Shabbat Zachor 2018/5778: The Parkland, FL Tragedy - How do we remember?

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 2^nd 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.