Shabbat Zakhor 5782 / 12 March 2022

Today is Shabbat Zakhor, the Shabbat of Remembrance, which is the Shabbat before Purim. We are commanded, on Shabbat Zakhor, to remember Amalek and to blot out his name. Why do the rabbis link Amalek with Purim? Because Haman (lift up hand if boos) was a decendent of Amalek, and like Amalek, he was focused on wiping out the Jewish people. After the Exodus from Egypt, the Israelites were worn out. They were wandering through the Wilderness of Sin when they camped at a place called Rephidim, but there was no water. The Israelites, being somewhat traumatized and not having steady access to shelter, food, or housing for many days now, lashed out at Moses, saying: Why’d you bring us out from Egypt anyway? To kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? God told Moses to take his rod to a rock at Massah and Meribah, Challenge and Strife, and when he did, water burst forth. And then: Amalek came up behind the Israelites and attacked them. Joshua led troops to fight against them, and the next day, Moses, Aaron, and their assistant Hur went to watch the fight from a nearby hill. When Moses’ hands were up, Israel was strong, and held out against the Amalikites. But when his arms went down, the Amalikites prevailed. Hur and Aaron put a stone under him, then each took one of Moses’ arms, helping him to keep his hands up, and that is how the Israelites were able to overwhelm Amalek and his people. After this was all over, God said to Moses: Inscribe this in a document as a reminder and read it aloud to Joshua: I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven! (Exodus 17:14).

Every year on Shabbat Zakhor, we read from Deuteronomy 25:17-19: 

Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers at your back. When Hashem your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

It’s difficult, this part of our tradition. The idea that we might blot someone out of history. We are taught to wipe out Amalek in every generation. How are we supposed to work with this?

In the story of Esther, Haman is identified as a descendent of Agag, the king of Amalek, and in the end, the Israelites destroyed both Haman and over 75,000 non-Jewish Persians. By linking Haman to Amalek, there is some permission given for this widespread violence. We are protecting ourselves. We are blotting out Amalek. Today, sometimes people identify Palestinians as contemporary Amaleks, using it to justify violence and ongoing occupation of Palestinian land. It is impossible for me to read this part of Torah without recognizing this.

There is a rabbinic principle that there are no errors in Torah, and nothing extraneous. That, essentially, everything in it is true. When we come across something puzzling or concerning, it is our job to figure out how to make sense out of it. How to square the circle. I don’t always hold by this. I don’t want to ever say that it is okay to slaughter 75,000 people, for example. But I don’t want to throw the text out, either. Or to say that Torah is wrong. Truth can mean many things, and we can find many ways towards getting at the truths present in troubling texts. 

This year, when I was reading through rabbinic texts, looking for something that might point me towards some truth, I found a midrash in the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, on Exodus 17:14—the commandment that God gave to Moses to write down a remembrance in the book and give it to Joshua. The midrash says:

So is it with all generations: the rod with which Israel is smitten, in the end, will be smitten itself. Let all men learn from Amalek, who came to smite Israel, and whom the Kadosh Barukh Hu smote out of this world and the world to come. As it is written “for I will blot out the remembrance of Amalek” (Ex. 17:14). And also, the wicked Pharaoh, who subjugated Israel—the Kadosh Barukh Hu drowned him in the Red Sea, as it is written “And God shook out Pharaoh and his hosts in the Red Sea (Ps. 136:15). And thus, every people and kingdom that arises to harm Israel will be harmed in the same manner. By the ruler one measures others by, so they will be measured.  במדה שאדם מודד בה מודדים לו. 

Another way to say it: As one dishes it out, so it will be dished out to them. In Mishnah and Talmud Sotah, this is used to show how people are both punished and rewarded according to their actions. A sotah – a woman who commits adultery, Samson, and Absalom, are all lifted up as people who were punished in keeping with their transgressions. Miriam, Joseph, and Moses were lifted up as people who were rewarded in keeping with actions they did that benefited others. It all ties into a larger perspective in Torah, that God rewards and God punishes according to our fidelity to God and God’s mitzvot. 

The first time I found this phrase was from an earlier section of the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, where the rabbis are exploring why it was that Moses paused during the Exodus to get Joseph’s bones. According to the midrash:

R. Nathan says: Joseph was buried in the tombs of the kings. To teach us that By the ruler one measures others by, so they will be measured. Miriam waited a short time for Moses … — and God held back for her in the desert the ark, the Shechinah, the Cohanim, and the Levites and all of Israel for seven days with the seven clouds of glory… Joseph merited to bury his father, and there was none among his brothers greater than he — Who was there among us as great as Joseph, who was attended only by Moses! … Moses occupied himself with the bones of Joseph, there being none in Israel greater than Moses … Who was there among us greater than Moses, who was attended by the Shechinah? And, what is more, with the casket of Jacob there went up the servants of Pharaoh and the elders of his household, while with Joseph there went up the ark and the Shechinah and the Cohanim and the Levites and all of Israel and the seven clouds of glory. And, what is more, the casket of Joseph went alongside the ark of “the Life of the Worlds”—the Ten Commandments—and when the passersby asked: What are these two arks? they were told: This is the ark of a dead man and the other is the ark of “the Life of the Worlds.” And when they asked: How is it that the ark of a dead man goes alongside the ark of “the Life of the Worlds”? they were told: He who lies in this ark fulfills what is written in what lies in the other ark. (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael 13:19:3-5).

Joseph is known as haTzadik, the righteous, to the rabbis. A man who moved through his fixation on his self and his own needs to focusing on the needs of others, exemplified by returning to care for his father as he was dying and forgiving his brothers despite his desire for revenge. In the rabbis mind, the thing that makes him righteous is his ability to grow, to hold other people’s needs alongside his own desires.

I have been a practitioner of Mussar, a Jewish ethical practice dating from the 18^th century since 2009. In Mussar, we work to balance the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov. The yetzer hara is the inclination to take care of the self — including our legitimate material and physical needs and the things that give our bodies pleasure. It is called the “evil inclination” because when out of balance, we seek our own good and our own pleasure at the expense of others and the world around us. The yetzer hatov is the inclination to take care of others. It’s called the “good inclination” because it is that within us that acts for the sake of meeting the needs of others around us. It, too, can get out of balance. When it does, we fail to meet our own material, physical, and emotional needs. In Mussar, we use a system of middot, character attributes, that help us to assess ourselves through a practice known as cheshbon hanefesh, or soul-accounting.

The middot in mussar, we come to them to help us through sticky situations. Places where we are having a difficult time identifying other people’s needs. Places where our own needs are loud and distracting and it’s not easy to tell what of our needs are legitimate and what are drawing us out of connection with the people and world around us. The middot are things like patience, calmness, separation, truth, and diligence. When I feel hurt in a relationship, and I get mad, the middot help me to slow down, to identify what is in me that is hurt, and what in my friend might be hurt. What their burden is. I have definitely found, throughout my almost 13 years of practicing Mussar, that the things I judge others for, almost always, that is a place where I am also lacking. I get frustrated with a close friend because I felt they weren’t listening to me. I notice later, that I wasn’t paying attention when another friend was telling me about a difficulty they were having at work. 

The reason this phrase בה מדדה שאדם מודד בה מודדים לו, By the ruler one measures others by, so they will be measured, stood out to me is because of  my Mussar practice. Separate from all the other texts about reward and punishment, what I heard when I read this midrash on taking Joseph’s bones out of Egypt was: by the middah that one judges others by, that’s the middah they will be judged. It’s a really interesting sentence in Hebrew because the noun – middah – and the verb – modded – are from the same root. It’s a compact distillation of one aspect of Mussar practice, and it really shows the point of the middot: to encourage us to cultivate attributes that help us in our relationship with others, and to identify where in ourselves we are struggling. What are the precise places where our yetzer hara is out of balance. What attributes can we cultivate to bring us more and more towards working for the yetzer hatov.

So what’s all this have to do with Amalek and Shabbat Zakhor.

There are two things. 

One is that the commandment to remember what Amalek did and to blot him from our memories — the commandment to remember to forget Amalek — is a punishment that follows from this principle: As one dishes it out, so it will be dished out to them. Amalek is getting his due. This makes me really uncomfortable. I don’t want to look at this part of our tradition, the part that says that some people deserve such severe punishment that they are wiped off this earth. How can we think and talk about accountability for harm done separate from retributive punishment?

The second is that when I spoke earlier about seeking some truth I might find in a text and a practice that fundamentally sits wrong with me—it is precisely that truth that lead me deep enough into rabbinic text to find this phrase here, By the ruler one measures others by, so they will be measured. It

The second is that ultimately, I believe that when this phrase appears, even when it looks like we are talking about reward and punishment, what we are really talking about is Mussar. About balancing our own needs with the needs of the world around us. About what happens when we fail, or refuse, to pursue this balance. We are given exemplars, of those who have given themselves over wholly to the yetzer hara, like Amalek, and those who have given themselves over fully to the yetzer hatov, like Moses. And of many people in between—the sotah, Samson, Absalom, Miriam, and Joseph. 

Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers at your back. 

The most basic read of Shabbat Zakhor teaches us to blot out Amalek’s memory. Another read might show us that we all hold some of Amalek in us—some drive to pursue our own gain at the expense of others. And more expansively, I think, we find that Shabbat Zakhor is here to redirect us back towards getting ourselves right with each other. To ensure that we are never like Amalek, or like Pharaoh before him. To never be the ones pursuing others, driven by very demanding yetzer haras, but to train ourselves to move towards the yetzer hatov. To have our concern for the needs of those around us be the measure by which we are judged in this world and in the next.