* Translated by Janine Muller Sherr
This word is practically screaming out at us this year. This Shabbat, we will be reading the Torah portion that contains the verse: “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt.”
Amalek staged an unprovoked attack against Bnei Yisrael in the desert when they were weak and unprepared. The word Amalek has come to represent absolute evil, unrestrained violence, and those who are determined to terrorize, demolish, uproot and destroy the good and the just.
In parashat Ki Teitze the Torah urges us to come to grips with reality; that we cannot ignore the fact that there is good and evil in the world. Not everything is a “narrative,” not everything is acceptable, and not everyone is a potential peace partner. We are commanded to remember that evil exists and that it has no place on the face of the earth. “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.”
This week we commemorated 9/11. Responding to the horrors of that day, the American thinker, Lee Harris, wrote that with Al-Qaeda, Sinwar, and Hitler, there can never be a possibility of co-existence: “We in the West have forgotten the concept of an enemy. (We believe) that for every problem there is a solution, for every conflict a resolution. The way to achieve it is to sit down, negotiate, and do on balance what is best for all. In such a world there are no enemies, merely conflicts of interest. An “enemy” is simply “a friend we haven’t done enough for yet.” In the real world, however, not everyone is a liberal democrat. It is difficult for the West to conceive of a true enemy, as Harris puts it, “someone who is willing to die in order to kill you.”
This explanation hits the mark. In a morally confused world, with hypocrisy on college campuses and at the UN, antisemitic and terror attacks that are barely condemned, and the distortion of the just moral stance of Israel, our parasha delivers the following message: If the good will not know how to recognize evil, the good will cease to exist.
And if we are to be completely honest with ourselves, it’s not only the world that is confused—we are too. Sinwar checks the “like” icon next to every scene in which he views us pouring our energies into self-hatred and internal division, instead of using our strength to fight against him. We must not find ourselves embroiled in so much division and hatred that we begin to lose our main focus: Remember what Amalek did to you at Nova, in Sderot, in Ofakim, in Be’eri and in Nahal Oz.
