All the “stories” in the Torah are archetypal in nature, reflecting or representing various physical and spiritual energies ever present in all aspects of reality and within each and every person. The essential energy and fundamental lessons contained in these stories reappear in countless different guises and under many different circumstances, related to the individual, the people of Israel, and the entire world. Using the PaRDeS system to decode the text is a particularly potent way to reveal the Torah’s eternally relevant nature.
The end of Ki Teitzei recounts Amalek’s unprovoked attack on the Jewish people just as they came out of Egypt. This incident is read on the Shabbat before Purim in synagogues all over the world. That Haman, the villain of the Purim story, is a descendant of Amalek provides a concrete example of how the same archetypal energy reared its ugly head a thousand years later.
Today, given the vicissitudes of history no extant people can be labeled the descendants of Amalek, but the Rabbis teach that any person or nation who actively seeks to wipe out the Jewish people is a manifestation of Amalek. Tragically, in the last hundred years we have seen many different faces of Amalek: Hitler and the Nazi killing machine, Saddam Hussein, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbbalah, and the recent attempt by Iran to develop nuclear weapons. The latter all share the same overwhelming desire: to exterminate Jews and eliminate the State of Israel.
In the passage about Amalek’s attack on the Jewish people, the Torah reminds us to “remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you were leaving Egypt … and he struck those of you who were hindmost, all the weak who were at the rear when you were faint and exhausted” (Exodus 25:17). Amalek struck not the vanguard of the people, but the stragglers, the weary and weak. Approximately 250 years ago a slow but steady trickle of Jews began returning to the Jewish homeland. From the students of the Ba’al Shem Tov and the Vilna Gaon in the late 1700s, to the first and second aliyot in the late 1800s and early 1900s the movement gathered steam. By the time the Second World War arrived, the ingathering of the exiles had become a phenomenon of historical proportions. After nearly two thousand years of exile the Jewish people were coming home, leaving their “Egyptian” exiles behind. It was then that Hitler and the Nazi regime struck at those straggling in the rear, those who were “faint and exhausted” from the long and bitter exile. Although both Amalek and Hitler took a terrible toll, both were ultimately defeated.
Ki Teitzei ends with the ringing declaration that the Jewish people must not forget to completely wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. The sad and bitter reality in this world is that while there are some enemies the Jewish people can make peace with, there are other enemies who must be decisively defeated, for they know no compromise in their goal of wiping out the Jewish people. This lesson speaks to the Jewish people today as clearly as it did then, and due to the scourge of Islamic terrorism around the world, it is a lesson the world will unfortunately have to confront sooner or later as well.
