Taste of Torah
A Bima-Ready D'var Torah

8 Elul 5784 / September 11, 2024

Parashat Ki Teitzei
Who is Amalek?
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19
Haftarah Portion: Isaiah 54:1-10

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Shalom!

Our parashah this week contains many laws, more than appear in any other single Torah portion. These include laws about the treatment of war captives, returning lost objects, forbidden mixtures, the erection of a rooftop fence, collateral, and workers’ wages. The portion ends, however, with a most dramatic warning, in the form of a law about recalling a certain incident from the past:

Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when Adonai your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that Adonai your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget! (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)

Moses is reminding the people what originally happens in the Book of Exodus, when, after their liberation from slavery in Egypt, the people are set upon by a hostile tribe: “Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim” (Exodus 17:8). Because the genocidal villain of the Book of Esther, Haman, is from the Amalekite tribe, we read these verses from our portion on the Shabbat before the holiday of Purim, known as Shabbat Zachor (“the Sabbath of Remembrance”). And one of the ways that we obey this law found here in Ki Teitzei is by using groggers or other noise-making devices to drown out the name “Haman” whenever it is read in the Megillah.

But what is generally seen as lighthearted diversion on Purim is definitely not enough for some commentators, who take this injunction to “blot out the memory of Amalek” quite seriously and 
literally. As Rabbi Shai Held summarizes: “In the Jewish imagination Amalek comes to be seen as ‘the archetype of murderous evil,’ ‘the personification of eternal inhumanity and lack of scruples.’ …

For Rabbinic tradition Amalek represents a kind of cosmic evil. A Talmudic sage taught that ‘as long the descendants of Amalek are in the world, neither the Name [of God] nor the throne [of God] is whole. When the descendants of Amalek have disappeared, the Name is whole and the throne is whole’ (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tetsé 11).”[i]

Rabbi Held describes this historic perspective, then adds: “There is something profoundly disturbing about all this. It is one thing to abhor Amalek’s inhumanity; it is quite another to condemn all Amalekites, past and present, as eternal enemies of God.”[ii]

Held’s view, too, is rooted in Jewish tradition. In fact, the violent interpretation of these verses is in direct contradiction to another law from this very same parashah, which also tells us: “Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents: they shall be put to death only for their own crime” (Deuteronomy 24:16). In addition, our parashah counsels compassion towards Egyptians, who, according to Torah tradition, enslaved and oppressed our people for generations: “You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in their land” (Deuteronomy 23:8). 

The Torah text, it seems, is at the very least inconsistent on the question of retribution. What’s more, there are several places in the Talmud that explicitly refute the idea that Amalekites remain pariahs to Israelite society for all time. Referencing stories that Haman’s family studied Torah in the land of Israel, scholar Avi Sagi explains: “[D]escendants of Amalek were not only accepted as converts, but also belonged to the cultural elite of the Jewish people and were counted among its most distinguished teachers.”[iii] In other words, it seems that Amalekites were in actuality treated with the compassion and respect that this Torah portion also champions.

This paradox in our tradition attests to the understandable discomfort that exists around an imperative to abhor a people for all time. For one, there may be a temptation to compare the ancient Amalekites to contemporary enemies, even though many sources – ancient and modern – are quick to point out that Amalek no longer exists. Scholar Peter Beinart writes: “The wisdom of rabbinic tradition was to declare that we no longer know who Amalek is because that restrains the genocidal plain meaning of the Biblical text … [Claiming to know who Amalek is today] is undoing the moral scaffolding created by Jewish tradition and asserting a Biblical literalism that is alien to the Judaism of the last two thousand years.”[iv]

In his analysis of this question of Amalek, Rabbi Shai Held concludes: “In labeling someone an Amalekite, and thus raising them to the level of metaphysical evil, we run the risk of giving ourselves license to behave in savage ways in attempting to root out savagery. In the process we become the very thing we set out to combat.”[v]

This Shabbat, as we read the laws of remembering Amalek, let us always keep in mind the crucial distinction between inhumane behavior and human beings themselves. While this Torah portion has been used to justify violence, it also advocates mercy; drawing on that ancient mercy and our own contemporary compassion, may we number among those who pursue peace for all people.

Shabbat shalom!
​Rabbi Salem Pearce

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[i] Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah Vol. 2 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), p. 257.
[ii] Ibid., p. 257-8.
[iii] Avi Sagi, “The Punishment of Amalek in the Jewish Tradition: Coping with the Moral Problem,” Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994), p. 338.
[iv] Noah Lanard, “The Dangerous History Behind Netanyahu’s Amalek Rhetoric,” in Mother Jones, November 3, 2023, accessed at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netanyahu-amalek-israel-palestine-gaza-saul-samuel-old-testament/. 
[v ]Held, p. 259.

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