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Remember Who Needs War: Commentary on Shabbat Zakhor 5785
By Rabbi Jonah Rank, Rosh Yeshivah of Hebrew Seminary
You are lucky that God still needs people to forgive.
– Barbara Howard in Abbott Elementary, season 2, episode 13, “Fundraiser”
Moral outrage can produce a healthy kind of anger that helps us recognize what is wrong in our world; this kind of upset might even motivate us to find productive resolutions for the tensions we face. On the other hand, we have a responsibility to ease our tempers; we cannot let our emotional outbursts hurt others.
The Hebrew Bible fossilizes the many feelings experienced by not only a few specific ancestors but the collective spirit of our nascent nation. For a people so closely attuned to the word of their God, it would only make sense that our spiritual forebears felt that the very cosmos was protected by the cohesion of this ancient people; the people Israel deserved to defend their holy ways.
Although I believe that the Torah comes from a Divine source, I have long believed that the exact script of our Torah has changed in the mouths and bodies of human storytellers who breathed new life into old teachings trying to penetrate the hearts of new audiences. Because the Book of Joshua picks up nearly immediately after the Book of Deuteronomy, I believe that the human hands that wrote much of Joshua also wrote much of Deuteronomy. Further, because the Book of Joshua recalls so many thorough conquests of cities and neighboring nations in and around the Land of Canaan—far more than I can imagine the small Israelite population capable of achieving—I imagine that the stories in Joshua grew in Exile.
I envision Israelites cast out of their beloved homeland—living perhaps in Babylonia—sitting beneath a dark starry sky in a cool desert in the 7th century or 6th century B.C.E. A campfire warms their cool hands as they listen to and watch masters of tradition singing, dancing, and declaiming the narratives that scribes would write down only centuries later. These Babylonian Israelites have lost hope of ever returning to the holy land because this was a Torah-loving people, skilled in agriculture, math, ritual, arts, crafts, architecture, and wisdom—but made of very little muscle. A despondent nation needed to know not only did they once live in Canaan, but they once had the brawn necessary to conquer the country—so maybe they could again one day. Over many years over many nights (over many overwhelming feelings), exiled master orators of the Israelite nation told, retold, reworked, refined, and recast the tales that today fill the Book of Joshua. The best measure of the truth behind the stories of Joshua cannot be some historical value; the narratives elude historical evidence. The truth that undergirds Joshua lies within the book’s capacity to inspire faith in God, confidence in the nation, and even some religious zeal. Joshua relays to its reader not a truth of fact, but a truth of ethos.
The same sort of psychological truth colors the Book of Deuteronomy—an excerpt of which Jews around the world will read this Shabbat, Shabbat Zakhor, when Jews will read a passage that asks us to “remember” (zakhor, זָכ֕וֹר) our mistreatment by the Amalekite nation. Three special verses—Deuteronomy 25:17–19—will attempt to arouse within us some nationalistic fervor as we recall the how the Amalekites treated our ancestors back in Exodus 17:8–16. These verses today no longer point to a living nation to which we can direct our attention (since there are no more people who identify as Amalekites). Nonetheless, these words remind us that Jews have often been—and might forever be—greeted with hostility by certain neighbors.
On this last Shabbat before the Purim festival when Jews will read about the evils of Haman (an Amalekite, according to Esther 3:1, referencing I Samuel 15:8)—Jews will wrestle with God’s enigmatic commandment, shared by Moses to the Israelites, in Deuteronomy 25:19:
תִּמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק מִתַּ֖חַת הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם לֹ֖א תִּשְׁכָּֽח׃
Erase the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the Heavens; you shall not forget!
It is hard to read this verse as asking the Israelites to commit anything other than genocide against the people Amalek. It is for this reason that—as the story goes—many centuries later, the prophet Samuel invoked God and enjoined upon the Israelite King Saul to slaughter “every man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey” among the Amalekites (I Samuel 15:1–3). Was this truly the word of the same God who, in Deuteronomy 10:19, commanded the Israelites to love the foreigner? After all, we had known what it was like to endure hardships as foreigners when our ancestors lived in Egypt.
Just as I struggle to believe that the whole of the Hebrew Bible could come from one author alone, I do not believe that Deuteronomy was written by one author alone. One Deuteronomist embraced the stranger, and another Deuteronomist inspired a royal scribe to compose the tale of Samuel commanding Saul to expunge Amalek. One orator preached empathy, and another orator preached power. This is why Samuel emphasized to Saul, “וְלֹ֥א תַחְמֹ֖ל עָלָ֑יו” (ve lo tachmol alav, “Have no compassion for that [people Amalek]”) (I Samuel 15:3). But Saul—and the nation he led in war—nonetheless demonstrated just a small amount of compassion. Saul and the people with him spared the Amalekite king, the best of the sheep, the cattle, the second-rate animals, and the lambs (I Samuel 15:7–9). Saul did not hear God’s word directly. He wondered whether God really would have wanted such utter destruction (even if Saul came pretty close).
As Jews, we allow the words of our Bible to speak first, but we sanctify these ancient writings by studying them together with the teachings of our sages. By dialoging with the words of the Bible, we approach some final word on the matter—if such a thing is ever possible. Considering the plight of Amalek, the medieval collection Pesiketa Rabbati imagines God conveying to the Israelites that they personally do not have to destroy Amalek:
.עשו את שלכם תמחה את זכר עמלק (דברים שם י”ט) ואני אעשה את שלי כי מחה אמחה את זכר עמלק (שמות י”ז י”ד)
You do your [part, as I said,] “Erase the memory of Amalek” (Deuteronomy 25:19); I will do My [part, as I said,] “For I shall surely erase the memory of Amalek” (Exodus 17:14). (Chapter 13, Friedmann edition, p. 54a.)
Still, the idea that an entire people should be wiped away—whether by the Israelites or by God—does not match with the lovingkindness preached elsewhere in our tradition. In fact, yet another sacred story imagines that God simply got this wrong—and that Saul was the one who convinced God that this fury had gone too far. The Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 22b records:
בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁאָמַר לוֹ הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לְשָׁאוּל: ״לֵךְ וְהִכִּיתָ אֶת עֲמָלֵק״, אָמַר: וּמָה נֶפֶשׁ אַחַת אָמְרָה תּוֹרָה הָבֵא עֶגְלָה עֲרוּפָה — כׇּל הַנְּפָשׁוֹת הַלָּלוּ, עַל אַחַת כַּמָּה וְכַמָּה. וְאִם אָדָם חָטָא, בְּהֵמָה מֶה חָטְאָה? וְאִם גְּדוֹלִים חָטְאוּ, קְטַנִּים מֶה חָטְאוּ? יָצְאָה בַּת קוֹל וְאָמְרָה לוֹ: ״אַל תְּהִי צַדִּיק הַרְבֵּה״. וּבְשָׁעָה שֶׁאָמַר לוֹ שָׁאוּל לְדוֹאֵג: ״סוֹב אַתָּה וּפְגַע בַּכֹּהֲנִים״, יָצְאָה בַּת קוֹל וְאָמְרָה לוֹ: ״אַל תִּרְשַׁע הַרְבֵּה.״
When the Holy Blessed One [through Samuel] said to Saul, “Go and strike Amalek” (I Samuel 15:3)—he responded, “But didn’t the Torah teach regarding the loss of a single human life to bring forth [in mourning and collective guilt] a calf with a [ritually] broken neck? For all of these souls, how much all the more so [should we mourn]!? And, sure, the people have sinned, but have the animals sinned? And, sure, adults have sinned, but have the minors sinned?” A heavenly voice emerged and said to him, “Don’t become too righteous!” [Later,] when Saul said to [his inferior] Do’eg, “You! Turn and injure the priests!” (I Samuel 22:18)—a heavenly voice emerged and said to him, “Don’t be so evil!”
Saul, in the rabbinic imagination, had something of a moral consciousness, but some heavenly body extracted it from him. Removing that ounce of ethical discernment apparently turned him into a warrior without scruples: a lover of violence, without reason. I am compelled by the God of Exodus—cited by Pesiketa Rabbati—who committed to take military matters into God’s own metaphorical hands.
There may be times when war itself must stop unreasonable oppressors. But even when the God of Joshua should feel enticing, we never wipe away entire nations. That kind of bloodthirst would dismantle the moral fiber that holds us up a sacred and ethical people. Our Torah was given not to angels, but to people who have to live in a real world where humans make imperfect—and often destructive—decisions. The key to survival as a species cannot be pure retaliation and the devastation of our neighbors. When we disagree and when others malign us, we still possess the Divine capacity to pursue reconciliation through dialogue and other peaceful and productive means. In most cases, civility breeds civility. That lesson—along with the times when we have forgotten that simple rule—is what we now must remember.
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