- Clergy
- Shabbat
I read a book forty-five years ago that changed my life. The Holocaust and Halacha, by Irving Rosenbaum, offered me a counterintuitive insight I will never forget. Rosenbaum’s premise was that religiously observant Jews fared better emotionally in the concentration camps than highly acculturated Jews because they were not naïve about the Bible and Jewish history, and therefore not shocked by the Nazis. Even as young children, they learned what our enemies have done to us for more than three millennia. They knew about Purim and Haman’s plot. They also knew that Haman failed and the part of the Megillah that is skipped in reform synagogues wherein the Jews of the day countered Haman’s threat by slaughtering thousands of Jew haters, after first executing Haman and his crew on the gallows. They knew Pharaoh ordered the murder every male Jewish newborn, marking the first attempted genocide of our people. This dynamic of Jew hatred was reinforced for our more traditional brothers and sisters every Purim and Pesach. Orthodox Jews who recite Birkat HaMazon, our prayer after finishing a meal, know that on days other than Shabbat that prayer begins with a Psalm recounting how the ancient Babylonians threw Jewish babies off of cliffs. Just as important, Orthodox Jews during the Holocaust had a prescribed set of behaviors and holy days to give them structure and faith amidst the chaos of the camps, not unlike freed Hamas hostage Eli Sharabi who said "Shema Yisrael kept me going." Jews who lacked historical memory, faith, and structure, according to Rosenbaum, suffered far greater shock and depression in the face of Nazi cruelty. They had no mitzvot to scaffold their lives in the hell they endured; no frame of reference for what was happening. They were good Germans, fought in WWI, served as judges, and politicians, and contributed mightily to their nation. How could this happen to them? At some level, the answer is terribly complicated. On another, it is quite simple. They didn’t know because they and many before them, had failed to remember.
This Shabbat has a special name, Shabbat Zachor; a Shabbat and Torah reading that commands us “Zachor Et Amalek--Remember Amalek,” who was among the cruelest of enemies to bring death and suffering to our Biblical ancestors. This is kind of weird, because usually when a villain is mentioned in classical rabbinic literature, his name is followed by an acronym for the words “May his name be blotted out.” In the minds of the ancient rabbis, the worst thing one could wish upon another, the curse of curses, was that he or she be forgotten. And yet, within that very curse the name of the villain is nevertheless perpetuated. We can wish that evil, sadness and ugliness be forgotten, but saying “don’t think about it” is to think about it; an attempt at squaring a circle, a fruitless, impossible denial of the constant that is memory itself. Today we are commanded to remember the evils we have endured. Remember Pharaoh, remember Haman, remember the Assyrians, remember the Romans, the pogroms, the wars we did not start but had to win, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran… Remember what they have done to us. We have no choice but to remember pain… the same way we have no choice when asked not to think about a pink elephant, but far worse. Such is the grip of memory. It is a necessary force unlike any other in our lives. When we have no sense of our past, we can be so easily shocked by the present.
Luckily, when a righteous person dies, a different acronym is used whenever their name is mentioned; a beautiful wish of sorts: “May their memory be for a blessing.” Seemingly different, these two acronyms “May his name be blotted out” and “May his memory be a blessing” speak the same truth—to be remembered, is to live beyond the grave in ways sublime and terrible. Of course, sooner or later we are all “blotted out.” Kafka said “The meaning of life is that it ends,” and that is no less true of memory. When it is gone, we are gone. We don’t like to think about it, but eventually, in a generation or two or three or four or five, there will not be a single person left on earth who remembers us. When that day comes, we are truly dead. That is equally true for us as a Jewish people. Forgetting that we have very real and determined enemies is the road to extinction.
Zachor/Remember! For how else can we hold onto the past that defines us, the offenses that wound us, or the laughter and the love that warm us? How else can we hold onto anything in a world of lies, hatred, hostages, and death? What else can we do when we hear Jews refusing to see terrorists and nations who wish us gone and are prepared to die for that wish? Nothing, other than embrace this blessing, this curse, this imperfect gift, this burden, this holy vessel called memory—the power that protects us from naiveté, and yet, hurts so much.
King Saul had a chance to wipe out Amalek, but in pity he spared Agag, the king. Centuries later, Haman the Agagite, the descendant of Agag, plotted the mass extermination of Jews. Not every evil is Amalek, but the ultimate evil must be destroyed. The sages put it this way: “Whoever is compassionate to those who deserve cruelty ends up being cruel to those who deserve compassion” (Midrash Tanhuma Metzora). That’s a truth I hope no Jew ever forgets…
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Steve Leder