Far more puzzling for some readers - and it says something about Jewish culture that this now includes Jews - is the at times disturbingly violent nature of some other passages, in particular in the books Yehoshua (Joshua) and Shofetim (Judges). Now these books are basically a historical chronicle of the wars of the early Israelites, and have never been presented as the word of G-d.
In a recent issue of Tikkun [Sept.-Oct. 1994, pp.57-58], however, the Jewish Harvard theologian Judith Plaskow comments on similar passages in the Torah such as the anathema over the seven idolatrous nations and the command to exterminate Amalek, as well as the gleeful account of the destruction of Haman and his allies in the Megillat Esther. Now the US Reform movement has basically taken all texts it no longer considers "politically correct" off the Torah reading cycle: for example, the Yom Kippur afternoon parasha (Lev.18, which enumerates and condemns forbidden sexual practices) has been replaced by Lev.19, which supposedly is more spiritually uplifting on the Day of Atonement.
To the mind of even a liberal European Jew, the mere idea of applying the criterion of "political correctness" to the Torah invokes no other emotion than plain revulsion. If the "innovation" of producing "sanitized" versions of, say (l'havdil), "The Merchant of Venice", "Oliver Twist" or "Die Zauberflöte", has not even caught ground here (perish the thought), how much more so would this be true for the Torah, the very foundation not just of our religion, but of ethical monotheism!
Of course more traditional currents in American Judaism would not even think of censoring their Sefer Torah either. Judith Plaskow therefore suggests a less radical solution: that the texts be read, but in an undertone, such as to clearly set them apart from the rest of the material.
We will here discuss possibly the most striking of them, the curse of Amalek.
"[...] And THE ETERNAL spoke to Moshe: write this memento in your book, and impress it upon the ears of Yehoshua: for I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven" . And Moshe built an altar, and called it: THE ETERNAL is my banner. For he said: because the hand/sign is upon the throne of Y-H, war from THE ETERNAL with Amalek from generation to generation" [Ex.17:14-:16] "And Yehoshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword" [Ex.17:13]
It will hardly surprise readers that Joel Rosenberg's science-fiction novel "Not for glory" includes a scene in which a future Israeli general, by reading Ex.17 to his exhausted troops, turns fifteen hundred combat-fatigued men into as many fighting machines "with ice in their blood, fire in their nerves, and death in their hands" (pp.68,116), which then proceed to overrun a much stronger contingent of future Nazis against all odds.
The parallel passage in D'varim/Deuteronomy gives us an indication for the reason of this unadulterated hatred: "Remember what Amalek did to you, when you had left Egypt: how he met you on the way and cut off the weak in your rear-guard, while you were tired and exhausted, without any respect for G-d. When THE ETERNAL, your G-d, has given you rest of all the enemies around you in the land, which THE ETERNAL, your G-d, will give you as a heritage to possess, then you will blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven: DO NOT FORGET." [Deut.25:17-19]
There are a few situations, however, when a merely literal reading obviously does not cover the full meaning of a statement. For example, "Do not [...] put a stumbling block before the blind." [Lev .19:14]. Doing so would obviously be a cruel and immoral act, and the prohibition makes perfect sense as it stands. Yet Jewish tradition attaches meanings that go well beyond the literal, such as: "do not take advantage of a person's ignorance". In short, emblematic or allegoric reading of even the Torah can be quite acceptable in some contexts.
A more pietistic perspective is given by the 5th-century Midrashist Rav Kahana: "Remember" refers to one's own transgressions. For "the enemy comes only on account of sin and transgression" (PdRK 27). In the face of the Shoah, where meticulously observant Chasidim and completely assimilated Jews so often met the same death, this answer does not strike the author as very convincing.
Rashi's commentary (ad Ex.17:13) points to a subtlety of the Hebrew: "vayachalesh et-Amalek v'et-amo l'pi charev" should really be translated: "and he weakened Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword". That is, he (Yehoshua) did not kill them all, but he cut off the heads of the mighty men and left only the weak (thus rendering Amalek powerless).
[On the other hand, years after the supposed extirpation of Amalek, some Amalekites evidently served in the Israelite army (2 Sam. 1:8-16).]
Furthermore, the Song of Deborah (Judg. 5:2-31) refers to the half-tribe of Efrayim as "they whose root is in Amalek" (Judg. 5:14). Efrayim being the son of Yosef and the grandson of Ya'akov, this cannot possibly be meant as an indication of ancestry, since the first Amalek was a grandson of Esav (Gen.36:12). Rather, it indicates the warlike character of Efrayim.
The 1st-century Tannaitic Aggada (146) identifies Amalek with Roman empire.
Jewish lore abounds with references to various enemies of the Jewish people as Amalek - the 1st-century Tannaitic Aggada (par.146) which identifies the Roman empire with Amalek, is just one example. And it is far from uncommon in yeshiva parlance to refer to contemporary enemies of the Jewish people (and humanity) as Amalek - from Hitler over Saddam Hussein to Hamas. [Lewis Glinert, in his The joy of Hebrew , explains the word gematriya (Hebrew numerology) by telling how Israeli Jews during the Gulf war gleefully discovered that the Hebrew transliteration of "Saddam Hussein" has the same numerical value as the word Amaleki (Amalekite).]
And finally - in one of the most moving passages of the Talmud (TB Sanhedrin 96b), it is said that the descendents of Haman study Torah in B'nei B'rak - the site of Rabbi Akiva's academy!
We are dealing with a case in point where not the literal, but the emblematic reading is appropriate.
Amalek is not one particular clan or tribe.
Neither is it a particular people.
Amalek is a symbol for "the ultimate evil".
Not so with ultimate evil. Any attempt to bargain with it ultimately leads to two things. The first is failure in the long run - even when a temporary reprieve can be bought. The second is moral contamination of one's own person.
One can hardly find a more striking contemporary example than Nazism. Some regimes collaborated with it in the hope of mitigating the worst excesses of the Nazi regime. Ultimately these regimes (PŽtain in France might be an example) were either forced into full complicity, or sidetracked in favor of more "dedicated" supporters, having achieved nothing but to tarnish their own image.
Other regimes tried to use Nazism for their own ends, or avoided a confrontation with it for the same reason. The Flemish nationalists who collaborated during WW II might be the best example of the former (their ultimate goal not being Nazism as such, but to create if not an independent, at least an autonomous, Flemish state), while the parve attitude of Pius XII during the war has been quite convincingly explained as an example of the latter (in casu, unwillingness to antagonize a declared enemy of Communism). Neither achieved anything useful for their own ends, and while the former ostracised themselves, the latter seriously compromised his moral authority.
And finally there are the sad examples of JudenrŠte and officials who tried to bargain with the Nazis in order to "at least save the strong and productive" (like Chaim Rumkowski in the Lodz ghetto), or, even more sadly, for no higher purpose than to save their own lives and those of their families (like many members of the Warsaw ghetto police). Inevitably they became contaminated by the utter evil they were dealing with - even if initially they embarked on their task with positive goals - and hardly achieved anything of the goals they had set themselves, or even being able to save their own lives.
Ultimate evil leaves only one option: to combat it until its full and utter destruction. Nothing less will do. This, and only this, is the true meaning of the malediction of Amalek.
But more to the point. In a sense, the person who makes this kind of transgenerational teshuva is actually - and possibly unwittingly - observing the commandment regarding Amalek. For when people remember the family not as: "Oh, that of SS-UntersturmfŸhrer Jedermann" but as "Oh, that of rabbi Jedermann/Almoni", then the name of Amalek has truly been blotted out from under heaven.