On Purim, we are rightly appalled by Haman's attempt to destroy the Jewish people. Yet we seldom notice that we are twice commanded to do the same thing to Haman's people, to Amalek: in Exodus 17, which we read on Purim morning, and in Deuteronomy 25, which we read on Shabbat Zachor.
In the Haftara of Shabbat Zachor, the Prophet Samuel orders King Saul to "attack Amalek … spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses."
In short, we are instructed to commit genocide. This is morally problematic in and of itself; it is doubly problematic after the Holocaust.
During the biblical period, we were attacked by many peoples. Why blot out the memory of Amalek, as opposed to other peoples who have attacked us throughout history?
Some rabbis say that Amalek, by attacking a defenseless bunch of slaves on the road, deviated from the norms of war. It was an unjust war that offered no conceivable gain, and therefore was motivated solely by hatred.
Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Sofer (Hungary, 19th century) emphasized the words "undeterred by fear of God" (Deut. 25:18). If Amalek attacked the Israelites immediately after God redeemed them from Egypt with signs and wonders, it shows that they had no fear of God. That is why Exodus says that God will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation (Exodus 17:16). It is, so to speak, a war between God and Amalek.
DESPITE THE clarity of the biblical commandment, a number of rabbinic sources express clear discomfort with the requirement to blot out the memory of Amalek.
Rabbi Mani says (Yoma 22b) that King Saul argued with God: If the Torah says that if you find an anonymous dead body between two cities you must bring a sacrifice as a form of atonement for that one death, how much the more so all of these souls! And if an Amalekite sinned, did his animal sin? If adults sinned, did children sin?
Rabbi Ya'acov Haim Sofer (Jerusalem, d. 1939) asked why we don't recite a blessing before Parashat Zachor on the Shabbat before Purim.
"Because we do not bless regarding destruction, even the destruction of non-Jews, as we see that God said [to the angels after the Egyptians drowned in the Sea of Reeds]: 'my handiwork are drowning in the sea and you are singing?'"
This type of discomfort led to allegorical interpretations of the commandment to destroy Amalek. The Zohar says Amalek is Samael or Satan, while in Barcelona (ca. 1300) there were commentators who said that Amalek means Yetzer Hara, the evil inclination. In other words, we are commanded to blot out Satan or the Yetzer Hara, not a physical people called Amalek.
Indeed, the commandment to blot out Amalek is omitted entirely by two of the most important codifiers of Jewish law - Rabbi Ya'acov ben Asher in hisTur and Rabbi Yosef Caro in his Shulhan Aruch. Other important rabbis eliminated the obligation by explaining that, in our day, Amalek no longer exists.
Nonetheless, there were many important rabbis, such as Maimonides and Rabbi Pinhas Halevi of Barcelona, who ruled that Amalek still exists, and that we are still commanded to remember their deed and to destroy them. Some rabbis even proceeded to identify Amalek with a specific people.
In 1898, Rabbi Yosef Haim Sonnenfeld refused to go out to greet Kaiser Wilhelm II when he visited Palestine, citing the Gaon of Vilna's view that the Germans are descendants of Amalek. Not surprisingly, many prominent Jews such as Simon Dubnow, Arthur Szyk and Raul Hilberg identified the Nazis with Amalek beginning in the 1930s.
Continued
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