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Tetzaveh Zachor – ways to get out of the cycle of violence?

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Shabbat Zachor – named for the second scroll reading which signals the imminent arrival of Purim –gives us the instruction to “Remember what Amalek did to you by the way as you came out of Egypt. How he met you by the way and struck the last strugglers, all those feeble ones at the back, when you were faint and weary, and he did not fear God.  So it shall be, when the eternal your God has given you rest from all your enemies around, in the land with the Eternal your god gives you as an inheritance, to possess it, that you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)

Yet the story in the narrative in Exodus is somewhat different.  “Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said to Joshua, Choose men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand at the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand. So Joshua did as Moses had said, and fought with Amalek, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it happened that when Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. And when he dropped his hand, Amalek prevailed. Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on each side of him, so that his hands were steady until the sun set. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the sword. And God said to Moses “Write this for a memorial in a book, and repeat it in the ears of Joshua, for I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.  And Moses built an altar and called it Adonai Nissi, (God is my banner) and he said “the hand upon the throne of the Eternal. God will have war with Amalek from generation to generation”

So which is it? Did Amalek come and prey upon the weakest individuals at the back of the caravan of people fleeing Egypt?  Or was it an apparently unprovoked attack while they were encamped? Was there a battle between armies, or was it a stealthy marauding and attacking of the most feeble?  Were Moses and Joshua active in some way, strategizing the battle? Or were they barely aware of the attacks at the end of the line of people? And who exactly is at war with Amalek? Is it God or is it the Israelites? And which of them is responsible for blotting out the memory of Amalek –  a persistent requirement down the generations, as persistent as telling the story of the exodus from Egypt,  the covenant accepted at Sinai, the story of Esther, Mordechai and Haman – all of which we are told to retell, to never allow the memory to be forgotten.

We are told that Amalek does not “fear God” –Amalek do not possesses “Yirat Adonai”

When we look closely at this term – fearing God – it appears to be one used particularly in circumstances that involve the choice to behave ethically.  Whenever someone could take advantage of a weaker person and doesn’t, but instead chooses to behave with moral integrity, they are described as having “Yirat Adonai”. So, for example, the Egyptian midwives who defy the order of the Pharaoh and who don’t kill the new-born baby boys are motivated by Yirat Adonai (Ex1:17). When Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and tells them that he will not harm them he says “I fear God” (Gen 42:18). In the “holiness code” is possibly the most clear example – after the warning not to curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block in front of the blind we are told – “v’yareita me’elochecha – but you shall fear God, I am the Eternal”

The fear of God seems to be the awareness of a higher authority, of something beyond the individual and their desires. While religion is not the only generator of ethics, it is certainly a powerful one, and the idea of an eye that sees and an ear that hears – even if others do not – has historically kept many on a better path than they might otherwise have chosen.

The Amalekites seem not to have this corrective in their world view – they see no reason to behave ethically if that should conflict with their own gain or benefit.  They are the paradigm of amorality – and so it seems that God steps in, and the fight to blot out this life without moral guidance is one that takes place in every generation. The reminder to us that for all time we should blot out the memory of Amalek, to remember always to fight the habit of selfishness, of not caring for the weak or the vulnerable. While this greed and disregard for others is externalised into the Amalekites, the reality is that we all carry the tendency within us.  One of my teachers used to say – “it’s all very well being afraid of what God might think, but most of us are more concerned with what other people might think if they knew what we do – if only we cared as much about what God thinks as we do about what other people think, the world would be a better place!”

Yirat Adonai, the fear of God, is sometimes translated as “reverence” or “awe”, but I rather like the idea that one should be a Godfearer.  Joseph Soloveitchik wrote that we live our lives with all kinds of fears – realistic and irrational. Fear of old age, or pain or illness; of death, of loneliness, of poverty or somehow being “found out”. He said fear was something that confuses us and limits us- we never know what to be legitimately fearful of, what is a pointless fear.

“”Fear seems to be a universal malaise…What kind of fear is it that can overtake us, thereby uprooting all other kinds of fears-fears of failure….of rejection … or of disease? Only the fear of the Eternal God! … [During the High Holydays] We pray that this great fear will free us from all the lesser fears which lurk everywhere, upsetting and embittering our lives”

The Adon Olam has a verse based on psalm 118 – “Adonai Li, lo ira” – God is with me, I shall not fear. It is one of my favourite verses. In the psalm the second half of the verse asks “ma ya’aseh li Adam” – what can human beings do to me?  It is the same view of Yirat Adonai as that of Soloveitchik – Because if we have a secure and certain foundation of Yirat Adonai, of fear of God, then all smaller “mortal” fears fall away.

Talmud also sees Yirat Adonai as a necessary part of our relationship with God and our development as human beings, to become the best we can be.  In tractate 31b we read:

“Rabbah bar Rav Huna said, “Any person who has [mastered] Torah learning but lacks Yirat shamayim (reverence for heaven, or God) is like a treasurer who has been given the keys to the inner chambers, but who has not been given the keys to the outer chambers. How can [the treasurer] enter [the inner chamber]?”

In other words, Yirat shamayim is the necessary condition for us to truly understand what Torah is about. Without it, all our learning , all our worldly achievements are pointless. We might know the texts, the legal conclusions drawn from them, but without the element of relationship with God that is played out in our relationship with God’s creation, they remain cold academic prowess – we have missed the point of why we learn Torah.

The autumn festivals of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are called the Yamim Noraim in Hebrew – Noraim having the same root as Yira – fear or awe.  During the amidah we have the “uv’chen” insertions asking God to send Pachad, Eima and Yerucha on Creation –  all words used for fear/ awe or reverence. It was these prayers that Soloveitchik was referencing – once we understand Who to be in awe of, there is no need to tie ourselves up in pointless worry about other people. Yirat Adonai liberates us to perceive what is true and what is simply our own construction of the world. It allows us therefore to reorient ourselves and if necessary to change how we are living our lives, freed from the pressures that might otherwise distort our authenticity and integrity.

So what is the connection to the Book of Esther and the story of Purim?

Besides the fact that we are told that Haman is a descendent of Agag, and therefore descended  from the Amalekites, we see also that he behaves in an extraordinary and deeply amoral way. From the moment he is angered that Mordechai did not bow to him, he appears to overreact dramatically as he thinks only to revenge his injured pride. Indeed, the whole book is predicated on various modes of revenge. – And the motivation to take revenge on others is possibly the furthest away from the humanity we want to be, behaviour that is the polar opposite of Yirat Adonai.

The Book of Esther is famous also for the lack of both name of God and the presence of God – a reminder to us that without any sense of the God of Yirat Adonai we are vulnerable to the forces that surround us, forces that have no guiding morality with which to mitigate or  soften their actions. It is paradigmatically the book of Diaspora – the Jewish experience of being at best at guest and at worst a stranger in someone else’s land; And like the historical experience of Diaspora, one must always be conscious of treading carefully so as not to upset or provoke the host country, never quite knowing when a comfortable existence may suddenly become a precarious one, as the whims of the governing powers shift unpredictably.

But possibly the most painful connection between Megillat Esther and the command to remember and so blot out the Amalekites, is the violence that vibrates through the whole narrative, culminating in the Jewish uprising against those who would destroy them.

Surely there is more going on here than a fictionalising of the fears of a vulnerable diaspora community – however closely these fears follow a terrible historical reality. There is something in the overreaction of Haman to Mordechai – the desire to destroy a whole people because of the actions of one man – that needs closer examination:-

We know that the Amalakites are descended from Esau: bible tells us And Timna was concubine to Eliphaz, Esau’s son; and she bore to Eliphaz Amalek (Gen 36:12). The Talmud fills in details:

Timna was a royal princess. Desiring to become a proselyte, she went to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but they did not accept her. So she went and became a concubine to Eliphaz the son of Esau, saying, “I would rather be a servant to this people than a mistress of the other nation.” From her Amalek descended who afflicted Israel. Why so? Because they should not have rejected her. (Sanhedrin 99b)

So the enmity between Israel and Amalek is rooted in the far past – and twice the Amalekites were treated badly – when Esau was cheated of the birthright by his younger brother Jacob, and when his daughter in law was rejected for conversion.

This may explain why the aggrieved Amalekites attacked the Israelites shortly after the exodus from Egypt. They are avenging the historical wrong.

But then further reading gives us the story of King Saul who fulfilled the commandment to blot out the Amalekites because of what they did after the exodus  –  and only the king, Agag, survived the massacre. (1 Samuel 15)

Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin. Mordechai was also of the tribe of Benjamin. Was Haman taking revenge not only because of hurt pride, but because he was avenging the massacre of his tribe by the tribal ancestors of Mordechai?

There are a number of literary devices that tie the various stories of the Amalekites and the Israelites to the Book of Esther.( For example the same words are used of the bitter cry of the betrayed Esau, and that of Mordechai when he learns of the plot to kill all the Jews . “ vayitz ‘ak tz ‘akah g ‘dola u’marah”  And he cried a great and bitter cry! ) It is almost as if the generational pain has been programmed into the very DNA of the protagonists.

So when we see the terrible violence play out once again in the Book of Esther, when we consider what it means to remember Amalek so as to blot him out, we see that we too are part of the chain that goes back to the terrible sibling rivalry of the Book of Genesis. It is never truly resolved – Joseph and his brothers find a way through to build a civil relationship but that is scarcely a true and full resolution.

The Book of Esther is a salutary reminder, not only that we are vulnerable to the continued hatred of those who choose not to “fear God”, but we are vulnerable too to playing out the violence in our own generation. It is a chain of attack or be-attacked scenarios, of taking revenge in turn down the generations, with never an end in sight. And the end of the book, with the Jews killing over seventy five thousand of those who hated them and wished to kill them, is not so much a victory as a tragedy.

Maybe we should wipe out the memory of Amalek  by no longer participating in the tit-for-tat violence, but demonstrate our Yirat Adonai by no longer prolonging this hatred. After all, Moses says that the war against Amalek is waged by God – not necessarily by us.

How can we stop the cycles of violence in our world? The Book of Esther provides one way – to fictionalise it, put the acting out into the realm of fancy-dress and carnival. In this way we can fulfil the requirements to remember without bringing the violence into the real world. To remember our ancestral pain without causing hurt to others would truly be acting with Yirat Adonai.

Shabbat Zachor, così denominato per la seconda lettura del rotolo, segnala l’imminente arrivo di Purim e ci dà l’insegnamento: “Ricordati di ciò che ti fece Amalek quando eri in viaggio, allorché uscisti dall’Egitto, che ti assalì sulla strada e colpì tutti coloro che affranti erano rimasti indietro mentre tu eri stanco e sfinito, e non temette Iddio. E quando il Signore tuo Dio ti darà tregua da tutti i tuoi nemici all’intorno nella terra che sta per darti in eredità perché tu ne prenda possesso, cancellerai il ricordo di Amalek di sotto al cielo, non dimenticarlo!” (Deuteronomio 25: 17-19)

Eppure la storia, nella narrazione dell’Esodo, è in qualche modo diversa. “Quindi venne Amalek e attaccò Israele in Refidim. Mosè disse a Giosuè: ‘Scegliti alcuni bravi guerrieri e va’ a combattere Amalek; domani io mi metterò sulla sommità della collina e terrò in mano la verga del Signore’. Giosuè eseguì il comando di Mosè iniziando battaglia contro Amalek, e nello stesso tempo Mosè, Aronne e Chur salirono in cima alla collina. Ora fintanto ché Mosè teneva alzate le sua mani vinceva Israele; quando le abbassava vinceva Amalek. Ma le braccia di Mosè erano pesanti, allora presero una pietra, gliela misero sotto, egli vi si assise sopra a Aronne e Chur sostenevano le sue braccia l’uno da una parte e l’altro dall’altra cosicché le sue braccia poterono sostenersi sino al tramonto del sole. E Giosuè sconfisse Amalek e la sue gente a fil di spada. Il Signore disse a Mosè: ‘Scrivi in un libro il ricordo di questo grande avvenimento e trasmettilo oralmente a Giosuè, ché Io ho stabilito di cancellare la memoria di Amalek di sotto il cielo’. Mosè fabbricò un altare che nominò: Dio è la mia bandiera. E disse: ‘Il Signore pone la mano sul Suo trono, guerra ad Amalek di generazione in generazione”.  (Esodo 17: 8-16)

Quindi, di cosa si tratta? Amalek venne a predare dagli individui più deboli nelle retrovie della carovana di persone in fuga dall’Egitto? O fu un attacco apparentemente non provocato mentre erano accampati? Ci fu una battaglia tra eserciti o avvenne un attacco furtivo con saccheggio verso i più deboli? Mosè e Giosuè furono in ​​qualche modo attivi, pianificando la battaglia? O furono a malapena a conoscenza degli attacchi nelle retrovie della colonna di persone? E chi, esattamente, è in guerra con Amalek? È Dio o sono gli Israeliti? E chi di loro è responsabile di cancellare la memoria di Amalek, una necessità persistente lungo le generazioni, persistente come il raccontare la storia dell’esodo dall’Egitto, del patto accettato nel Sinai, della storia di Ester, Mardocheo e Haman:  tutte cose che ci vien detto di ripetere, di non permettere mai che se ne perda il ricordo.

Ci viene detto che Amalek non “teme Dio”: Amalek non possiede “Yirat Adonai”.

Quando osserviamo più da vicino questa espressione, “temere Dio”, sembra che sia usata in particolare in circostanze che implichino la scelta di comportarsi eticamente. Ogni volta che qualcuno potrebbe trarre vantaggio da una persona più debole e non lo fa, scegliendo invece di comportarsi con integrità morale, viene descritto come “Yirat Adonai”. Quindi, ad esempio, le ostetriche egiziane che sfidano l’ordine del Faraone e non uccidono i neonati, sono spinte da Yirat Adonai (Ex 1:17). Quando Giuseppe si rivela ai propri fratelli e dice loro che non farà loro del male, dice “Temo Dio” (Gen 42:18). Nel “codice di santità” c’è forse l’esempio più chiaro: dopo l’avvertimento di non maledire i sordi, né di mettere un ostacolo davanti al cieco ci viene detto “v’yareita me’elochecha – ma avrai paura di Dio, Io sono l’Eterno”.

Il timore di Dio sembra essere la consapevolezza di un’autorità superiore, di qualcosa al di là dell’individuo e dei suoi desideri. Anche se la religione non è l’unico generatore di etica, lo è comunque in modo potente, e l’idea di un occhio che vede e un orecchio che ascolta, anche quando altri non lo fanno, ha storicamente tenuto molti su un sentiero migliore di quello che avrebbero altrimenti scelto.

Gli Amalekiti sembrano non possedere questo correttivo nella loro visione del mondo: non vedono alcun motivo per comportarsi eticamente quando ciò dovesse entrare in conflitto con il proprio guadagno o beneficio. Essi sono il paradigma dell’amoralità, e quindi sembra che in ogni generazione vi sia l’intervento di Dio e la lotta per estromettere questa vita senza guida morale. Ci viene ricordato che in ogni tempo dovremmo cancellare la memoria di Amalek, ricordandoci sempre di combattere l’abitudine all’egoismo, al non prendersi cura dei deboli o dei vulnerabili. Nonostante questa avidità e disprezzo per gli altri siano esplicitati negli Amalekiti, la realtà è che tutti portiamo dentro di noi questa tendenza. Uno dei miei insegnanti era solito dire: “è cosa buona essere spaventati da ciò che Dio potrebbe pensare, ma la maggior parte di noi è più preoccupata da ciò che gli altri potrebbero pensare se sapessero ciò che facciamo: se solo ci importasse nella stessa misura di cosa Dio pensa di ciò che facciamo così come ci importa di quanto ne pensano gli altri, il mondo sarebbe un posto migliore!”

Yirat Adonai, il timore di Dio, a volte viene tradotto come “riverenza” o “soggezione”, ma mi piace abbastanza l’idea che si dovrebbe essere Timorati di Dio. Joseph Soloveitchik scrisse che viviamo le nostre vite con ogni tipo di paura: realistiche e irrazionali. Paura della vecchiaia, o del dolore o  della malattia; della morte, della solitudine, della povertà o  di essere in qualche modo “smascherati”. Disse che la paura è qualcosa che ci confonde e ci limita: non sappiamo mai di cosa avere legittimamente paura e cosa invece sia una paura inutile.

“La paura sembra essere un malessere universale … Che tipo di paura può sopraffarci, estirpando così tutti gli altri tipi di paure: paura del fallimento … del rifiuto … o della malattia? Solo la paura dell’Eterno Dio! … [Durante le Festività Solenni] Preghiamo affinché questa grande paura ci liberi da tutte le paure minori che si nascondono ovunque, sconvolgendo e amareggiando le nostre vite”.

L’Adon Olam ha un verso basato sul salmo 118: “Adonai Li, lo ira – Dio è con me, non avrò paura”. È uno dei miei versi preferiti. Nel salmo, la seconda metà del verso chiede “ma ya’aseh li Adam – cosa possono farmi gli esseri umani?” È la stessa visione di Yirat Adonai che troviamo in Soloveitchik: perché se abbiamo una base sicura e certa di Yirat Adonai, della paura di Dio, allora tutte le più piccole paure “mortali” svaniscono.

Anche il Talmud vede Yirat Adonai come parte necessaria della nostra relazione con Dio e del nostro sviluppo come esseri umani, per diventare il meglio che possiamo essere. Nel trattato 31b leggiamo:

            “Rabbah bar Rav Huna ha detto: ‘Qualsiasi persona che abbia [padroneggiato] gli insegnamenti della Torà ma manchi di Yirat shamayim (riverenza verso il cielo o Dio) è come un tesoriere a cui siano state date le chiavi delle camere interne, ma a cui non siano state date le chiavi delle camere esterne. Come può [il tesoriere] entrare [nella camera interna]?’”

In altre parole, Yirat shamayim è la condizione necessaria per comprendere veramente di cosa tratti la Torà. Senza di essa, tutto il nostro apprendimento, tutti i nostri traguardi mondani sono inutili. Potremmo conoscere i testi, le conclusioni legali tratte da essi, ma senza l’elemento di relazione con Dio che si gioca nel nostro rapporto con la creazione di Dio, rimangono fredde abilità accademiche: abbiamo perso il punto del perché impariamo la Torà.

Le festività autunnali di Rosh Hashanà e Yom Kippur in ebraico sono chiamate Yamim Noraim e  Noraim ha la stessa radice di Yira: paura o timore reverenziale. Durante l’amidà abbiamo le “uv’chen”,  inserti che chiedono a Dio di inviare Pachad, Eima e Yerucha sulla Creazione, tutte parole utilizzate a significare paura/timore o riverenza. Queste erano le preghiere cui faceva riferimento Soloveitchik: una volta che capiamo di chi avere timore reverenziale, non c’è bisogno di legarci in inutili preoccupazioni per le altre persone. Yirat Adonai ci libera facendoci percepire ciò che è vero da ciò che è semplicemente una nostra idea artefatta del mondo. Ci consente quindi di riorientare noi stessi e, se necessario, di cambiare il modo in cui viviamo la nostra vita, liberi dalle pressioni che potrebbero altrimenti distorcere la nostra autenticità e integrità.

Quindi, qual è il legame con il Libro di Esther e la storia di Purim?

Oltre al fatto che ci viene detto che Haman è discendente di Agag, e quindi discende dagli Amalekiti, vediamo anche come egli si comporti in modo straordinariamente e profondamente amorale. Dal momento in cui si arrabbia per il fatto che Mardocheo non si è inchinato a lui, sembra reagire in modo esagerato, se pensa solo di vendicare il proprio orgoglio ferito. In effetti, l’intero libro è basato su varie modalità di vendetta, e la motivazione del vendicarsi sugli altri è forse quanto più lontano ci sia dall’umanità che vogliamo essere, un comportamento che è diametralmente opposto a Yirat Adonai.

Il Libro di Ester è famoso anche per la mancanza sia del nome di Dio che della presenza di Dio: per ricordarci che senza alcun senso del Dio di Yirat Adonai siamo vulnerabili alle forze che ci circondano, forze che non hanno una guida morale che mitighi o ammorbidisca le loro azioni. È il libro paradigmatico della Diaspora: l’esperienza ebraica di essere nella migliore delle ipotesi ospite e nel peggiore dei casi estraneo nella terra di qualcun altro; E, come nell’esperienza storica della Diaspora, si deve essere sempre consci di procedere con cautela per non sconvolgere o provocare il paese ospitante, senza mai sapere quando un’esistenza confortevole possa improvvisamente diventare precaria, poiché i capricci dei poteri governativi si spostano in modo imprevedibile.

Ma, probabilmente, la connessione più dolorosa tra la Megillat Esther e il comando di ricordare e quindi cancellare gli Amalekiti, è la violenza che vibra attraverso l’intera narrazione, culminante nella rivolta ebraica contro coloro che vorrebbero distruggerli.

Sicuramente qui c’è molto di più che una messa in finzione delle paure di una vulnerabile comunità della diaspora, per quanto da vicino queste paure seguano una terribile realtà storica. C’è qualcosa nella reazione eccessiva di Haman verso Mardocheo, nel desiderio di distruggere un intero popolo a causa delle azioni di un solo uomo, che necessita di un esame più attento:

Sappiamo che gli Amalekiti discendono da Esaù: la Bibbia ci dice “Timna concubina di Elifaz (figlio di Esaù) gli partorì Amalek” (Gen 36:12). Il Talmud dà ulteriori dettagli:

            Timna era una principessa reale. Desiderando diventare proselita, andò da Abramo, Isacco e Giacobbe, ma essi non la accettarono. Così andò e divenne una concubina di Elifaz, figlio di Esaù,         dicendo: “Preferirei essere una servitrice di questo popolo piuttosto che una nobile nell’altra nazione”. Da lei discese Amalek che afflisse Israele. Perchè ciò? Perché non avrebbero dovuto respingerla. (Sinedrio 99b)

Quindi l’inimicizia tra Israele e Amalek è radicata nel lontano passato, due volte gli Amalekiti vennero trattati male: quando a Esaù fu tolto con l’inganno il diritto di nascita da suo fratello minore Giacobbe, e quando sua nuora fu respinta per la conversione.

Questo potrebbe spiegare perché essi, danneggiati, attaccarono gli israeliti poco dopo l’esodo dall’Egitto. Vendicano l’errore storico.

Ulteriori letture ci restituiscono poi la storia del re Saul, che adempì il comandamento di cancellare gli Amalekiti a causa di ciò che fecero dopo l’esodo, e solo il re Agag sopravvisse al massacro. (1 Samuele 15)

Saul apparteneva alla tribù di Beniamino. Anche Mardocheo apparteneva alla tribù di Beniamino. Haman si stava vendicando non solo per l’orgoglio ferito, ma perché vendicava il massacro della sua tribù da parte degli antenati tribali di Mardocheo?

Ci sono un certo numero di dispositivi letterari che legano le varie storie degli Amalekiti e degli Israeliti al Libro di Esther. (Ad esempio, le stesse parole sono usate nel grido amaro del tradito Esaù, e in quello di Mardocheo quando apprende del complotto per uccidere tutti gli ebrei: “Vayitz ‘ak tz’ akah g ‘dola u’marà” E pianse un grande e amaro grido!) È quasi come se il dolore generazionale sia stato programmato nel DNA stesso dei protagonisti.

Quindi, quando vediamo la terribile violenza che si ripete nel Libro di Esther, quando consideriamo cosa significhi ricordare Amalek in modo da cancellarlo, constatiamo che anche noi facciamo parte della catena che risale alla terribile rivalità tra fratelli del Libro della Genesi. Non è mai veramente risolta: Giuseppe e i suoi fratelli trovano un modo per costruire una relazione civile, a malapena una risoluzione piena e autentica.

Il Libro di Esther è un benefico sollecito: non solo siamo vulnerabili al continuo odio di coloro che scelgono di non “temere Dio”, ma siamo anche vulnerabili alla messa in atto della violenza nella nostra stessa generazione. È una catena di scenari “attaccare o essere attaccati”, di vendicarci a nostra volta nello scorrere delle generazioni, senza mai una fine all’orizzonte. E la fine del libro, con gli ebrei che uccidono oltre settantacinquemila di coloro che li odiavano e desideravano ucciderli, non è tanto una vittoria quanto una tragedia.

Forse dovremmo cancellare la memoria di Amalek non partecipando più alla violenza occhio per occhio, e dimostrare il nostro Yirat Adonai non prolungando più questo odio. Dopo tutto, Mosè afferma che la guerra contro Amalek è condotta da Dio, non necessariamente da noi.

Come possiamo fermare i cicli di violenza nel nostro mondo? Il libro di Ester fornisce un modo: mettendola in scena e trasportandola nel regno del costume e del carnevale. In questo modo possiamo soddisfare i requisiti del ricordare senza portare la violenza nel mondo reale.     Ricordare il nostro dolore ancestrale senza causare danni agli altri sarebbe davvero recitare con Yirat Adonai

Traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

 

 

 

 

Biblical Empathy at the exodus from Egypt

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Bible tells of ten plagues that struck all Egyptian people in the battle between God and Pharaoh, culminating with “God smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon and all the firstborn of cattle….there was a great cry in Egypt for there was not a house where there was not one dead.” The Egyptians hurried the Israelites away, giving them everything they asked for – jewellery, animals, clothing, gold, because they said “We are all dead”.

One can only imagine the grief, the terror and anguish of the Egyptians on that night, the night that we celebrate as “leil shimurim – night of vigil”, now Seder Night. As we celebrate and remember the story of our liberation, we are also observing the anniversary of these deaths, and on Seventh Day Pesach we will recall the deaths of the Egyptian soldiers, drowned as the waters closed over them while they pursued the escaping Israelites.

The bible tells the stories unflinchingly, recording the screams of the people facing their dead at midnight, the fear and distress of the Egyptian forces caught on the seabed unable to flee as the waters roll back.  It tells of the real human cost of our freedom. And Jewish tradition picks up this theme so that our observance of Pesach not only tells the story of the Israelites gaining freedom, but also the story of grief and fear experienced by those cast as our enemies.

The book of Proverbs tells us “when your enemy falls, do not rejoice” and rabbinic tradition reminds us to lessen any  joy gained at the expense of others. So we recite only half-hallel for the last six days of Pesach, we take out drops of wine at our Seder while recounting the plagues, and  remind ourselves that freedom  comes at a cost that we must never forget.

 

written for and first published by London Jewish News “the bible says what?” column March 2018

Ha’azinu – what might we say and write when we confront our own mortality?

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Moses knows he is going to die.  Not in the way we all ‘know’ we are going to die, the coldly logical knowledge that doesn’t impact on our emotions in any way, but in the way that some people who are very close to death know with a certainty that no longer expresses itself as fear or self-pity but with a clarity and sense of purpose.

I have sat at many deathbeds. I have seen denial and also acceptance, whimpering pain and alert peacefulness, sudden startling requests – for toast, for touch, for people long gone, for non-existent sounds or lights to be turned off or up.  What I have learned is that we none of us know how we shall die, how our last days and hours will be, but that at many, if not most of the deathbeds I have observed where there is some time for the process to be worked through, there is an opportunity to express what is most important to the dying person, to project themselves one last time into the world.

It is human to want to survive. Life wants to continue despite pain or confusion or fear. Even when a person seems prepared and ready for death there is often a moment where there is a struggle to continue in this world. Even Hezekiah who famously “turned his face to the wall” having been told that he must set his house in order for he would die and not live, then prays to remind God that he has done God’s will with his whole heart, and weeps sorely.   His prayer (found in Isaiah 38) resonates today “In the noontide of my days I shall go to the gates of the nether world, I am deprived of the residue of my years…. O God, by these things we live, and altogether therein is the life of my spirit; so recover Thou me, and make me to live.”

It doesn’t matter at what age we come to death – we want more life, we want to go on in some meaningful way, we want to be part of the future.

We all know we will die. We share death with all who have ever lived and all who will ever be. We may fear the how or the when, but generally we get on with life as if death is not real. And we don’t plan for how we might continue to be a part of the future, for how our life may make a difference for our having lived it, or for how or what might be remembered of our existence.

Yet sometimes we are forced to confront our own mortality. And when that happens, these questions demand to be asked.

The whole period of the Days of Awe which are now coming to a close forces us to acknowledge our own transience in this world.  Be it the wearing of the kittel we shall don for the grave, the taking out of a whole day from time to focus on how we are living our lives in order to reset and readjust our behaviours, or the saying of yizkor prayers and visiting the graves of our families. Be it the autumnal edge we feel as we shiver in the sukkah, or the browning and falling of the leaves, or the daylight hours shortening perceptibly – we are viscerally aware of the darkness that is coming, the lessening outer energy alongside the power of the interior life.

Sometimes this knowledge that we will inevitably cease to be in this world brings out a search for meaning, for a sense of self that will transcend the physicality of our existence. Sometimes we become engrossed in our own personal wants and needs, sometimes we look further outwards towards our family and our relationships, sometimes we gaze further out towards our community or we look further in time to see what will be after we have gone.  I think often of the story of Moses in the yeshiva of Akiva (BT Menachot 29b), comforted by seeing that Rabbi Akiva is citing him as the source of the teaching being given, even though he does not understand anything of the  setting that is 1500 years after his own life.  It is a story of not being forgotten, of projecting values down the generations. Talmud also tells us that R. Yochanan said that when a teaching is transmitted with the name of its author, then the lips of that sage “move in the grave” (BT Sanhedrin 90b.  Rabbinic Judaism gives great honour to the idea that we live on in the teachings we offered, but also in the memories of those who choose to remember us. It is commonplace in the Jewish world to be named for a dead relative in order to honour their memory, to tell stories about them long after the hearers (or even the tellers) have a first-hand memory of the person, to fast on the day of their yahrzeit (anniversary of their death) as well as to light a 24 hour candle and to say the kaddish prayer.

So it is time for us to give serious thought about how we project ourselves into the future, what we pass on in terms of life lessons, the stories people will tell about us, how they will remember us, how they will carry on the values that we have cared about enough for them to see and for them to choose too.

All rabbis have stories of sitting with the dying as these desires clarify. One colleague has I think the ultimate cautionary tale of being asked to come out to a deathbed of a woman he barely knew, a long way out from where he lived, in terrible weather, and sent in the form of a demand. Deciding that he must go but unsure of what was wanted, he collected together a number of different prayer books to be able to offer her the spiritual succour she wanted. Her final wish was that her daughter in law would not inherit her fur coat. She was taking her feud past the grave.  I remember the woman who sat in bed in her hospice writing letters to everyone in her life, beautiful letters – but she refused to actually see any of the people she was writing to. I remember the people who made great efforts to right wrongs and those who tried to comfort the people left behind. I think with love of the woman who sent an audio file with her message that she had had a wonderful life with the right man and they were not to grieve, even though her death seemed unfairly early. I think of the woman who, having lost her fiancé in the war, proudly told me she was going back to her maker virgo intacta, and the woman who told me of her abortion while she was hiding in Nazi Germany, and her belief that the child had visited her alongside its father who died some years later.

Many a personal secret has been recounted at a deathbed, but often having been released from the power of that secret if there is time, the soul continues its journey in this world, and suddenly all sorts of things come into perspective. And it is these stories that I remember with such love and that have had such great impact on me.  The stories that people had hidden from their nearest and dearest but which explain so much of who they are and why they have done what they did. Their belief that they were not loved enough which led to them thinking they were not able to love as much as they wanted. Their umbilical connection to Judaism that they had not lived out publicly for fear of what might happen to them or their children should anti-Semitism return as virulently as they remembered in their youth.  Their subsequent horror that children and grandchildren were not connected to their Jewish roots, and their guilt at having weakened this chain. There are multiple examples but what I see again and again is the need for good relationships with others, for human connection with others , for expressing warmth and love and vulnerability, the need for living according to clear and thoughtful moral values, and for a sense of deep identity that passes from generation to generation and connects us to the other in time.

Moses in sidra Haazinu is just like any other human being, wanting his life not to be wasted but to be remembered, wanting his stories and his values to be evoked in order to pass on what is important to the generations that will come after him, however they may use them.  He needs to be present in their lives, albeit not in a physical way.  The whole of the book of Deuteronomy has been his way of reminding, of chivvying, of recalling and reimagining the history he has shared with the people of Israel. He uses both carrot and stick, he uses prose and poetry, he is both resigned and deeply angry, he is human.

There is a biblical tradition of the deathbed blessing, a blessing which describes not only what is but also what is aspirational.  Rooted in that has come the idea of the ethical will to pass on ideas, stories and thoughts to the next generation of one’s family, a tradition that has found a home also in reminiscence literature.  Sometimes we find out much more about the person who has died from their letters and diaries than they ever expressed  in life – and often we mourn that it is now too late to ask the questions that emerge from these, or to apologise or explain ourselves.

As the days grow shorter and we have spent time mulling over how we are living our lives and trying to match them to how we want our lives to have looked once we see them from the far end, we could take a leaf out of Moses’ life’s work in Deuteronomy and write our own life story, not just the facts but the stories around them, how we understood them, what we learned.  Next year we might write it differently, but what a rich choice lies in front of us, to explore what is really important to us and to ensure that it, like us, will live on.

Behukkotai: redemption requires ongoing action.

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The sidra Bechukkotai ends the book of Leviticus, and concludes with the verse “These are the commandments which the Eternal commanded Moses for the children of Israel in Mt Sinai”

A book which is primarily dealing with the ritual system overseen by the hereditary priesthood, a book whose rabbinic name is Sefer Cohanim (The Book of the Priests), is seen by itself as holding a much wider remit, putting into context the sacrificial cult of priest and altar, clarifying the notion that the relationship between God and Israel is available to each and every person, and is framed into the construct of covenant.

            At the beginning of the sidra we are told of the great blessing which will be given to the people if they observe the Torah, 11 verses detailing the blessings of economic stability, peace and prosperity, and finally God’s presence among the people. This is followed by the tochecha – the admonition and curse, with 30 verses which warn of the destruction of the land, the destruction of the nation and their exile, for the sin of violating the commandments.

This set of warnings, which here are told to Moses by God in the desert, are repeated in an even more concise and forceful manner by Moses just before his death forty years hence.

When you study these two versions of the warnings, and compare then with other biblical texts warning about destruction and exile, you find a curious and certainly deliberate absence. Usually the warnings which are found in bible end with the promise of Teshuvah – that God will restore us from our captivity as soon as we return to God. The certainty of ultimate redemption is spelled out for the reader. If we actively seek God then God will redeem us. But the rebuke in this sidra, like its parallel text in Deuteronomy, does not state that redemption will surely come. Instead , at the end of chapter 26 of Leviticus (arguably the original end of the whole Torah), after the warnings of destruction and exile, we are told   “I will remember My covenant with Jacob and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember,; and I will remember the land” and God goes on to say “When they are in the land of their enemies I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break My covenant with them; for I am the Eternal their God. But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations that I might be their God, I am the Eternal”(26:42,44-5)

These verses, which resonate in this text, are ones which countless generations of Jews have held close. They are a huge comfort to many generations, yet they do not talk of redemption or of return to the Land. What they tell us is that God continues to remember the covenant – but they don’t tell us what that means. The covenant is remembered by God and so we are not lost however dark our days may be. The fact that the patriarchs are named in reverse order is used as the proof text for the tradition of Zechut Avot – the merits of our ancestors which we can call upon in difficult times. If our own merits do not help us than we enlist those of Jacob. If his don’t do the trick then we enlist the merits of Isaac and finally we can call on the merits of Abraham, who, as the first person to make a covenant with God will surely come to our aid.

            The tradition of Zechut Avot – that the merits of our ancestors will be added to our own at the time of judgement, and so will enable us to survive, is debated at length in the rabbinic literature and there are those who claim it continues to operate, and those who claim that the merit has been exhausted – our own sins by now far outweigh any ancestral good deeds. But all the commentators agree that whatever the status of Zechut Avot, the covenant made with our ancestors remains in force, it is the covenant which effectively ensures our continuing existence and our continuing meaning.

            Within the bible there are two types of covenant – there is the Noachide Covenant when God promises that the natural order will not change, a promise made by God which does not require any action or even response from people. Then there is the covenant as understood by Abraham and his descendants, the covenant that is described by God who does not forget. This is a covenant of mutuality – mutual obligation, mutual understanding, mutual responsibility. “I will be your God and you shall be My people” – there is an interdependence here, a way of defining and identifying through the other party in their relationship. This covenant is still in force even at the end of the tochecha – it remains in force because God remembers it. But there is no promise of redemption because redemption is not an automatic consequence of God remembering – we need the concept of mutuality – whether the covenant can be executed will depend not only on God remembering but on US remembering. For the people to find redemption they must act properly, responsibly, within the terms and conditions of the covenant.

            In the midrash we are told that:

“Three things were given to Israel conditionally – the Land of Israel, the Temple, and the Kingship of the House of David. And two things were given unconditionally – The Torah and the hereditary priesthood”

What is not mentioned is redemption – we have no automatic right to such a state of being, no magic formula of faith in God which will ensure that we are saved. Judaism teaches us, (and it bases its teaching from within the two passages of the tochecha), that we are in a position of covenant with God, that we have all the rights and obligations and responsibilities that such a relationship entails, and that the purpose of such contract is not that we individually save our souls through our belief, but that we work to save the world through our actions which themselves are rooted in the contract/covenant relationship we have accepted with God.

That contract can never be broken, whatever we do or don’t do, wherever we are, and however we view ourselves. Because God remembers the covenant, and God remembers the land. And God waits for us too to remember, and having remembered, to act.

 

From Purim to Pesach – the flavour of slavery as we prepare for the scent of freedoms

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By tradition the days from Purim to Pesach have a character all their own – that of mental preparation and of physical hard work. For if tradition tells us that Rosh Chodesh Adar brings with it increasing joy, we know that it also sounds the starting pistol in the race to make everything ready for Pesach.

There are those who search through every book on their shelves, for crumbs fallen as the reader fed their body as well as their mind. There are those who begin at the top of the house and ruthlessly unearth every speck of leaven from the pockets of jackets hanging in wardrobes to the linings of handbags and suitcases put away after earlier outings.

There are some who ruthlessly scrub every surface be it inside or out, regardless of whether food could possibly come into contact or not, and there are those he maniacally turn out pot and pan drawers, cutlery containers and the shelves of artefacts kept unused just in case one might want a fish kettle/ pasta maker/ mousse mould.

From Purim to Pesach the traditionally minded Jewish householder experiences a little of the flavour of slavery our ancestors experienced in Egypt. The injunction for this story of redemption from slavery to become our own personal story is taken quite literally as servitude to the ideal of a sparkling clean leaven free home means sore back muscles, peeling fingernails and a pervasive smell of bleach on the fingers of the zealous leaven hunter.

There is, I know, a wonderful feeling of satisfaction when the work is done, the house a no-go zone for non pesachdik condiments, the shopping done, the Seder table set and the ritual foods ready along with the feast that follows. But alongside the satisfaction is the niggling sense that we need to remember that a clean house and communally enjoyed meal is not the purpose of the exercise. It is only the route towards considering the meaning of freedom.

We are to think ourselves beyond the physical and emotional labour necessary to prepare for it, in order to experience the meaning of the Seder in all its rich complexity. Having a nice meal with extended family, all work done for the moment, is not the point, however enjoyable it may be. We are having Pesach and the Seder meal in order to remember. The event is to memorialise through reliving and retelling a story that must belong to us. It is to remember our past and the formative narrative of our redemption by God. It is to make our memory something that does not simply narrate or contain the past, but something that causes us to be active in the present.

What are we doing when we memorialise, when we ‘remember’ the story of our people as if it is our own experience? We are ‘remembering’ in the sense of putting something together,‘re-membering’. We are putting together the experiences that formed us as a people and thinking about how they are still playing out in the world we live in today – both giving us our own identity as Jews and giving us understanding of all who share the experience of oppression and lack of freedoms. And from this understanding we begin to notice that we are not the only people who have a narrative of pain, we are not the only ones who are looking to be and to stay free.

The most repeated sentence in bible is “Remember you were a slave in Egypt”. Why so? It cannot be simply to remember painful times in order to dwell on them or be grateful that they are gone. It must be because action has to emerge from our remembering. Our remembering of what it was like to be oppressed and burdened has value only if we work to remove such oppression and trouble from the world we inhabit now.

These days we often understand this command to remember our own slavery as being the nudge that should give us empathy towards those who are suffering without freedoms – that we are somehow more likely to care for the downtrodden and the disenfranchised because of our own history and experience. But there is at least one medieval source which tells us almost the opposite – that once we have escaped our own pain it is easier to deny it, to treat others badly as we were once treated in order to  keep our distance from the experience. So the injunction to remember our slavery is repeated so often in our texts precisely because we are more, rather than less likely to ignore the pain of others. There are resonances in modern psychological thought – that we repeat the dysfunction of our childhood experiences in our own families, a vicious cycle that takes mindful and conscious effort to break out from.  If this is so, how much more so does the journey from Purim to Pesach and the climax of the haggadah narrative force us to remember our own suffering in order to help others whose suffering is happening right now.

            The festival of Purim allows us to explore the dark sides of our world and of ourselves. The festival of Pesach does the same. But it gives us something extra – the knowledge that if we work together we can change our world. At the exodus from Egypt not only the Jews escaped slavery – an erev rav  (mixed multitude of people) took the opportunity to escape too.  May our Pesach every year mean that other people reach freedom alongside us, that we are moved to make this happen, that we remember our own stories of oppression and work to ensure that for every person and every people there will be a time when they too will be able to recite their own story as historical narrative rather than present reality.  

 

Parashat Tetzaveh. Shabbat Zachor

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 “And it will be, when the Eternal your God has given you rest from all your enemies round about, in the land which the Eternal your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess it, that you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven, you shall not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:17)

            So we read on the Shabbat before Purim, the Shabbat when we remember the gratuitous hatred shown to the Children of Israel as they fled from Egypt, echoing the hatred shown by Haman, said to be descended from the Amalakites, and we remember too the gratuitous hatred shown to Jews ever since.

            It is a text which has come to be something of an emblem for Jews – the act of remembering, so sacred to our tradition, is to be used in this one case to blot out the individuals concerned, to erase their names from history.

            As Jews we fear only one thing – we fear disappearing entirely, so that no trace of us is found.  One thinks of Isaiah’s phrase, poignantly taken up by the holocaust remembrance centre in Israel – “I  will give in My house and within My walls a monument and a memorial (yad v’shem) better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting memorial, that shall not be cut off.  (56:5).  Yad v’shem – a hand and a name. 

            Almost everything we do as Jews is in some way about remembering, and what we remember can be linked to two grand themes – Creation and Exodus/Redemption.  All our festivals, whether agricultural in their origins or not, are linked to Creation and to Redemption – think of Pesach, Redemption of our people and Creation of peoplehood.  Shavuot, building on Pesach, brings us the meaning of our Redemption – Torah.  Rosh Hashanah reminds us of the cycle of time, a new start which may yet lead us to Redemption, Yom Kippur helps us leave behind and create again.  Succot is of course Creation led, with the underlying theme that our Redemption can come only from God, Simchat Torah neatly begins with the almost – Redemption of the Jewish people and focuses us again into the Creation story.  Chanukah and Purim, the two post biblical festivals are both about Redemption too, with the possibilities of starting again afresh.

            In our rich and complex Jewish tradition, we constantly and ritually remember the two experiences which mould us – the Creation which we experience newly every day, and the Redemption to which we are committed to work.  We remember where we come from and where we are going to.  That is our most sacred behaviour.  And so it is particularly shocking to be told to remember so as to be sure to erase all memory.

Such an instruction is a creative betrayal of that which we hold most sacred.  Nothing could be more designedly dumbfounding, more completely against our instincts.  Our whole imperative is to remember so as not to lose completely.

            Yet the special reading on Shabbat Zachor, designed to emphasise the response to Purim which will shortly follow, tells us that not everything or everyone should be remembered, that there are certain events the enormity of which means that they must be buried away forever.  They are beyond our capacity to deal with, beyond our ability to create anew or to bring to Redemption.  Few and far between – one thinks inevitably of the go’el who would not marry Ruth for the sake of his descendents, and who is named only Poloni ben Poloni – Mr X – in the text – these events where enforced erasing of the memory of a human being serve to point up the importance of conserving the memory.  Shabbat Zachor says it all – Shabbat Remember! 

            Nowadays we have so much to remember – and extra days have been added to our calendar with Yom ha Shoah, and Yom ha Atzma’ut, the depths and heights of the last century.  We are programmed to remember, to allow history to live again in us.  We just have to ask ourselves what we should be remembering, and how. 

            The text we read as part of Shabbat Zachor begins “And it will be, when the Eternal your God has given you rest from all your enemies round about, in the land which the Eternal your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess it, that you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven, you shall not forget”, places the enforced forgetting and erasing in a context – it begins with a future time “It will be”.  This reminds us of one very important lesson – we don’t have to worry yet about what we might erase or forget, that will be for the unspecified future.  Right now our task is to remember and to document and to keep alive, it is not, absolutely not, to do anything else.