Reaction: Remember the Fogels!
Reaction: Remember the Fogels!

Every year it’s the same. On the Shabbat before Purim, a second Torah scroll is removed from the ark. The Rabbi announces that Parshat Zachor is about to be read. The synagogue tingles in anticipation as men, women, and children, attentively listen as the reader reads three verses.

And then it’s over.

I have successfully concentrated for the few required minutes to the reading which commands us to remember what Amalek did to the Israelites as they left Egypt. I can now check off ‘Remember what Amalek did’ from my To Do List for this year and not think about it anymore till next year.

The problem is that this year’s Shabbat Zachor is not like any other year. Amalek came early this year. He didn’t wait till the Shabbat before Purim to enter our minds and memory. He arrived a week ahead of schedule when he paid a surprise Friday night visit to the settlement of Itamar and murdered five family members of the Fogel family (the parents, Udi and Ruth, and three of their children).

People are always careful about not dubbing someone ‘Amalek’. The title seems to be reserved only for the most heinous. We can dislike, or even hate, certain leaders of nations, but we stop short of calling them ‘Amalekites’, because that’s just too harsh.

But upon careful examination of the events of last Friday night, the terrorist’s murderous actions look like they were taken right out of the Amalekite handbook.

This Shabbat we read from Deuteronomy (25:19-20): “Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God.”

The Amalekites attacked from the rear. They did not come through the front door, they jumped the fence and came through the back window. They killed innocent children, those who were sleeping, who were literally ‘weary and worn out’. It’s needless to say they had no fear of God, let alone any human feelings. Who stabs sleeping children in their beds?

Of course, the reason we fulfill this commandment on the Shabbat before Purim is because the wicked Haman was a descendant of Amalek. What is most telling in the story of Purim is Haman’s reasoning. Mordechai won’t bow to Haman, but it was not enough for Haman to take personal revenge on Mordechai alone. As the Book of Esther states, “"But it was not enough for him to make an attack on Mordecai only; for they had made clear to him who Mordecai's people were; so Haman made it his purpose to put an end to all the Jews, even Mordecai's people, through all the kingdom of Ahasuerus.” His evil decree is even more specific, “Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king's provinces with the order to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews--young and old, women and little children--on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods.”

Haman takes out his aggression on all the Jews, young and old, women and little children. One cannot fathom why, but perhaps the only reason is that because he is an Amalekite. That’s his modus operandi.  It does not matter if you are based in the capital city of Shushan or fence jumping into Itamar in the middle of the night. Killing innocent men, woman, and children is simply Amalek’s M.O.

Maybe our problem is that in coping with this terrible tragedy we try to find some logic in it, but there is none. We need to accept that there is no logical explanation here. There is no point in asking ‘how could they do it’ or ‘why did they do it’ because we will never come up with a rational answer.

What did all the Jews in Shushan (and the rest of the king’s provinces) ever do to Haman? If he had a beef with Mordechai, why not settle it with him directly, why take it out on all the Jews? Why would someone murder five members of a family sleeping in their home on a Friday night? Certainly they were not guilty of doing anything to their attacker. Why murder them?

The commandment of Zachor is indeed a simple one: Remember what they did to us! Don’t forget! We are not commanded to ask why they did it, or what, if any, their reasons were (they really had no legitimate reason to attack Israelites, not when they wandered in the desert, and not in Itamar). We are only commanded to remember and not to forget.

Perhaps the third and final verse of Parshat Zachor is the most telling one: “When the LORD your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”

Only God has the answers as to why things happen, we only need to remember, and not to forget.

This Shabbat, as that second scroll is being read, I will be remembering what happened to the Fogels – and not forgetting.