Remember? How Could We Ever Forget?

10 Adar 5786
Erev Shabbat Kodesh
Parashat Tetzaveh - Zachor 

Excerpted from the Stone Edition Chumash Commentary on the parashah...

The Sidrah deals almost exclusively with the Kohanim: their selection, their vestments, and the inauguration service by means of which they and their offspring would become confirmed for all time as the special ministers of God.

...On the Sabbath before Purim two Torah scrolls are taken from the Ark.  From the first, the regular Sidrah is read.  The second is used for the Maftir, and the reading is the commandment to remember (zachor) the villainy of Amalek.

The original Amalek was a grandson of Esau, and it was he who carried on his grandfather's legacy of hatred of the Jewish people.  Only weeks after the Exodus from Egypt, Amalek made the first sneak attack against Israel.  This ambush became the paradigm of treachery, especially since the land of the Amalekites was not part of Eretz Yisrael, so that Amalek was motivated not by fear but by hatred.  God informed Israel that there would be an eternal state of war between Him and Amalek, because Amalek's battle was primarily against the cause of holiness, not against the nation that God chose to be its standard-bearer.  And God commanded Israel to remember what that renegade nation did, and to destroy the Amalekites so completely that they would not even be remembered.

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Rav Richter:  Part 4 of the Great Debate
("A New Promised Land?")