Every Purim and Pesach, my beloved Holocaust survivor mother would say with great emphasis, “Zachor asher asah lecha Amalek… al tishkach”, “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey when you came out of Israel, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven, Do not forget!”

My mom’s admonition was never just a historical recall, but a moral imperative from personal experience to recognize evil and hatred wherever it appears and to remain vigilant against it. For my late mother, invoking Amalek wasn’t a symbol but a present reality. 

Since October 7th, the eerie sounds that many Israelis have nightmares about in our sleep or hear at the oddest times like a car backing up, an ambulance siren, or a gate opening. Yesterday’s sirens discouraged me from going to synagogue and hearing Parashat Zachor directly from the Torah reading. But I definitely felt that I didn’t need reminding, I’ve been living it every day for the past two and a half years. 

The Holocaust memory imprinted on me as a second- generation survivor is what happens when the world ignores evil and fails to confront it decisively and early. However, I am also a trauma therapist, and the Biblical imperative and my mother’s warning is etched in my psyche.

The command “to remember” sounds like an invitation to remain stuck in trauma and never move past the pain. Noting that the Biblical story of Amalek said that Amalekites chased the recently freed Israelites and attacked the vulnerable, the tired, the stragglers, and those who had fallen behind. Often, I see in my work that trauma begins in moments of depletion and disconnection. I suggest that Amalek’s cruelty against the Israelites was not only an attack on those in the rear but a physical attack against those who were also vulnerable because they were depleted emotionally and spiritually.

As a trauma therapist living through this war, I am struck by how the ancient reference to Amalek is not only metaphor but also a foreboding direction. Trauma is not born only from the blow itself, but from the moment when a person or a people is caught depleted, disconnected, or unprotected. The Israelites were attacked “when they were faint and weary,” and that is precisely when trauma imprints most deeply, when the nervous system has no reserves left to absorb the shock.

In my clinic here in Israel, I have seen this pattern repeat itself. Clients who were functioning well often suddenly find themselves overwhelmed by intrusive memories, panic, or a sense of collapse. Parents who have held their families together for years now tremble at night. Soldiers who have faced danger before describe the build up to this war as different, not only because of the physical threat, but because of the way we were blind-sided on the 7th, and now the sense that the ground beneath us is shifting.

War does not create trauma in a vacuum but lands on the layers already inside us.  At times it’s the inherited vigilance of the second generation, the collective memory of persecution, or the personal stories of loss. For many Israelis, this latest war does not just trigger fear but reactivates an ancestral alarm system that has been humming quietly for decades.

There is a paradox in doing trauma work during wartime. I sit with clients whose bodies shake with fear while my own body is bracing for the next siren. I guide others to breathe deeply while often my own breath is shallow. I help people find safety while knowing that safety is, at best, conditional.

This is not a failure of professionalism but the reality of shared trauma. In Israel today, therapists and clients are not on opposite sides of the experience. We are living through the same rupture, the same uncertainty, the same existential threat. We must appreciate that the therapeutic space can become a shelter within a shelter, a safe place to feel, reflect and contemplate. 

I recognize that something profound happens in these moments. When a client says, “I don’t know how to keep going,” and I feel the same fear in my own chest, the work becomes more honest. We are not pretending that everything is fine. We are practicing how to stay human in the midst of chaos.

The command to remember Amalek is often misunderstood as a call to remain frozen in trauma. But remembering, in the biblical sense, is not passive. It is an act of moral clarity. It is the refusal to normalize cruelty. It is the insistence that vulnerability must be protected, not exploited.

As a therapist, I see remembering as a form of integration. I have learned that the traumatic experience fragments our psyche. However, within a professional therapeutic relationship, we reconnect pieces of our life in a healthy way. To remember is to say: This happened. It shaped me. And I will not let it define the future without my participation.

In this war that began with Parashat Zachor, remembering means to recognize the reality of evil without becoming consumed by it. We must name our fear without surrendering to it and stay connected to one another so that no one becomes the “straggler” left behind.

The mitzvah is not to live in fear, but to live with awareness, to see danger clearly and still choose courage, unity, and responsibility.

Sitting in the shelter as the siren wailed, I heard my mother’s voice inside me, not as a warning to be afraid, but as a reminder to stay awake. To see what is happening. To protect what is precious. To refuse to let trauma isolate us from one another.

We are living through a moment that will shape the next generation’s nervous system, just as our parents’ and grandparents’ experiences shaped ours. The question is not whether this time will leave a mark, it will. The question is what meaning we will make of it, and how we will transmit this experience to the next generation.

In the end, Zachor is not only a command to remember the past. It is a call to shape the future with clarity, compassion, and courage, especially in the shadow of war.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)