and the other disappears” (ed. Margaliyot, #120, #350).

If, therefore, we moderns have largely lost the sense of bushah, it is not because we have a high opinion of ourselves. Quite the contrary, it is because we have too low an opinion of ourselves, because we have almost no self-esteem, no image of dignity to be jolted and hurt. Our sophisticated generation has been nurtured on Freud and weaned on Kinsey. We have been taught to expect the worst in ourselves. We have become conditioned to the beast in man, so much so that if we sometimes are confronted with a genuinely human act, we are surprised. Our problem is that we have so contemptible a view of our own inner value, our own moral worth and significance, that that which is mean and despicable seems to us to fit into the picture we have drawn of ourselves. And if there is no discrepancy, no exposure, no jolt, there can be no bushah, and hence there can be no impetus to grow and improve and transform ourselves.

---

 

*1962/5723

Excerpted from Rabbi Dr. Norman J. Lamm’s Derashot Ledorot: A Commentary for the Ages – Deuteronomy, co-published by OU Press, YU Press, and Maggid Books; edited by Stuart W. Halpern

One Nation, All Alone, Under God*

In the portion of this week’s reading which describes the blessings that will come upon Israel, we read one verse that is outstanding by its magnificence: “And all the nations of the world will see that the name of the Lord is called upon you, and they will be afraid of you” (Deuteronomy 28:10).

What does Moses mean when he says that “the name of the Lord is called upon you?” The Talmud (Berakhot 6a) quotes an answer by one of the greatest of all sages, Rabbi Eliezer the Great. In a pithy comment of but three words, he says: “elu tefillin shebarosh,” the “name of the Lord” that is “called upon us” refers to the tefillin that we wear upon the head.

How remarkable! Is that all it takes to frighten away the anti-Semite bent upon a pogrom? Is the tefillin worn upon the head really sufficient to neutralize the venom of the anti-Jewish enemy, his plentiful arms and allies?

If we turn to the Talmudic passage from which this quotation is taken, and study it in context, we discover what I believe is the real meaning of the statement of Rabbi Eliezer the Great. Immediately after quoting his response, the Talmud asks: We know that in the tefillin of man is written the profession of unity, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” But what is written in the tefillin that, so to speak, God Himself wears? The answer given is that the tefillin of God bear the message: “Who is like unto Your people Israel, one nation upon earth” (I Chronicles 17:21). As the Rabbis explain: The Lord said to Israel, “You made of Me a unity in the world, so I too will reciprocate and make of you a unity in the world.” Our espousal of God’s oneness is reciprocated by God’s affirming our uniqueness in the world.

Now, reading our original passage in context, we see that “the name of the Lord” refers not to man’s but to God’s tefillin shel rosh! Hence, what the Sages really meant to say is this: What will win respect and inspire awe in others is the Jewish ability to stand alone, to be a “unity in the world,” to risk loneliness, to remain secure though friendless, to hold our own if necessary against the entire world. When Jews have sufficient faith in “the name of the Lord” to act on the basis of the confidence that we will remain “one nation upon the earth,” then we will survive and we will flourish.

That is true for us as individuals. If we are embarrassed by our Jewishness and fearful of being outsiders and aliens in a non-Jewish culture, if we yield easily to the majority’s pressures upon us to conform, then we will deserve no respect for us, because we will have dishonored ourselves. Those pseudo-WASPs, those Jews who would have preferred to be re-born non-Jewish, who do not acknowledge their ethnic origins or religious traditions, are in truth not authentically human. The self-deniers have, as it were, ripped the tefillin off the head of God and left themselves both headless and heartless.

What Rabbi Eliezer is telling us is that we must have the courage of our convictions and ignore the pressure of numbers. If you think you are right, if you are convinced that what you are doing is correct and moral, then do not be worried by the fact that most people are against you, that you may look silly, that people will gaze at you as though you came from another world. If you are right, proceed to do what is right in your eyes and do not be worried that you offend majority opinion.

Indeed, Rabbi Eliezer the Great himself beautifully exemplified this principle. He was born to a very wealthy father who, like most wealthy fathers, preferred that his son become a well-to-do businessman. But when Eliezer was twenty-two years old he decided that he would rather become a scholar and so, at a relatively advanced age, he made his way to Yavneh and enrolled in the academy of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai. His father was furious at him for abandoning the family business and going into something as impractical as Talmudic scholarship. He made up his mind, after some time, that he would himself travel to Yavneh and there publicly disinherit his son. When he came to Yavneh, the great teacher Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai noticed him and called out to Eliezer, saying: “Amod uderosh,” “rise up and deliver the lecture.” Eliezer was truly frightened, because he regarded himself as only a beginner disqualified and unprepared for such a task. But the teacher insisted, and Eliezer delivered a brilliant and scintillating Talmudic lecture. So impressive were his words that the audience gasped and the teacher kissed the student upon the forehead. When Eliezer’s father Hyrkanos saw this, he arose and declared that although he had come to disinherit Eliezer, he now wished to announce that he is so overwhelmed that he is going to leave all his money and estate to his son (Avot DeRabbi Natan 6:3).

All through his life, Rabbi Eliezer continued to demonstrate this single-minded stubbornness of following what is right no matter who is in the opposition. At one crucial point of his life, when he was already a world-famous teacher and had distinguished students – counting among them no less a figure than Rabbi Akiva – Rabbi Eliezer clashed with his colleagues on a point of law. They declared a certain oven as ritually unclean and, he pronounced it ritually clean. When the matter was taken to a vote and the opposition won, Rabbi Eliezer refused to go along. The matter led to a confrontation, and as a result of Rabbi Eliezer’s persistence and his refusal to accede to majority rule he was placed in excommunication – and remained in this ban for many years, until his death. He was beloved by his colleagues and students, revered universally, and yet in order for the Halakha to survive they felt it necessary to take this extreme action against him. But he refused to be budged. The principle he found in the divine tefillin shel rosh was something he implemented in his own life.

If this is true for us as individuals, it is certainly true for Israel as a people today. We must be prepared for what is coming upon us. We must recognize that the State of Israel is in for some difficult times in the diplomatic and political world, and possibly even militarily. Israel is more and more facing isolation. It has earned the enmity of the Soviet Union. It is isolated from the Third World who in their recent assembly repeated the ritualistic condemnation of and hatred for Israel. The UN continues treating Israel like a pariah, and the Civil Airlines Organization, which always procrastinates and dawdles when hijackings are carried out against Israeli aircraft, springs into a sudden burst of zealous efficiency when Israel takes action and try to prevent hijacking, without any loss of life or property. Arab oil is now being used, perhaps for the first time, in a deliberate attempt to isolate Israel diplomatically. The energy crisis in the US is exaggerated in order to fall in line with this pressure. Russian-American détente promises no great help for Israel. A weakened presidency leaves Israel in a most difficult position. And, if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that pleased as we are at having the first Jewish Secretary of State in American history, we are also worried lest he will bend over backwards in an attempt to prove that he is not prejudiced in favor of Israel.

So we must be prepared to remain alone, friendless, and isolated.

At times of crisis, it has been our experience for this past quarter century that Israelis usually rally, whereas Diaspora Jews usually cave in. To the dismay of most Israelis, we Jews of the Diaspora panic rather quickly. So, Israel must certainly continue to seek friends where it can, and we American Jews must use our political influence and clout discretely and wisely. But we must not panic. We must remember that our normal condition is “a people that dwells alone.” We must draw strength and not weakness from the knowledge that we are often alone and different in the world. It is during these times of loneliness – when we are “one nation upon the earth,” as the statement in God’s tefillin declares – that we will draw the admiration and respect of others who will appreciate our strength and courage during these periods of solitude, who will recognize “that the name of the Lord is called upon you,” and then we shall prevail.

I do not mean to say that American Jews must offer blind support for every Israeli policy, whether foreign or certainly internal. But if the decision of the Israelis should be to go at it alone, let us not try to move them on the basis of our own inner panic. At such times we must give them strength and not infect them with our weakness.

It is at times of this sort that we must be aware of the principle enunciated in the divine tefillin – that we have been, we are, and will probably always remain “one nation upon the earth.”

This is our burden and glory, as the Name of the Lord is called upon us. We shall remain one nation, all alone, under God.

---

*September 15, 1973.

Excerpted from Rabbi Shmuel Goldin’s Unlocking the Torah Text – Devarim, co-published by OU Press and Gefen Publishers.

Context

With the final three sentences of Parshat Ki Tetzei, the Torah turns its attention to the mitzva of remembering the crimes of the nation of Amalek, the archenemy of the Jewish people.

Zachor, remember that which Amalek did to you, on the way as you left Egypt.

Asher korcha ba’derech, how he happened upon you on the way, va’yezaneiv becha kol hanecheshalim acharecha, and he struck those who were hindmost among you, all the weakest at your rear, v’ata ayeif v’yageia v’lo yarei Elokim, and you were faint and weary, and [he] feared not God.

And it will be when the Lord your God gives you rest from all your enemies round about, in the land the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess it, timcheh et zecher Amalek mi’tachat hashamayim, you shall erase the memory of Amalek from under the heaven – lo tishkach, you shall not forget!

The rabbis eventually ordain a special reading of this passage each year on the Shabbat before the festival of Purim, a Shabbat that consequently becomes known as Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of remembrance. This reading is ordained in order to ensure the yearly fulfillment of the positive biblical mitzva conveyed by the passage itself: the mitzva to remember the crimes of Amalek. The Shabbat before Purim is chosen for the fulfillment of this mitzva because Haman, the villain of the Purim story, was a descendent of Agag, the last king of Amalek.

Questions

No other nation is singled out by the Torah for enduring enmity as is the nation of Amalek.

Why must an eternal battle be waged against this nation? What was the exact nature of its crimes? The Egyptians enslaved and tormented the Israelites for centuries; the Canaanites and Emorites attacked the nation during its wilderness travels; the Moabites and Midianites conspired to spiritually destroy them; the Edomites refused to allow them to pass through their land and denied them water to drink. Yet, while these nations are chastised – and in some cases ostracized – by the Torah, none of them earn the enduring enmity that is reserved for Amalek. What aspects of Amalek’s crimes warrant this treatment?

Furthermore, whatever Amalek’s crimes may be, how can the Torah mandate perpetual hostility towards this nation? Does the Torah accept the concept of collective guilt? Are descendents to be blamed for crimes committed by their forefathers centuries earlier? What are the practical ramifications of the mandate to erase the memory of Amalek across the ages?

Finally, the mitzva of remembering the crimes of Amalek, as outlined in the text, seems to be inherently contradictory. The Torah enjoins us to remember, and yet, the ultimate goal of remembering is to reach the point when we will “erase the memory of Amalek from under the heaven.” It seems as if the Torah is commanding us to remember, in order to forget? The Torah then deepens the mystery by closing the passage with the admonition: “You shall not forget!” On a practical level, how are we meant to understand this mitzva?

Approaches

-A-

The Torah’s terse description of Amalek’s original attack upon the Israelites conveys volumes concerning the nature of the evil that this nation represents.

1. Asher korcha ba’derech, “how he happened upon you on the way…”

To underscore the unique nature of Amalek’s attack, the Torah utilizes an unusual verb, korcha, that is not conjugated in this form anywhere else in the Torah.

According to the pshat, the straightforward meaning of the text, the  verb korcha is derived from the word mikreh (happenstance). The central feature of Amalek’s sin, the Torah informs us, was the casual nature of their attack upon the Israelites. The Israelites did not threaten Amalek in any way; they were not passing through their land; these nations were not engaged in physical or philosophical conflict. They simply “happened” to meet each other on the way. Amalek’s attack was entirely unprovoked, motivated by the “pure joy of massacre.”

The connection between Amalek and Haman, the villain of the Purim story, now becomes clearer as well. Haman is not simply the biological descendent of the nation of Amalek, but the philosophical descendent of that nation, as well. Faced with one individual’s stubborn unwillingness to bow down before him, a “normal villain” would be satisfied with vengeance wrought upon the perpetrator alone. It takes an Amalekite, like Haman, to use the opportunity to spitefully attack not only that individual but his entire people. Unreasonable, reasonless hatred is the mark of Amalek – a mark clearly reflected in Haman’s reactions.

A Midrashic interpretation, quoted by Rashi, adds another layer of significance to the verb describing Amalek’s crimes. The Midrashic scholars discern the term kar (cold) embedded in the verb korcha. When you left Egypt, God informs the Israelites, you were “boiling hot” to the touch. No nation, upon hearing of the miracles wrought on your behalf during the Exodus, would dare attack you…until Amalek attacked. And then, just as an individual who enters a hot tub cools the water for those who follow, Amalek’s brazen attack upon you “cooled” your image and rendered you vulnerable to attack from other sources, as well.

2. Va’yezaneiv becha kol hanecheshalim acharecha…, “and he struck those who were hindmost among you, all the weakest at your rear…”

Once again, the Torah underscores the extraordinary nature of Amalek’s crimes through the unique conjugation of a verb, va’yezaneiv, found in this form nowhere else in the Torah text.

Derived from the noun zanav (tail), the verb va’yezaneiv underscores the despicable, cowardly nature of Amalek’s attack. Amalek fails to attack the Israelites head-on, but deliberately targets the hindmost section of the Israelite column: the sector containing, as the Torah testifies, kol hanecheshalim acharecha, “all the weakest at your rear.” The weakness of others does not move the nation of Amalek to compassion and sympathy, as it would any human being imbued with the spirit of God. Instead, discerned weakness and vulnerability only awakens the bloodlust and scorn embedded in Amalek’s heart.

3. V’ata ayeif v’yageia v’lo yarei Elokim, “and you were faint and weary, and [he] feared not God.”

We have translated the final notes on Amalek’s attack according to the interpretation of the vast majority of scholars from Midrashic times onward.  These closing comments, the authorities maintain, can only be understood if we divide the text into two sections, each referring to a different subject. The phrase “and you were faint and weary” refers to the Israelites, while the phrase “and [he] feared not God” refers to Amalek.

In summary, the Torah thus declares, Amalek attacked you at the point when you were, as a whole, weakened from the journey. This brazen assault and its despicable characteristics showed a total lack of any God awareness on Amalek’s part.

Some scholars, however, suggest a different, bold approach to these closing notes – an approach that is also based on a Midrashic source. Noting that the text literally reads, “and you were faint and weary, and feared not God,” these commentaries insist that the entire textual description, including the statement “and feared not God,” applies to the Israelites. The Torah informs us of the true source of the nation’s vulnerability to Amalek’s attack. Not only were the people physically weary but, at this moment, they were also “bereft of mitzvot.” A related tradition, found in many sources, connects Amalek’s attack to the event recorded immediately prior in the book of Shmot. There, the Torah describes that, at a location known as Refidim, the Israelites complain to Moshe over a lack of water. These protests, according to Moshe, ultimately descend into an overall test of God, as the nation asks, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” The spiritual weakness demonstrated by the people during this event ultimately leaves them open to the assault by Amalek that immediately follows.

-B-

A clear picture thus emerges from the Torah’s brief description of the crimes for which the nation of Amalek is singled out. This is a people filled with spite and hatred – a nation that attacks without warning or cause, that preys upon the physically and spiritually weak, that revels in violence, and that represents the antithesis of all the Torah stands for. Good cannot triumph while Amalek exists.

-C-

While the Torah makes a cogent case for opposition to Amalek, however, the permanent character of this mandated hostility gives us pause. What are the practical ramifications of the commandment to erase the memory of Amalek in our day? Do the descendents of an ancient people bear continuing responsibility for crimes committed by their ancestors centuries ago?

A broader analysis of these issues can be found in our earlier study concerning the approach of Jewish law to war (see Bamidbar: Matot-Masei 2). For the purposes of this study, however, we will summarize some of the salient points that apply specifically to the laws surrounding Amalek.

1. The questions we raise are not new. An early Midrashic source reflects the ambivalence felt by the rabbis as they consider the Torah’s approach towards Amalek. The Talmud suggests that Shaul, the first king of Israel, engages God in poignant debate after receiving the divine command to utterly destroy the nation of Amalek and all of its wealth.

When Shaul raises concerns over the morality of killing countless souls – men, women, children and animals – God refuses to address the issues directly and commands the king “not to be overly righteous. Through this Midrashic medium, the rabbis perhaps give voice to their own concerns and conclude that, while the answers to the issues raised will forever remain elusive, God’s will must be obeyed.

2. Some authorities, over time, increasingly perceive Amalek as a conceptual rather than as a physical entity. The evil represented by this ancient nation, these authorities maintain, continues to exist and must be eradicated if good is to triumph. An argument might be made that this transition to the conceptual is reinforced by the text itself when it speaks of the obligation to eradicate the “memory of Amalek,” without reiterating the requirement to physically destroy the nation.

3. Most scholars, in contrast, continue to interpret the Torah’s commandment concerning Amalek in concrete terms. The physical obligation to destroy the Amalekite people, these authorities maintain, continues over time.

The practical application of this law, however, runs into a serious roadblock. How does one identify an Amalekite?

Complicating this question is a conclusion reached in the Mishna allowing the acceptance of a convert of Ammonite descent into the Jewish community, in spite of the biblical injunction “An Ammonite or a Moabite may not enter the congregation of the Lord, even their tenth generation… to eternity.”

This allowance is made, the Mishna explains, because of the actions of the ancient Assyrian king Sancheriv (sixth century BCE), who, upon embarking on a campaign of conquest in the ancient Middle East, completely subdues his enemies by exiling them from their homelands and scattering them across the face of his empire. Tragically, Jewish history is indelibly altered when the Kingdom of Israel is conquered and treated in this fashion by Sancheriv. As a result, ten tribes of Israel assimilate into surrounding cultures and disappear from the historical stage.

Like the “Ten Lost Tribes” of Israel, the Mishna claims, other ancient biblical nations, including the Ammonites and the Moabites, were scattered by Sancheriv, resulting in the loss of their independent identities. Even someone claiming to be of Ammonite descent, therefore, is not treated as such and may become a full-fledged member of the Jewish people. The Rambam codifies the Mishna’s conclusion in broad terms: “When Sancheriv, the King of Assyria, rose, he confused all the nations and commingled them with one another and exiled them from their places.… Therefore, a convert who comes in our time, in all places, whether he [claims to] be Egyptian, Ammonite, Cushite or of any other nationality, both men and women, are immediately permitted to join the congregation.”

Centuries later, the concept of commingled nations again becomes part of the halachic discourse when a number of halachists revisit the biblical commandment to blot out the nation of Amalek. Rabbi Yosef Babad mirrors the position of many when he emphatically states in the Minchat Chinuch, his renowned commentary to the Sefer Hachinuch, “And today we are no longer commanded in this [commandment to blot out the remembrance of Amalek] because Sancheriv has already risen and confused the whole world.” Due to Sancheriv’s policies of conquest, these authorities maintain, after the sixth century, the archenemy of the Jewish nation is no longer recognizable.

4. A fascinating “blended” position is offered by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the Rav, based upon a subtle discrepancy in the rulings of the Rambam.

The Rav notes that the Rambam clearly states in his codification of the law that the obligation to destroy the seven Canaanite nations no longer applies because “their memory has long since perished.” Strikingly, however, the Rambam makes no such allowance concerning the obligation to destroy the nation of Amalek.

Why, asks the Rav, does the Rambam assume that Amalek survives while the memory of other ancient nations “perishes”?

To explain this legal disparity, the Rav suggests that two distinct commandments concerning Amalek emerge from the Torah text reflecting two different categories of Amalek.

The verse “You shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek” mandates the destruction of each individual genealogical descendent of Amalek. This commandment loses its force when Sancheriv’s method of conquest robs the ancient nations of their independent identities. The verse “the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” establishes the obligation to obliterate any nation across the face of history that seeks to destroy the Jewish people. This second commandment, which defines Amalek in broad conceptual rather than biological terms, remains unaffected by Sancheriv’s actions. “There still exists,” the Rav maintains, “a category of Amalek [as a people] even now after the peoples
have been intermingled [and there are no longer individual Amalekites].”

The Rav explains that within the context of this commandment, Hitler and the Nazis were the Amalekites of the 1930s and ’40s, while “the mobs of Nasser and the mufti” were the Amalekites of the 1950s and ’60s. We can safely assume that the Rav would similarly identify the members of Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and others as the Amalekites in our day.

The Rav thus agrees that the concept of obligatory warfare based on genetic national identity becomes moot after Sancheriv’s conquests. He maintains, however, that a second type of national identity emerges from the Torah’s commandments concerning Amalek – an identity determined by behavior rather than bloodline. This national identity remains intact to this day, obligating the Jewish people in each generation to ongoing struggle against the Amalekites of their day.

-D-

Finally, we turn our attention to the character of the mitzva concerning Amalek. As noted earlier, a fundamental inconsistency seems to emerge from the text.

The Torah clearly commands us to “remember that which Amalek did to you…” The text then explains, however, that the goal of this remembrance is to reach the point when we will successfully “erase the memory of Amalek from under the heaven.” The Torah seems to be commanding us to remember, in order to forget. Deepening the mystery, the text then closes with the admonition “You shall not forget!” On a practical level, how are we to understand this mitzva?

The key to understanding the mitzva of zachor lies in recognizing that the Torah clearly distinguishes between two distinct phenomena: “forgetting” and “erasing.”

When something is forgotten, that condition still exists. We have simply sublimated our awareness of the issues involved. In contrast, when something is erased, that condition is obliterated. We have successfully confronted the issues involved and dealt with them.

Once this distinction is noted, the Torah’s approach to Amalek becomes abundantly clear and profoundly relevant: “Zachor, remember, that which Amalek did to you…” Keep this memory alive, for if you “forget,” the challenges and horrors of Amalek will resurface over and over again.

Timcheh et zecher Amalek mi’tachat hashamayim, “you shall erase the memory of Amalek from under the heaven…” Remember, until you have convinced the world to erase, to eradicate, Amalek in all of its forms from its midst. Remind the world of the lesson that you have learned through bitter experience – that for good to triumph, evil must be destroyed. Speak out and oppose evil, wherever it may exist.

Lo tishkach, “you shall not forget!” Do not take the easy way out. Do not succumb to temptation. Do not forget until you have succeeded in the eradication of Amalek. And if the world fails to listen, continue to remember and remind them, until the end of days.

-E-

How prescient the commandment to remember the crimes of Amalek seems today as we consider our world, seventy years after the Holocaust.

The rising tide of anti-Semitism throughout Europe, even in countries almost bereft of Jews; anti-Zionism and the devastating double standard applied against Israel by the world community; countless atrocities committed against ethnic, racial and religious minorities in countries across the globe – all these and other phenomena give lie to the public proclamations, resolutions and commitments for a better world that followed the close of World War II.

The world grows tired of hearing about the horrors of the Shoah. In the presence of a dwindling community of survivors, there are already those who loudly deny that the Holocaust ever occurred. Such a world is doomed to see horrors recur. We are, therefore, obligated to change the world by insisting that its inhabitants “remember.” And when, with God’s help, we finally do succeed in fully “erasing the memory of Amalek from beneath the heavens,” there will no longer be a need to “remember.”

Points to Ponder

The discerning reader might have noticed that we “dodged” a particularly difficult question in our study.

We noted that, according to many authorities, the commandment to destroy “genetic Amalekites” cannot be fulfilled today. We failed to answer, however, how God could issue such a commandment. Is the Torah preaching the mantra of collective guilt? Are descendents to be blamed for crimes committed by forefathers centuries earlier? How do we relate to the fact that, according to most authorities, if we could definitively identify a genetic Amalekite today, we would be obligated to summarily execute him or her?

We have stated many times before that questions like these are based on the erroneous assumption that Torah morality must always correlate to the temporal mores of our day. We may never fully comprehend the philosophical underpinnings of the commandment to eradicate the nation of Amalek. The rabbis clearly made this point in the Midrash positing Shaul’s struggle with God’s decree (see study).

Nonetheless, a glimmer of understanding of these difficult issues might emerge from our own unfortunate experience.

As the State of Israel continues its arduous search for peace with its neighbors, one fact, ignored by the world, becomes clearer each day. As long as the Palestinians and so much of the Arab world continue to educate their children towards violence, martyrdom and hatred of Jews, no peace will ever take root. In classrooms and mosques, in textbooks and over the airwaves, young Palestinians are bombarded with images portraying Jews as subhuman enemies, worthy only of destruction.

Can a child from such a culture be “blamed” when he reaches adulthood and acts in consonance with these images? Is a suicide bomber, raised since childhood in a seething cauldron of hatred, fully responsible for his actions? Was the ordinary German, pummeled by Nazi propaganda, guilty when he turned a blind eye towards genocide?

Certainly, in the heat of battle, such delicate debates concerning “personal fault” have no place. The evil must be confronted and eliminated without hesitation.

In the quiet moments that follow, however, blame must be assessed, certainly upon the perpetrators, but also upon the guilty society, as well. A society that educates its young towards hatred, violence and murder must share responsibility, as a whole, for their crimes. In Amalek, the Torah confronts such a society and the resulting mandate is abundantly clear.