Amalek, Intergenerational Hatred and the Possibility of Peace

 

It’s Shabbat Zachor,

And we have read verses from Deuteronomy that remember an event recorded, originally in Exodus

There is an attack, of the Amalekites against the Children of Israel, tired and weary from their servitude in Egypt and their desert wandering. And then comes the bit that makes the tale of Amalek unique in Biblical narratives.

“God will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.”

Or, as we read today,

^“When God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”

Amalek is set to function as an intergenerational enemy. That’s the reason for the Haftarah we read on this Shabbat – the story of Agag the Amalekite, enemy of Israel. And connects to the Megillah we will read on Thursday night and Friday morning, featuring Haman the Agagite – enemy of Israel.

And then two things happen. As a matter of Jewish law, there is no such person as a descendent of Amalek. As a matter of Jewish law, you can’t point at someone and say – you are an Amalek, and therefore my dread enemy who I must wipe out even to this day, for you bear such animus towards me.

But then there is the second thing; when there is an enemy of Israel, particularly one who cowardly attacks the weak and weary in the rear, there are places, where such people are called Amalek. Leaders of the Spanish Inquisition were often called Amalekites, and Cossack leaders of horrific pogroms launched against the Jews in the 19^th and 20^th Century. And of course was Hitler referred to as Amalek. Here’s something published in 1933, Paris.

And the idea, I think, of these comparisons is twofold.

On the one hand, this association of one generation’s hatred for Jews with the tale of Amalek is a reminder that there really is such a thing as an inter-generational hatred for Jews. There are those who will hate us and attack us regardless of anything we say or do. And we would do good to remember that.

And on the other hand, this association reminds us not to get soft in the face of hatred. Despite the inducement offered by other religious, sometimes, if someone slaps you in the face and just turn the other cheek, you get slapped on the other cheek. And if you come at the world from a religious place where you believe in the image of God in all humanity and you believe in Dan LChaf Zhcut – judging people meritoriously, it can become too easy to overlook evil. It can become possible to find oneself sliding into a collaboration with those who don’t recognise the image of God in us. And that gets dangerous. We know that as Jews.

And that, of course, brings us to the aftermath of October 7^th.

It’s 518 days since Hamas terrorists attacked the weak and the weary at the crack of dawn along Kibbutzim and settlements and Festival sites in the South of Israel. It was as cowardly an attack of unprovoked murderous hatred as the Jewish people have ever experienced. And the question is – is this Amalek?

Is this an attack launched by a people whose undying intergenerational hatred of Israel, of Jews, or me is so absolute as to blot out any possibility of creating not only a future shared society, but even a future safe border between two people living side-by-side?

It’s the question underpinning so much of what has happened since that awful day; the question underpinning what should be done now.

There was coverage of a leading American Reform Rabbi giving up on the possibilities of a two State Solution in the press this week. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, a one-time proud peacenik, gave a sermon where he said this, “This was the week that finally ended the hope, at least in my lifetime, for a Palestinian state and a Jewish state existing side by side," Hirsch said. “The Palestinians themselves strangled this fragile hope in its crib.”

The Israeli and Palestinian leadership of the shared-society organisation A Land for All are in London this week. I’m hosting a meeting of rabbis to hear their plan for a way out of this that preserves both Israeli and Palestinian self-determination and freedom. I invited four of local Orthodox colleagues. Three didn’t reply, and the fourth said this; “since October 7^th 2023 I am totally opposed to a two-state solution.  Previously I had supported it.  The best way for British Jews to contribute to a solution is to make aliya.”

A little over a week ago, Rabbi Natasha and I, among other Rabbis visiting from Britain and colleagues from Israel, wandered through the wreckage of the Nova Festival site and stood at the memorials of those slain and asked this question. Is this Amalek, is this people next to whom Israelis live, alongside whom Israelis live, a people who perpetrate the evil of Amalek, an undying hatred that must be uprooted before it can harm yet again?

And my heart breaks that the question is indeed a good question.

For what it’s worth, my answer is no. Od Lo Avdah Tikvateinu – I still haven’t lost hope. I know, easy for me to say, I’m not living along a border across which terrorists can invade. I haven’t served. My children aren’t due to serve. But still, no. This is awful, it needs to be called out as awful and it needs to be addressed with grave seriousness. But this isn’t Amalek.

Two sets of thoughts. There are partners for peace. We met with representatives of Standing Together: Jews and Arabs who haven’t given up and won’t give up because neither think the other is going anywhere and neither can bring themselves to such a level of hatred as to justify ethnic cleansing of worse. We met with mayors of regional councils in the northern West Bank, Area A. The two memories most pushing on my heart was when they took us to look over the 100 dunams behind their village and pointing out the tiny illegal Jewish settlement on a hill – We don’t mind the two or three dunams they have taken, said the mayor. But why all this, and he swept his hand across the Palestinian fields of olive trees that cannot be accessed and the quarry that cannot be run, they are creating the circumstances for another October 7^th, he said. They aren’t perfect peace partners, these Palestinian elected leaders, but George R.R. Martin had it rights when he put these words in the mouth of his character Lord Baelish, “We only make peace with our enemies. That's why it's called making peace.”

If that is hard to hear.

This one is harder still.

There are Jews who are actively fanning flames of hatred between Jew and Palestinian because they sincerely believe with a messianic faith I find abhorrent, that the entire Land, from River to Sea, should be for Jews only. And they know that if they can threaten and lock up and bottle up all Palestinian pretensions to self-determination it will indeed overspill into more violence and that advances their cause. There is a terrible problem in Israel with a far-right extreme political movement that has power and is wielding that power to inflame and set Jew ever further against Palestinian. A wise member here suggested October 7^th is a bit like the end of the David Fincher movie Seven where a despicable murdered decides to commit a series of murders matching each of the Seven Deadly Sins while being pursued by the policeman played by Brad Pitt. The last murder, forgive the spoiler, is to match the sin of Wrath – anger. And the murder is not to be the true source of the evil, but the policeman. The true source of evil is planning to get Pitt’s character to be so full of wrath that he will sin. Israel, being deliberately goaded into committing acts of violence by the wickedness of those responsible for October 7^th, I think, makes more sense of why Hamas did what they did than almost any other thing I’ve heard since that awful day. And I feel that partly since I recognise the same tactic wielded by the extreme settlers and their allies who seem to take pride in their whipping up hatred between Jew and Palestinian.

These are desperate, complex, painful times. We cannot afford to lose our humanity. We cannot afford to fail to call out evil when we see it. And in between these two poles, we must struggle. For me, the call to see even in those who hate us, Amalek must be pushed back. Yes there is anger and yes there is hatred, but I cannot believe there is partner for shared society, or even strangers living in self-determination on either sides of a border. Od Lo Avdah Tikvateinu

 

Shabbat Shalom