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Tetzaveh

"You shall wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens" Deuteronomy 25:19

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This is the Shabbat before Purim. Haman, the epitome of evil and sworn enemy of the Jews of the Book of Esther, is a descendant of the Amalekite King Agag. This is why we read two short verses from Deuteronomy this Shabbat, commanding us to "Remember Amalek… and to wipe out his memory". Does this mean that Haman was genetically programmed to hate us? The Amalekites were our enemies from the moment we left Egypt and they might have been wiped off the face of the earth if King Saul had done what Samuel commanded him. But Saul saved Agag.

Yet a closer look shows us that in the Book of Exodus (17:16,17) it is God himself who says "I will utterly wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens." But it doesn't happen. The Amalekites come back again and again, in battle after battle. In the two verses we read this Shabbat, the task of wiping out Amalek's memory now belongs to us. This teaches us a lot about understanding the potential of God's power, a painful and necessary question after the Holocaust. Yet, what is this task of wiping out the memory of Amalek, of remembering in order to forget? The great medieval thinker Nachmanides says that we speak in order to remember Amalek's evil. He implies that this process of internalising the reality of evil allows us to confront it, not only in the figure of Haman on Purim, but also, ultimately, in ourselves.

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