(17) Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—(18) how he surprised you on the march, and cutting down all the stragglers in your rear, when you were famished and weary: he did not fear God. (19) Therefore, when Ad-nai your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that Ad-nai your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

“Could you have chosen a more loaded week?” said my husband with a face that can only be described as both bemused and pitying when I told him that I had agreed to write my first 91�첥 Torah Commentary on Shabbat Zakhor. As the heaviness of the reading sank in, with its commandment to recall Amalek’s unprovoked attack on the Israelites and to “blot out” Amalek’s memory, I became apprehensive.

Like many Torah portions, Zakhor is often used by Jews not only to make sense of history, but to make sense of their contemporary moment. The story has represented a call to fight against evil and complacency; and also as a metaphor for the many persecutions faced by Jews across history, and a convenient label for any and all enemies of the Jewish people. And since October 7th, it has been politicized in ways that have been both surprising and painful when Hamas, and sometimes the entire Palestinian people, have been referred to as Amalek by Israeli politicians and religious leaders, including by Netanyahu in a speech describing the unity of Israelis in the fight against Hamas. Walking through Tel Aviv last month, I found graffiti quoting Zakhor, a sign that it remains a rallying cry to some everyday Israelis. Loaded, indeed.

When I want to understand something in a new way—or when the contemporary resonance starts to overwhelm me—I consult history, looking for answers in the thoughts, feelings, and ideas of Jews past. How did Jews who lived before this intensely conflicted contemporary moment understand Zakhor? A search of the Jewish Historical Press reveals that 1,116 English-language articles in North America cited the word Amalek (and that’s just using this spelling). Reading through several, it was clear that, for Jews in the early twentieth century, Amalek as metaphor served them well for describing enemies of the Jews in Europe.

“One can readily understand… that Amalek is not used to designate a particular people, but rather as a synonym for every and any art of cruelty, oppression, hatred and bigotry, whenever and wherever encountered,” wrote Ben Aronin in the American Jewish newspaper The Sentinel in 1932. Jews have learned “that in every generation there arise many of the ‘hosts of Amalek’… We have only to mention men of the stamp of Herod, Hadrian, Haman and Hitler to emphasize the peculiar fanatical suspicion and hatred of the Jew which have characterized those proponents of cruelty.” But Aronin argued that Zakhor should not just remind Jews to remember the cruelty of the enemies of Jews past, but to commit themselves “to unremitting efforts against the forces of ignorance and evil” more broadly. In other words, they should use Zakhor as a call to fight for a better world. In the midst of a news cycle filled with an overwhelming degree of persecution and violence both at home and abroad, Aronin’s call to commit to the fight against ignorance feels particularly resonant and powerful.

Despite the fact that Yiddish has its own words for remembrance and memory, secular Yiddish speakers also evoked Amalek and Zakhor quite frequently. “Amalek” was mentioned in the American Yiddish press a whopping 1,488 times, an astonishing number considering that most Yiddish newspapers in the early twentieth century represented the growing ethos of secular Jewishness. What were they thinking about the week’s Torah portion? To me, this reveals that, much like secular Israelis no doubt understand Netanyahu’s references to Amalek based on their education and cultural touchstones, so too did even the most ardently secular Yiddish speakers.

Not only did Yiddish speakers understand what Amalek referred to, but they still found use for this framing as a tool for understanding their people’s contemporary struggles around the globe. For a wide variety of Jews in the early twentieth century, it seems, the metaphor of Amalek was clear and uncontroversial: several obvious enemies of the Jewish people and so little reason to interpret them otherwise. For Jews at that historical juncture, the commandment to remember yielded possibilities of hope in a context of rising antisemitism and eventually the Holocaust. It is not as easy today to make contemporary connections to Zakhor that work for everyone in a given synagogue, let alone every reader of a Jewish newspaper. I do not envy the rabbis across the country writing their divrei Torah as I write mine, figuring out how to deal with communities that no longer agree on who the enemies of the Jewish people are or how to remember. And yet, as I scrolled through the thousands of articles, interpretations, and words of Torah published in the Jewish press, I found myself comforted by the generations of Jews with different worldviews, languages, and religious practices that forged relationships to the words of Zakhor in their own unique ways. May we find a way to remember, even as contemporary events continuously shift and challenge our understanding of the text.

But what are we to be remembering? The late Rabbi Harold Schulweis, a true moral hero, wrote the following in an essay some years ago: 

“I remember that whenever Reb Shapiro, our Talmud Torah teacher, was angry at us kids he would drop his chalk and begin his sarcastic tirade: ‘Sure, boys, go ahead and talk, play games, don’t pay me any attention. For this our ancestors died to preserve the holy text? For this they suffered from anti-Semites, so that you should talk and fool around?’ Reb Shapiro’s diatribe worked. We all felt properly guilty. We stopped snapping rubber bands, and paid him mock attention, but . . . [it] did not work for too long . . . This kind of scare may work once, twice, three times, but sooner or later it proves counterproductive and is resented as manipulative and insincere . . . Jews can’t be scared into life.”[2]

Remembrance in Jewish circles is usually not so much about God, Torah, ritual, culture, nor even ethics; it is much more about victimization, which let us stipulate is real and not invented. But still, say the words “Jewish remembrance,” or “zakhor,” or perhaps the Yiddish “gedenk,” to yourself, and wait for images to appear. They are quite likely to include some selection of barbed wire, railroad tracks, selection platforms, and/or armed soldiers threatening helpless innocents. Try it on Google Images (best to spell it “zachor”) and see what you get.

It is true, of course, that there are more than enough events of horror and destruction in our past to darken our thoughts. We all know that, nor can we avert our attention from that. Surely not today, when there is more hostility being expressed toward Jews and Judaism than anyone can make their peace with. But if Schulweis is correct—and as an educator, as a rabbi, and as a parent and grandparent, I am certain that he is—then we had better expand our understanding of just what this imperative of zakhor is. Because, as he put it, “To be an anti-anti-Semite does not make you a Jew. It robs you of Jewish song and poetry, Jewish philosophy and Jewish joy.”

A tradition begun by the mystic Rabbi Isaac Luria is to recite six biblical injunctions of remembrances—Zekhirot—each day. Three of them do indeed, and rightly so, focus us on moments of negative valence: The communal failure of faith in the wilderness. The individual moral failure of Miriam—standing in for all of us—in casting aspersions on her own brother Moses. And most prominent is what we will remind ourselves of on Shabbat, i.e., the threatened destruction of the people by the ancient Amalekites. We are enjoined to remember all of those. 

But they are not all. Because the other three are remembrances of an entirely different kind: Remembering the day we left Egypt. Remembering the day we stood at Mount Sinai. And remembering Shabbat. Note well: we are not enjoined to remember the slavery in Egypt. We are obligated to remember the day we left. A day on which we had no real past, but only a future, a yet-to-be-realized potential, spreading out before us—as was the case at Mount Sinai. A people with no past culture or structure, now first receiving the gift of a blueprint for what was to come for them. And remembering Shabbat is perhaps the most primal of all. It takes us back to when God completed God’s solo part in creation, and having just created the human race, invited us to join in the work of building a future for the world that would reflect the peace and joy of Shabbat.

This kind of memory is what we are too short on. Remembering who we are at our core, what our potential is, and the future that we can build given our spiritual resources. It is what a mentor of mine from many years ago, Rabbi Max Arzt, of blessed memory (a former vice chancellor of 91�첥), once pointed out to me on a Tishah Be’av afternoon. The Book of Eichah rather surprisingly indicts Israel by saying—Lo zakhrah aharitah—she did not remember her future (Lam. 1:9). Rabbi Arzt called this “anticipatory memory,” and it has stayed with me ever since. We need to build as many monuments to this inner vitality of Judaism that still has so much to unfold and build in the future as we do to our moments of sorrow and loss in the past. As knowledgeable Jews, and Jewish leaders, we have to be sure to do more than take the absolutely essential care for the welfare of Jews, and their safety and security. We must also attend to the importance of anticipatory memory, that is, of knowing, understanding, and loving what Judaism means and can be in the future, and knowing how to convey that to the next generation. Even if no one were ever again to raise a threatening hand against us.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

[1] Interview with  Sander Gilman, Diacritics, Vol 4, No. 1 (Spring 1974), p. 33.

[2] In God’s Mirror: Reflections and Essays (Jersey City: Ktav, 2003), p.71.

In this commentary, I would like to focus on some of the vestments of Aaron that he wore in his capacity as kohen gadol (High Priest). At the beginning of , the Torah commands that the Israelites who are skilled artisans should prepare a specific list of items for Aaron and the priests to wear. These include the breastpiece, ephod, robe, fringed tunic, headdress, and sash.

Let us take a closer look at the way in which the Torah describes how Aaron must function vis-à-vis the “clothing items.” First, the “ephod” (a garment):

They shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and of fine twisted linen, worked into designs . . . Then take two lazuli stones and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel . . . attach the two stones to the shoulder-pieces of the ephod, as stones for remembrance of the Israelite people, whose names Aaron shall carry upon his two shoulder-pieces for remembrance before the LORD.

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Thus, Aaron is to “carry the names” of the Israelites “for remembrance before the LORD.” Later, we shall return to the question of what “carrying” might mean. Secondly, let us examine another of the items, the “breastplate”:

You shall make a “breastpiece of decision” (hoshen mishpat), worked into a design; make it in the style of the ephod . . . Set in it mounted stones, in four rows of stones . . . The stones shall correspond in number to the names of the sons of Israel: twelve . . . On the breastpiece make braided chains of corded work in pure gold . . . Aaron shall carry the names of the sons of Israel on the breastpiece of decision over his heart, when he enters the sanctuary, for remembrance before the LORD at all times. 30 Inside the breastpiece of decision you shall place the Urim and Thummim, so that they are over Aaron’s heart when he comes before the LORD. Thus Aaron shall carry the instrument of decision for the Israelites over his heart before the LORD at all times.

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Once again, Aaron is described as “carrying” (in these instances, the names, again, and the [breastpiece of] decision). Finally, let us look at the “frontlet” (tzitz) that Aaron is to wear on his headdress:

You shall make a frontlet of pure gold and engrave on it the seal inscription: “Holy to the LORD.” 37 Suspend it on a cord of blue, so that it may remain on the headdress; it shall remain on the front of the headdress. 38 It shall be on Aaron’s forehead, that Aaron may carry any sin arising from the holy things that the Israelites consecrate, from any of their sacred donations; it shall be on his forehead at all times, to win acceptance for them before the LORD.

()

Here, too, as in each of the other cases, the Torah describes Aaron’s function as “carrying” the item, using the Hebrew verb נשׂא (nassa). However, in the first series of commands, the items that Aaron is to carry are physical objects (e.g., stones on the ephod) that function in some unspecified way “on behalf of the Israelites,” whereas in the last case Aaron is to carry the sins of the Israelites. Thus, the Torah uses figurative language (a metaphor) to describe sin as though it is a physical burden that is “carried.” As it happens, imagining sin as a “burden” is the most typical way in which the Torah describes sin; in later biblical passages, as well as in the vast preponderance of rabbinic literature, sin is imagined as a “debt that must be repaid.”[1]

What might the Torah mean that the “frontlet” (or “blossom”) on the headdress would enable Aaron to “bear” or “carry away” the sins of the Israelites—an act that is reminiscent of the function of the “scapegoat” on Yom Kippur (see : “Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness”)?

Rashi had offered the conventional wisdom of the talmudic Rabbis: the frontlet expiated sins that the kohanim may have committed when performing the sacrificial service. However, while Rashi does see that Aaron bears/carries the burden of the sin that had formerly “rested on” the holy things, the phenomenology of the frontlet itself is not as clear in Rashi’s explanation: “Aaron lifts the burden of the sin and (somehow) it follows that the iniquity is dispelled (nimtza mesulak ha-avon).”

Rashbam, Rashi’s grandson, goes out of his way to distinguish his explanation from that of his illustrious predecessor—and from every other interpretation that had been offered. He writes: “My grandfather explained [this portion]. I, too, will explain the items in ways that were never explained before” (Rashbam’s comment on ). In his comment on , Rashbam attempts to explain the way in which the frontlet functioned:

Aaron will take away any sin through the sacrifices: According to its contextual interpretation (peshat), the verse does not speak about the impurity of sacrifices [offered in an incorrect manner]. Rather this is its explanation: whatever sacrifices the Israelites might bring—whole-burnt offerings, purgation offerings or guilt offerings—to atone for their sins, the frontlet will help, together with the sacrifice, to cause them to be remembered before the Holy One, for receiving favor on behalf of the Israelites and as a remembrance for them, so that they will realize atonement.

Now, to be sure, the idea that a specific priestly implement or tool might “help God,” as it were, to “remember” the Israelites during the moment of sacrificial worship, and thereby actually work to create the conditions necessary for their atonement—this idea seems antithetical to the way that most of us think about God. So, however superior Rashbam’s contextual reading of the Torah portion might be to that of Rashi, neither reading may speak to our religious sensibilities, the drash that we need to carry within ourselves (!) when we engage the Torah with religious yearnings in our hearts.

Perhaps another way in which both the Bible and subsequent Jewish tradition have understood the Hebrew verb נשׂא (nassa) may help us out of our predicament—even if it does not precisely fit the language of our Torah portion. For this verb, that we have translated “to carry” or “to bear a burden,” may also mean “to be lifted up,” in the sense of “to exalt” or “to be exalted.” In the case of our Torah portion, as in the case of many of the Jewish rituals we perform to this day, and the Jewish ritual objects with which we adorn ourselves and our homes and dining tables—we know that these implements are not totems or actual “power-containing” tools that will “work” on their own. To believe this literally (whether with regard to mezuzot, tefillin, or any other ritual object) is to commit idolatry; or in the Bible’s own language, “to worship gods of wood and stone.” Ritual objects are not “sacred” in and of themselves—they are only “sacred” if they remind us to perform mitzvot, to become better human beings, to be more compassionate and sensitive towards our fellow human beings, and to be more truly worshipful of the One True God. To invoke an ancient midrash on one of the Levitical tasks (see ): the Levites may have been the ones charged with carrying the Ark—but it was the Ark that exalted the Levites. There are many implications of this alternative definition of the verb nassa, but perhaps the most prominent one for now is: we should try our hardest to make sure that the burdens we carry will exalt us instead of weighing us down.

A version of this commentary appeared in 2010.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (��”l) Hassenfeld.

[1] For detailed explanation of the figurative language Judaism and Christianity have employed to describe sin, see the wonderful and readable book by Professor Gary Anderson of Notre Dame University, Sin: A History (Yale University Press).

Remember what Amalek did to you by the way, when you came forth out of Egypt; how he met you by the way, and struck at your rear, all who were feeble behind you, when you were faint and weary; and he did not fear God. Therefore it shall be, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around, in the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance to possess, that you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget it.

The Performance of Memory (Dr. Avinoam Patt): Zakhor in the context of Amalek reinforces the importance of the victim’s voice and the role of the persecuted and the oppressed in recording their history both during and after collective trauma. 

Amalek (song lyrics) (Rabbi Jan Uhrbach): Song lyrics connecting Haman and Amalek as the personification of evil

Memory: Judaism’s Lifeblood (Dr. Ismar Schorsch): The centrality of memory in Jewish practice

“Do Not Forget.” (Rabbi Marc Wolf): Remembering Amalek recalls all genocide and it is up to us to intervene

Remembering to Forget (Rabbi Andrew Shugerman): Connecting the paradoxical commandment from Deutoronomy with the Purim Story

Taming the Beast of Extremism(Dr. Ismar Schorsch): Grappling with the exhortation against Amalek in light of the Hebron massacre

What We Are Asked to Remember(Rabbi Yehoshua Aizenberg): Exploring the history of Argentine Jews through the commandment to Remember Amalek

One of the first things to note is that the lavish nature of the Mishkan is not the only image the Torah knows of Israelite worship sites. The Mishkan’s Ark of the Covenant was richly overlaid with gold, with a solid gold covering that featured golden cherubim. Yet Deuteronomy, in its account of Moses replacing the shattered first Tablets, has God say simply and tersely, “make an ark of wood.” Though Deuteronomy does refer repeatedly to an exclusive place of worship that God will choose, no richly finished and furnished Temple is described. Moreover, the account of the Mishkan at the end of Exodus made much of the fact that it would be sanctified by the “Kavod”—God’s palpable Presence. But Deuteronomy pointedly calls the chosen site of worship “the place where God’s Name will dwell.” The late biblical scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky dubbed this the “relay station”; i.e., God’s Name is invoked there, and the offerings and prayers are conveyed from there to the God of Heaven.

We previously encountered this preference for the simple in the earlier chapters of Exodus.  Consider what was said there about a proper altar:

Make for Me an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your sacrifices of wellbeing. . . . And if you make for Me an altar of stones, do not build it of hewn stones, for by wielding your tool upon them you have profaned them.

Exod. 20:21–22

In this alternate vision, the altar is not to be created by skilled artisans and overlaid with polished bronze. Rather, it is to be simple earth. And if you are in a rocky place? Well then, a stone altar is OK, provided it is not worked with a tool. Otherwise, the tool will render it profane. Note well: the finishing tool is a desacralizer.

Solomon’s opulent Temple in a later time stands quite clearly in contrast to such ideal visions. But even that Temple, with its finished magnificence and rich trappings, still paid homage to the ancient concern about the intrusion of technology by insisting that if the stones were to be dressed, that had to be done out of sight and out of earshot of the place of worship itself: when the House was built, only finished stones cut at the quarry were used, so that no hammer or ax or any iron tool was heard in the House while it was being built (1 Kings 6:7).

Thus there is an old tradition of simplicity that opposes the grandiosity of the Mishkan, but what was the idea behind it? Consider a terse comment by Abraham ibn Ezra: there should be only complete stones, just as they were created (Short Commentary on Exodus 20:22). That phrase—“just as they were created”—is an essential gloss. It is as if attempting to worship God by means of something created by our wisdom is somehow to miss the entire point. The more ancient commentary on Exodus known as the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai nicely captures what this is all about:

“Do not build it of hewn stones.” . . . from where are they to be brought? From virginal land: one digs until a place is reached in which it is clear that there has been neither work nor building there, and the stones in that place are then removed.

In 2003, I met a fascinating archaeologist named Uzi Avner, who had studied desert culture extensively. One of the things he repeatedly encountered was that ancient worship sites in the wilderness almost always featured uncut, rough, natural matzevot (pillars) to represent the divine:

Crude stone, shaped by nature, or God, not by man, is sacred and appropriate for cult purposes. . . . [this opposition to human technology in worship] was shared by the prehistoric desert religions, by the Israelites, the Nabataeans, and Islam, all with desert roots.

“Sacred Stones in the Desert,” Biblical Archeology Review, 2001

The view that the elaborate Mishkan was not the ideal had additional roots in rabbinic literature.  Abraham Joshua Heschel noted Rabbi Yishmael’s disagreement with the view that the Mishkan was part of God’s plan from the start:

Rabbi Ishmael . . . understood that the command to build the Tabernacle . . . was not given until after the Israelites created the golden calf. What forced Rabbi Ishmael to postdate the building of the Tabernacle? It must be a reflection of the conviction that this command did not enter the divine mind until Israel sinned . . . when it was clear that they were prone to idolatry, the command was given to build a Tabernacle and to bring sacrificial animals to the officiating priests.

(Heavenly Torah, 76)

In this view, the Mishkan, and a fortiori the more fixed and formalized Temple, is not about bringing us close but, on the contrary, is institutionalized distance. Keeping the people, who were prone to idolatrous attachment to their own artifices, safely away from the seat of worship, lest they mistake what they have erected and created for the essence of religion.

Remarkably, Leonard Cohen seemed to have intuited this very idea in his song “Lover Come Back To Me.” Here are the relevant stanzas:

I asked my father, I said, “Father change my name.”
The one I’m using now it’s covered up
with fear and filth and cowardice and shame.
“Let me start again,” I cried, “please let me start again,
I want a face that’s fair this time,
I want a spirit that is calm.”
“I never never turned aside,” He said, “I never walked away.
It was you who built the temple,
it was you who covered up My face.”

Building Temples runs the risk of obscuring God’s face. We may of necessity build institutions that are essential to provide a locus for our religious needs. But we should never lose sight of the fact that they will always have the potential of distancing us, rather than drawing us close, if we cannot retain the simplicity that undergirds the life of the spirit.

This is not an argument against technology and human artifice per se. But when you think about it, religious reforms usually bring with them returns to greater simplicity. It is not only true of the Shakers, who sang of the “gift to be simple, the gift to be free.” We ourselves have a clear strain within our tradition of a preference for the simple as a precondition for true worship. Or at least we can say this: we have long recognized that an imbalance toward what human technology creates, even when yielding blessing—and certainly an idolization of what human ingenuity has produced—will ultimately distance us from God.

There may not only be environmental wisdom in greater simplicity. There may also be great spiritual depth, and opportunity for encountering God, in some human and humane simplicity as well.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

Shabbat Zakhor of 2020 was the last normal Shabbat service I attended. The Megillah reading on Purim night was the last normal communal event—though the sanctuary was only half full as coronavirus anxiety began to take hold. By week’s end, the synagogue, the kids’ schools, and my place of work were all physically closed. The shock of that unceremonious and all-encompassing cessation of life as we knew it evokes difficult memories, even after a year of this new normal—a constrained existence that many of us are still struggling to accept.

Countless people have lost loved ones, their own health, jobs, or homes to this pandemic. For those who have been spared these losses, and who have the luxury of working from home, perhaps the most conspicuous change in our lives has been the confinement to our residences. We have been deprived wholesale of entering the many other spaces that have defined the rhythms of our days, weeks, and years, our lifecycle events from birth to death. So it seems fitting for this fraught anniversary to coincide with the part of the Torah reading cycle that focuses on sacred space.

The four parshiyot devoted to the construction of the Mishkan—the portable Tabernacle that accompanied the Israelites through the desert—can be challenging to relate to. What contemporary meaning can we draw from the fastidious attention to detail regarding the specifications for each part of the Mishkan and the many sacred objects within it? This year, the Torah’s preoccupation with sacred space invites us each to consider what we have learned about space in our year without. These are the lessons that my own reflections have yielded:

Details matter. Throughout history, humans have designed specific spaces for specific needs—be they spiritual, social, aesthetic, intellectual, or utilitarian. The Mishkan was a space for encountering God. Considering its lofty and crucial function—along with the need for a stable structure that could be assembled and disassembled many times with limited tools—it’s no wonder that the instructions were delivered in highly specific detail up front and then repeated upon execution. The dimensions and materials, the ritual garments and many objects of worship, were of the utmost importance both religiously and architecturally. It had to be done right to achieve its purpose.

Do we pay any less attention to detail in the spaces that we design today? Consider the months and even years that go into the design and construction of synagogues and schools, theatres and museums. We obsess over the marriage of form and function in the creation of these structures, each for its designated purpose. As our physical landscapes have narrowed dramatically over the past year, we have found ways to gather, learn, pray, play, exercise, cook, and even travel from our screens. But we are painfully aware of how these virtual substitutes fail to achieve what physical spaces can.

So much of what we need is, as they say, in the details. A virtual Shabbat service lacks the ambient rustle of tallitot and turning pages in siddurim; the acoustics that allow our voices to soar; the glimmer of light reflecting off the polished brass of the ner tamid; the particular religiosity evoked in the final seconds before the ark curtains close. Saying goodbye to someone we love without accompanying their wooden coffin to the grave; without the serenity of a cemetery enveloping us; without the texture of sanctified earth beneath our shoes—how can we mourn and grieve without the physical trappings through which we honor their memory and begin to let them go? Like the many details of the Mishkan, these details of our physical spaces matter. They are crucial tools that enable a space to facilitate the specific experiences that we need. The loss of all that they provide is profound.

We need reassurance that we are not alone. Bible scholar Nahum Sarna (��”l) points out that the core function of the Mishkan was “to serve as the symbol of God’s continued Presence in the midst of Israel . . . . It is not designed, as are modern places of worship, for communal use” (The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus, 155). From ancient times to the present, people have found ways to connect to the divine in many different places. Jacob became aware of God’s presence in a seemingly random spot along the road upon waking from his dream of the ladder (Gen. 28:10–19). Today, we might feel God at the site of a natural or architectural wonder; in a concert hall resounding with music; in a hospital room with a newborn baby or a soul about to depart from this world.

And yet, there are many times in our lives when it’s not so easy to feel that God is there, and so places of worship play a unique role because they are designed with the express purpose of cultivating our awareness of the divine. The words “Know before Whom you stand” are found above the ark in many a synagogue. Church iconography affirms God’s presence even more explicitly for those who worship there. So, too, the Israelites derived spiritual reassurance from a physical home for God in their midst; “let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them,” God says (Exod. 25:8).

We share that need for reassurance—but we can no longer go to the places where we have grown accustomed to finding it. Religious communities have helped their members cope with the isolation of the pandemic through phone trees, care packages, pastoral counseling, and innumerable Zoom sessions; but I suspect that many people are nonetheless struggling with a sense of disconnection from God out of prolonged absence from the spaces designed to inspire faith and prayer. Spiritual isolation—though rarely discussed in the public sphere—is, I believe, just as prevalent as social isolation in COVID times, and just as unsustainable.  

It isn’t only the assurance of God’s presence that we are missing. The many people beyond our inner circle—the co-workers, coffee shop clerks, gym buddies, and fellow commuters who bring texture and color to the fabric of our lives—have fallen away. In normal times, countless casual interactions serve to assure us that we are not alone—that we are part of the larger project of human life and community. A recent piece in the Atlantic powerfully describes how essential to our wellbeing these “weak ties” are, in ways that we tend to overlook. Our expulsion from ostensibly non-sacred spaces—the office, the mall, the bowling alley—leaves us bereft as well.

Our spaces symbolize our values. The Israelites did not gather en masse in the Mishkan. Rather, a small number of priests carried out the most sacred functions on the people’s behalf. The people aspired to be in relationship with God, and the priests facilitated that relationship through their holy work. The Mishkan thus became “the focus of national unity” even though it was only religious leaders who were there (Sarna, ibid.).

I cannot help but think of the US Capitol in this context. Though most Americans never set foot there, our elected representatives carry out the sacred duties of democracy on our behalf in that space—a space hallowed by our defining national aspiration to enable the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of every American. There are, to be sure, many differences between the Capitol and the Mishkan; but both are manifestations of communal devotion to a higher cause. Then and now, we need spaces safe from assault where our leaders can work toward realizing our shared values and ideals.

Finally, on this Shabbat of Remembering, let us not forget the millions of people excluded from these diverse spaces far beyond the pandemic: those bound to their homes by disability; seniors whose ill health keeps them in nursing homes; the incarcerated, confined to spaces that are antithetical to the thriving of the human spirit. The protracted spatial deprivation that most are suffering through only temporarily is the long-term reality of so many of our fellow human beings, and the damage caused by their confinement is deep and lasting.

We are, and always have been, hardwired to rely on designated physical spaces to address our core needs. Notwithstanding the unprecedented opportunities for connection made possible by the digital era, Zoom will never replicate the benefits that we derive from the spaces beyond our homes. As I understand the Mishkan in this new, pandemic-influenced light, I pray that we will soon return to the beloved spaces that now stand empty, with renewed appreciation for what they offer us. The human soul needs space—both sacred and mundane—to breathe and grow.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Remember what Amalek did to you by the way, when you came forth out of Egypt; how he met you by the way, and struck at your rear, all who were feeble behind you, when you were faint and weary; and he did not fear God. Therefore it shall be, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around, in the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance to possess, that you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget it. (Deut. 25:17-19)

Because of this reading it is called Shabbat Zakhor (Remember). The verses recited in Deuteronomy are in effect already a remembering of what Amalek did shortly after the flight from Egypt, and the commandment to remember Amalek in Deuteronomy is in fact the second time this tale is recounted, the first being in its place in the narrative:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord is my banner, saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord Jacob! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. (Exod. 17:14-16)

In Exodus, we thus have the first reference in the Torah to the act of memorial writing. The explicit implication here is that the act of writing and reciting, recording the history and recounting it verbally, will blot out the memory of Amalek, even though every generation will be forced to confront Amalek again and again. This is a battle that is continued throughout the ages: Saul and Samuel battle the Amalekites and King Agag (described in the haftarah reading for Shabbat Zakhor from I Sam. 15-24); later in Jewish history, we learn in the Book of Esther that Haman, a descendant of Agag, also set out to destroy the Jewish people; and again, during and after WWII, comparisons between Hitler and Haman were commonplace.

So what is the special significance of Shabbat Zakhor beyond remembering to remember Amalek? We know that Judaism is a religion that is built on a foundation of memory, on the commandment zakhor. In his masterwork on the subject (Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory), Yosef Haim Yerushalmi notes that zakhor is repeated nearly 200 times in the Hebrew Bible, with both Israel and God commanded to remember: to remember the Sabbath, to remember the covenant, to remember the Exodus from Egypt. Judaism is a religion of remembering and, implicitly, of not forgetting. As Yerushalmi suggests, one might argue that the commandment to remember has been central to the survival of the Jews in dispersion over thousands of years. How else can we explain the continuity of the Jewish people through millennia of migration, relocation, persecution, destruction, and renewal?

The commandment zakhor has taken on new implications in the aftermath of the Holocaust as the commandments to remember and to bear witness have been integrated into modern Jewish observance. But how can we simultaneously perform the act of remembrance while blotting out the memory of Amalek, as both passages in the Torah require? Zakhor in the context of Amalek reinforces the importance of the victim’s voice and the role of the persecuted and the oppressed in recording their history both during and after collective trauma. This act of remembrance has not only historical and ethical value, but is of great psychological importance, too. Perhaps, in keeping with Purim’s combination of memory and levity, this can best be illustrated through a joke.

During and after the war, allusions to Hitler as Haman and the belief that he would meet the same end as Haman were common. One joke included in Steve Lipman’s Laughter in Hell went as follows:

Hitler, not being a religious man, was inclined to consult his astrologers about the future. As the tide of the war worsened, he asked, “Am I going to lose the war?” Answered affirmatively, he then asked, “Well, am I going to die?” Consulting their charts, the astrologers again said yes. “When am I going to die?” was Hitler’s next question. This time the answer was, “You’re going to die on a Jewish holiday.” But when … on what Jewish holiday?” he asked with agitation. The reply: “Any day you die will be a Jewish holiday.” (201-202)

Understandably, the first Purim celebration after liberation in Germany was a long-awaited holiday in the DP camps. In Landsberg, survivors organized a week-long Purim carnival that included a symbolic burning of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (which had been written in the local prison in 1924); a parade of workers, schools, kibbutzim, and various organizations; and, of course, the wearing of costumes. The Landsberger Lager Cajtung reported that, at the entrance to Landsberg, “Hitler hangs in many variations and in many poses; a big Hitler, a fat Hitler, a small Hitler, with medals and without medals. Jews hung him by his head, by his feet, or by his belly.”¹ Leo Srole, the UN-appointed welfare director for Landsberg and one of the organizers of the 1946 Purim carnival, later recalled: “It was (a day) of such elation, I had never seen anything like it … Hitler and Haman now had their due.”² As a poster from Landsberg announced: “In the city where Hitler wrote his Kampf, the Jews will celebrate the greatest Purim tow-szin-wow-hey [the transliteration of the Jewish year 5706], the Purim of Hitler’s downfall!”³ These reenactments of Purim in the aftermath of the Holocaust not only fulfilled the obligation to remember Amalek and to record the history of the latest destruction, they served as a poignant reminder of am yisrael hai, that the People Israel endures.

The performance of memory—through deeds, actions, and speech—assists in the process of not forgetting. But the act of writing and recording the events after they have transpired, and not forgetting them, also ensures that, by taking on the mandate of remembering and retelling, that the truth will win out and that history will record the perspective of the victims, not just the perpetrators. Those who seek to erase history, to deny the existence of evil, and to ignore the face of injustice and persecution only benefit when we do not remember. However, if we engage in the process of remembering Amalek, then those who endure and triumph over evil in confronting the persistence of Amalek—be it in the form of prejudice, discrimination, anti-Semitism, racism, or xenophobia—will ultimately enjoy the last laugh.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

¹ YIVO (DP periodicals), reel 1/1, Landsberger Lager Cajtung (22 March 1946).

² Toby Blum-Dobkin, “The Landsberg Carnival: Purim in a Displaced Persons Center,” in Purim: The Face and the Mask, ed. Shifra Epstein (New York: 1979), 52-59; Leo Srole, quoted in Elliot S. Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton: 2006), 91.

³ YIVO (DP Germany Collection), RG 294.2, MK 483, reel 61/753, “Poster from Landsberg for a Workers’ Purim Carnival in Landsberg” (15 March 1946).