In an old favorite World War 2 movie, actor Eric Stoltz,
playing a crewman on a B-17 bomber out of England, reads a poem to his
crew-mates as they wait to go up on a mission – I’d like to share just the end
of the poem:
I balanced all
Brought all to mind
The years to come seemed a waste of breath
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life
This death
In this poem, an Irish fighter pilot reflects on his fate.
As the poem ends with these words, there is a deep and
lasting silence.
It is the same deep and lasting silence of Aaron after God
strikes down his 2 sons Nadav & Avihu – Vayidom Aharon, and Aaron was
silent.
And it is the same silence, as we continue to reflect and
remember, and amidst a flurry of advocacy and lobbying, that surrounds Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, and Sandy Hook elementary school in
Newtown, Connecticut.
What is the best way to remember?
This Shabbat, Shabbat Zachor – the Shabbat of Memory – asks
us this question.
We always read the Maftir reading from the 2nd
Torah on the Shabbat just before Purim.
It is the story of how Amalek, marauders in the wilderness, attack the
Isarelites, ambushing the weakest of us first.
Haman from the Purim story….wait, I said Haaayman!...is a descendant of
Agag, a latter day King of Amalek. The
attack they launch against our ancestors foreshadows Haman’s planned massacre
of the Jews during the days of the Persian empire.
Our maftir reading begins, telling us Remember what Amalek
did to you in the wilderness, but then toward the end God instructs us to
obliterate the memory of Amalek from under heaven.
These two statements contradict.
And then the final two words are lo tish’kach, do not forget.
How can we eliminate the memory of Amalek but remember what
happened at the same time?
Could somehow choose to forget the name while remembering
the incident?
The mind does not work that way – our minds keep everything
together.
In Florida, they will tear down building 12 and put up a
memorial in its place. In Connecticut,
the new Sandy Hook school opened in 2016 after the prior building was
demolished.
In Europe, they preserve the concentration camps as places
to witness and learn.
The teaching of Shabbat Zachor is that we may want to rid
the world of places that carry horrible memories, but if we do that in every
case – we risk also losing a place of witness, a place that makes us
uncomfortable so that we remember whether we want to or not.
We tend to forget easily when we’re not compelled to
remember.
That’s what God is concerned about since we will be settled
comfortably in the Promised Land, and then the sense of urgency will be
gone.
If only that were the case today.
And so we need to keep alive the sense of urgency.
Especially on this Shabbat as we get ready to celebrate
Purim, that remembers a time when Esther stepped in to prevent the violence
from happening, and we sing, and we’re silly, we need to continue to re-light
the fires of awareness and empathy with the families of Parkland, Florida,
Newtown, and all the other places where violence stained otherwise happy places
of learning, socializing, and more.
God says, remember what Amalek did to you on your journey,
asher k’archa ba’derech, I’d like to thank Art Werschulz for sharing this
midrash earlier this week that is especially appropriate today – what happened
to you, kar’cha – our Sages in this word heard the word kor, meaning cold, that
Amalek took away our excitement and spirit and replaced it with coldness, with
doubt and fear. The Rabbis compare this
to one who has a very hot bath set up, so hot that no one even wants to get in,
and a nudnik comes along and jumps in, and even though he gets burned, he’s
made the water cool enough for others to jump in.
According to Rashi, Amalek did the same thing – they “cooled
us down” as it were, made us vulnerable.
And if we are feeling vulnerable, or feeling our kids are
vulnerable, then we need to join together in unity, faith, and mutual support
so that when a moment of deep and lasting silence comes again, God forbid, we
can rise again, rebuild, strengthen ourselves and others, and know we are not
alone.
