Commentary on the Torah reading for Shabbat Zachor (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)
“We’re all in this thing together
Walkin’ the line between faith and fear
This life don’t last forever
When you cry I taste the salt in your tears”—Old Crow Medicine Show
Memory is at the very core of our identities. Jewish memory is both personal and communal, from daily Kaddish for a loved one who has left this world to remembering the highs and lows in Jewish history. Memory is a generative act — creating, sustaining, and recreating our identity aligned with our most precious values.
Shabbat Zachor is literally the Shabbat of Remembering. The importance is so great that on this day — unlike any other day of the year — there is a special mitzvah to be in community to hear the Torah read out loud; a mitzvah that is not even found for Yom Kippur, Passover, or any other holy day.
So, nu, what is so important that we remember?
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On Shabbat Zachor we read: “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt — how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear” (Deuteronomy 25:17-18). Like Haman of the Purim story, Amalek has become the symbol for all those who seek to harm Jews, destroy the Jewish community, or hurt the stragglers in society.
Not the most uplifting of all passages from the Torah. In fact, left to my druthers, I wouldn’t rank it at the top. So what, precisely, is going on here?
As it turns out, I’m not the first to ask this question. Rabbi Simcha Bunem (a Polish Chasidic leader, 1765–1827) had the same question. He instructs us that there is a core Jewish value at the heart of our Torah reading. Rabbi Simcha teaches: “Amalek couldn’t have triumphed and killed so many Israelites had they not separated from the group…Rather, whenever we have group cohesion, then Amalek is not able to conquer them.”
Rabbi Simcha teaches that when we separate ourselves from the community, everyone is weakened — and hatred and destruction gain the upper hand. Today, our communities run the risk of being hollowed out. At a time when we are more “connected” than ever before, our social network is fraying. We have fewer friends, live further away from those whom we love, and spend less time away from work. When our communities wane, Amalek gains in strength, God forbid.
Memory is central to our process of defining and redefining our community. The Old Crow Medicine Show song quoted above resides at the core of a powerful memory that I carry with me wherever I wander. As a member of the chaplaincy team at Elon University, I had the blessing to work closely with some truly amazing human beings — including my brother, Father Peter Tremblay. When Father Peter was sharing part of his remarkable personal journey, he asked me to sing a couple of songs to accompany the event. This song symbolized our commitment to being “in this thing together.” Community offers us the opportunity to bear each other’s suffering — “when you cry I taste the salt in your tears.”
As Rabbi Simcha would guide us, the answer is building thicker relationships with those around us. I think he would really like the Old Crow song — “walkin’ the line between faith and fear.” Bearing another’s burden, in part, is a lesson in humility. It requires that we lower the volume on our own needs, opinions, and suffering, and listen to the narrative of another. In this time of fraying social networks, we are forgetting how to live in relationship with others who think differently, who love differently, and (especially) who vote differently. Times like these make it easy for Amalek to rise again — through the specter of alienation, hatred, and dehumanization.
Shabbat Zachor reminds us the central role that memory plays in our lives, both psychologically and communally. Rabbi Simcha Bunem teaches us that we are essentially social creatures, and that the strength of our communities is truly a life-or- death matter. May this special Shabbat empower us to recommit to our communal lives, to seek out opportunities to bear each other’s burdens, and to keep it right on our hearts that “we’re all in this thing together.”
Rabbi Meir Goldstein is the rabbi and executive director at Dartmouth College Hillel. He was ordained at the Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies at the American Jewish University. The greatest blessings in Rabbi Meir’s life are his wife Laura, his family by blood and by choice, and his students.
