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GLOBAL RELIGIOUS LEADERS

be negotiated peace. People engaged Israelites were commanded to fight. Lee Harris began Civilization and its
in conflict eventually realise they are He also said, in The Guide for the Per- Enemies with the words, “The sub-
not only destroying their enemies: they plexed, that the command only applied ject of this book is forgetfulness,” and
are destroying themselves. That is what to people of specific biological descent. ends with a question: “Can the West
Pharaoh’s advisers said to him after It is not to be applied in general to ene- overcome the forgetfulness that is the
seven plagues: “Do you not yet realise mies or haters of the Jewish people. So nemesis of every successful civiliza-
that Egypt is ruined?” (Shemot 10:7). the command to wage war against the tion?” That is why we are commanded
There comes a point at which rational Amalekites no longer applies. to remember and never forget Amalek,
actors understand that the pursuit of However, there is a quite different com- not because the historic people still
self-interest has become self-destruc- mand, to “remember” and “not forget” exists, but because a society of ratio-
tive, and they learn to cooperate. nal actors can sometimes believe that
Amalek, which we fulfil annually by
It is not so with non-rational actors. reading the passage about the Amale- the world is full of rational actors with
Emil Fackenheim, one of the great kites command as it appears in Devarim whom one can negotiate peace. It is not
post-Holocaust theologians, noted that on the Shabbat before Purim, Shabbat always so.
towards the end of the Second World Zachor. Here Amalek has become a Rarely was a Biblical message so rele-
War, the Germans diverted trains carry- symbol rather than a reality. vant to the future of the West and of
ing supplies to their own army to trans- By dividing the response in this way, freedom itself. Peace is possible, implies
port Jews to the extermination camps. Moses, even with an Egypt that enslaved
So driven were they by hate that they Judaism marks a clear distinction and tried to destroy us. But peace is not
were prepared to put their own victory between an ancient enemy who no possible with those who attack people
at risk in order to carry out the system- longer exists, and the evil that enemy they see as weak and who deny their
atic murder of the Jews of Europe. This embodied, which can break out again own people the freedom for which they
was, he said, evil for evil’s sake. 2 at any time in any place. claim to be fighting. Freedom depends
In Jewish memory, the Amalekites At times of peace, it is easy to forget the on our ability to remember and when-
function as “the enemy” in Lee Harris’s evil that lies just beneath the surface ever necessary to confront “the eter-
sense. Jewish law, however, specifies of the human heart. Never was this nal gang of ruthless men,” the face of
3
two completely different forms of action truer than in the past three centuries. Amalek throughout history.
in relation to the Amalekites. First is the The birth of Enlightenment, toleration,
physical command to wage war against emancipation, liberalism and human 1 Avot 5:16.
them. That is what Samuel told Saul to rights persuaded many, Jews among 2 Fackenheim, Emil L., and Michael L. Morgan.
do, a command he failed fully to fulfil. them, that collective evil was as extinct The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim: A
Does this command still apply today? as the Amalekites. Evil was then, not Reader. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1987, 126.
now. That age eventually begat nation- 3 Lee Harris, Civilization and its Enemies: The
The unequivocal answer given by Rabbi Next Stage of History, New York, Free Press,
Nachum Rabinovitch is: No. Maimon- alism, fascism, communism, two World 2004.
4
ides ruled that the command to destroy Wars, some of the most brutal tyran- 4 Rabbi N. L. Rabinovitch, Responsa Melomdei
the Amalekites only applied if they nies ever known, and the worst crime Milchamah, Ma’ale Adumim, Ma’aliyot, 1993,
refused to make peace and accept the of man against man. 22–25.
seven Noahide laws. He further stated Evil never dies, and like liberty it
that the command was no longer appli- demands constant vigilance. We are
cable since Sancheriv, the Assyrian, had commanded to remember, not for the Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ל“צז was a
transported and resettled the nations sake of the past but for the sake of the global religious leader, philosopher, and
award-winning author who served as
he conquered so it was no longer pos- future, and not for revenge but the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congre-
sible to identify the ethnicity of any of opposite: a world free of revenge and gations of the Commonwealth from 1991
the original nations against whom the other forms of violence. to 2013.

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