On this coming Shabbat we arrive at one of the most morally charged moments in our liturgical year: Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of Remembering.

The Torah commands us, in words that reverberate across centuries, “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey.” The scene is searing. We have just crossed the Sea. We are newly liberated, disoriented, fragile. And Amalek attacks from behind, striking those who lag, those who are most vulnerable. The Torah does not describe a conventional battle between armies. It describes cruelty aimed at the stragglers: the tired, the children, those who could not keep pace.

And then comes the paradox. We are commanded to remember. And in the same breath, we are commanded to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Remember, and erase. Hold on, and let go.

Rachel Goldberg Polin notes the irony that because we are told to eternally erase Haman, the descendant of Amalek, we have ensured that his name is never forgotten. The very act of ritualized erasure engraves memory more deeply. The Torah understands something about the human heart. Memory does not disappear through suppression. It is transformed through sacred framing.

So what is it that we are being asked to remember?

Not only an ancient tribe. Not only a historical enemy. We are asked to remember what Amalek represents: the assault on the vulnerable, the exploitation of weakness, the targeting of those at the margins. If a community wishes to call itself holy, it must measure its moral worth not by how it treats the powerful but by how it protects the fragile.

(This commandment lands with particular force during Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month. Amalek attacked those who lagged behind. A sacred community closes ranks around those who move differently, who process differently, who live differently. The Torah’s moral calculus is simple and exacting: our goodness is revealed at the edges.)

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg writes in his magisterial book on the Jewish Holidays, “The Jewish Way,” that the mitzvah of zachor has long made modern Jews uncomfortable. “We are future oriented.” We prefer healing to hurting, optimism to ache. “Forget and forgive becomes the slogan.” We are told that reconciliation requires amnesia. Sometimes, he notes with painful clarity, even the victims are chastised for keeping memory alive.

And yet, less than three years after October 7, who among us can pretend that the past is simply past? Who among us has not felt the tension between the desire to move forward and the responsibility to carry what has been seared into our collective consciousness?

There sometimes arises a debate in Jewish educational circles: how much Holocaust education is too much? The concern is that an overemphasis on trauma might eclipse the vibrancy of Jewish life, the joy and creativity that define us. Deborah Lipstadt has spoken of reclaiming “the joy, not only the oy.” That concern is real. Judaism is not a museum of suffering.

But Shabbat Zachor insists that forgetting is not the path to redemption.

Rabbi Greenberg argues that genuine reconciliation does not emerge from forgetting and forgiving alone. It requires teshuvah and memory. Repentance and remembrance. We would add vigilance. Because there is such a thing as Amalek in the world. Not every evil is Amalek. We must be disciplined in our moral language. But there are moments when cruelty is not confusion, when hatred is not misunderstanding.

“Naivete and amnesia always favor the aggressor,” Rabbi Greenberg writes. Amalek sought to annihilate not only a people but its memory. Amnesia completes the work the aggressor began.

Is not forgetting is the same as remembering? Perhaps there is a subtle distinction.

Not forgetting may be a covenant of loyalty to those who endured. A refusal to betray testimony. As Elie Wiesel taught, to be a witness to a witness is to become a witness. Not Forgetting anchors us in fidelity to the past.

Remembering, however, may be more active. It may be the work of shaping memory into moral resolve. Not forgetting preserves truth. Remembering mobilizes it.

On Shabbat Zachor we stand in community to hear these verses read aloud. It is considered a special mitzvah to hear them. We do not outsource memory to history books. We ritualize it. We sanctify it. We let it disturb us.

We expose ourselves to the ragged past so that our children will not be raised on naivete. We resist the seductive simplicity of forget and forgive when repentance has not occurred. We guard against conflating all enemies into one, even as we refuse to deny that enemies exist.

And we remember vulnerability.

Vulnerability is not a flaw in the human condition. It is the human condition. Our ancestors were vulnerable in the wilderness. We are vulnerable still. But awareness of vulnerability is not weakness. It is wisdom. It is what compels us to build communities that close ranks around those at risk. It is what sharpens our moral perception.

May we honor those who suffered by refusing to forget.

May we honor the future by choosing to remember.

May our remembrance make us more vigilant, more compassionate, and more fiercely protective of the vulnerable in our midst.

May we remember faithfully.

And may we never forget.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)