Choosing Love

“Ahhh, the monster is coming!” my two-and-a-half-year-old shrieks. “Quick, hide under the blanket. It’s a scary one!”

I know this game well. As I’ve written about before, my now four-and-a-half-year-old used to do the exact same thing two years ago. While in some ways this feels like déjà vu, it also feels different this time around. It feels more pressing. More real.

We live in a world of seemingly unimaginable, real life scary monsters—some who wield enormous power, others epitomize evil with no regard for human life, and some who choose hatred for no reason. Once we make it under the blanket, my son squeals with delight as we feel the warmth of each other’s breath, the safety, the calm. I find myself tearing up, overcome by the power of love and, at the same time, by a sense of urgency. I so desperately want to shield him from all the monsters in our world.

This Shabbat, the one preceding Purim, is known as Shabbat Zakhor—the Shabbat of Remembering. Instead of rereading a few lines of the parashah for the maftir aliyah, we will read the following verses from Parashat Ki Tetze out of a second Torah scroll:

“You shall remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you went out of Egypt—how he happened upon you on the way and cut off all the stragglers at your rear, when you were faint and weary, and he did not fear God. Therefore, when Adonai your God grants you respite from all your enemies around you in the land which Adonai, your God, gives you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget!”
(Devarim 25:17-19)

The mitzvah (commandment) is clear: First, we must remember the evil that Amalek–our enemy–committed against B’nai Israel as they wandered the desert, attacking from behind and preying on the weakest. And second, we must blot them out.

I have never been fully comfortable with this mitzvah. The command to remember feels imperative, but the directive to turn toward violence feels vengeful and cyclical. I like to think of remembering as a vehicle toward healing and justice rather than perpetuating harm. I feel a similar discomfort as we get to the end of Megillat Esther—the part our teachers left out in Hebrew school—where the plot twists and, in an act of revenge, the Jews kill tens of thousands of Persians. I’m grateful that here at BJ, when we read the ninth chapter of the megillah, we dim the lights.

It is so tempting to meet hate with hate.

But we can’t give in. Going into this Shabbat Zakhor, I want to turn toward the teaching of the 18th-century Hasidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, also known as the Kedushat Levi. He reframes this mitzvah by turning it inward. He teaches that since every person is considered a world, and the seed of Amalek is always present in the world, this mitzvah is not only about erasing external evil—it is about eradicating the Amalek within ourselves. Our prejudices or fear-driven reactions. The parts of us that are tempted by hate and by violence.

On this Shabbat Zakhor, don’t hear these words as an invitation to lean into hate. Hear them as a plea to remember—and then to blot out—the fearful, reactive parts of ourselves that crave revenge, that instinctively seek to meet hate with more hate. Let these words awaken us to the reality that the only blanket that can shield us and our children from the scary monsters of our world is the unwavering power of love.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rebecca Weintraub