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when the nation of Amalek attacked the Jewish people soon after
they had left Egypt. Confronted by a lack of food and water, the
Jewish people complained and questioned God and Moses, finally
declaring, “Is God among us or not?” As our Sages note, the very
next verse states: “Then Amalek came and fought with Israel….”
(Exodus 17:8). Amelek represents the archenemy of the Jews, not
only physically but spiritually as well. Indeed, the numerical value
of the Hebrew word for “Amalek” has the same value as the Hebrew
word for doubt (safek). The Sages explained that the Jewish people’s
doubt and weakened faith led Amalek to attack Israel.
The Torah often promises that if the Jewish people observe the
commandments and create a proper Torah society, God will protect
them from all their enemies. This does not mean that when enemies
attack this is a sign of our moral failing and God wants us to allow
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them to defeat us as punishment; indeed, the Jewish people found
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their faith and immediately fought and defeated Amalek in the
desert. However, it does mean that God is trying to teach us a deeper
spiritual lesson when we are confronted by enemies or other hardships
in life. We must try to discover the root cause and rectify it, while we
simultaneously defeat or overcome them.
It is also important to note that our enemies throughout the ages
have also been subject to their own Divine accounting and required
rectification. Thus, while their enmity may also be God’s way of
teaching us a lesson, our own sins in no way justify their aggression.
As we have cautioned, this principle is quite open to
misunderstanding, and, therefore, requires much careful clarification.
However, we must accept that all our actions have physical and
spiritual ramifications, many of which may come back to haunt us.
God inscrutably chooses how he wishes to teach us the lessons we
must learn. Ultimately, the antidote to Amalek, Balaam, and all our
personal and national enemies is rectifying the root causes that caused
them to be sent. This is why Moses sent Joshua to fight Amalek with
the sword, while he stood at the top of the hill in prayer throughout
the battle. This type of war can only be fought on both fronts at once
if we ever hope to defeat our physical and spiritual enemies.
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all, there are curses that really are curses and curses that (no matter
what the giver’s intent) are actually blessings in disguise. Thirdly,
the effect of a blessing or a curse can be transformed from one to
the other quite suddenly or over long periods of time, depending, for
example, on how the receiver conceives of them, and fourthly these
utterances can manifest differently in different contexts and with
regard to different people, as what may be a blessing for one person
can be a curse for another.
To paraphrase a rabbinic idiom, one of the greatest compliments
that can be paid to people is that their “insides” are like their
“outsides” (Berachot 28a). They are not hypocritical and what they
say is what they mean, pure and simple. In relation to our discussion,
their blessings do not hide alternate agendas – they mean what they
say. Yet, we all know that attaining such a level is much easier said
than done.
A famous Torah scholar known as Nachum Ish Gam Zu (Nachum,
the man who said “this is also for the good”) turned every possible
stumbling block into a potential blessing through his positive attitude.
The Talmud likewise coined an expression: “All that God does, He
does it for the good” (Berachot 60b). The good in what happens in life
may not be readily apparent; it may take hard work to ultimately
see, but eventually it will be revealed.
Some people naturally see the positive side to life. Once a man went
to the Seer of Lublin and complained that he was having a hard time
dealing with a string of setbacks in his life. The Seer advised him to
go to Reb Zusha of Annipoli who could teach him how to deal with
suffering. When the man entered Reb Zusha’s broken down home he
told him why he had come. Reb Zusha, who had lived a life of great
poverty, could not understand why the Seer had sent someone to
talk to him about how to deal with suffering; in his own eyes, God
had only been good to him and given him exactly what he needed.
The mystical tradition teaches that our difficulty in distinguishing
between good and evil is a result of Adam and Eve eating from the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Two forces that had once been
clearly defined became blurred and mixed together. In truth, there is
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