(יז) זָכ֕וֹר אֵ֛ת אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה לְךָ֖ עֲמָלֵ֑ק בַּדֶּ֖רֶךְ בְּצֵאתְכֶ֥ם מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃ (יח) אֲשֶׁ֨ר קָֽרְךָ֜ בַּדֶּ֗רֶךְ וַיְזַנֵּ֤ב בְּךָ֙ כָּל־הַנֶּחֱשָׁלִ֣ים אַֽחַרֶ֔יךָ וְאַתָּ֖ה עָיֵ֣ף וְיָגֵ֑עַ וְלֹ֥א יָרֵ֖א אֱלֹקִֽים׃ (יט) וְהָיָ֡ה בְּהָנִ֣יחַ ה' אֱלֹקֶ֣יךָ ׀ לְ֠ךָ מִכָּל־אֹ֨יְבֶ֜יךָ מִסָּבִ֗יב בָּאָ֙רֶץ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יְהוָֽה־אֱ֠לֹקֶיךָ נֹתֵ֨ן לְךָ֤ נַחֲלָה֙ לְרִשְׁתָּ֔הּ תִּמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק מִתַּ֖חַת הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם לֹ֖א תִּשְׁכָּֽח׃ (פ)
(17) Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt— (18) how he surprised you on the march, and cutting down all the stragglers in your rear, when you were famished and weary: he did not fear God. (19) Therefore, when Ad-nai your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that Ad-nai your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!
(יד) וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהֹוָ֜ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה כְּתֹ֨ב זֹ֤את זִכָּרוֹן֙ בַּסֵּ֔פֶר וְשִׂ֖ים בְּאׇזְנֵ֣י יְהוֹשֻׁ֑עַ כִּֽי־מָחֹ֤ה אֶמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק מִתַּ֖חַת הַשָּׁמָֽיִם׃ (טו) וַיִּ֥בֶן מֹשֶׁ֖ה מִזְבֵּ֑חַ וַיִּקְרָ֥א שְׁמ֖וֹ יְהֹוָ֥ה ׀ נִסִּֽי׃ (טז) וַיֹּ֗אמֶר כִּֽי־יָד֙ עַל־כֵּ֣ס יָ֔הּ מִלְחָמָ֥ה לַיהֹוָ֖ה בַּֽעֲמָלֵ֑ק מִדֹּ֖ר דֹּֽר׃ {פ}
(א) לזכור מה שעשה לנו עמלק - שנצטוינו לזכור מה שעשה עמלק לישראל, שהתחיל להתגרות בם בצאתם ממצרים, בטרם נשא גוי וממלכה ידו עליהם, וכענין שכתוב (במדבר כד, כ) ראשית גוים עמלק. ותרגומו, ריש קרביא דישראל הוה עמלק, שהכל היו יראים מהם בשמעם היד הגדולה אשר עשה להם השם במצרים, והעמלקים ברוע לבם ובמזגם הרע לא שתו לבם לכל זה ויתגרו בם, והעבירו מתוך כך יראתם הגדולה מלב שאר האמות, וכענין שמשלו בזה רבותינו זכרונם לברכה (פסיקתא רבתי פרשה יב תנחומא כאן) משל ליורה רותחת שאין כל בריה יכלה לירד לתוכה ובא אחד וקפץ וירד לתוכה, אף על פי שנכוה הקר אותה לאחרים, ועל זכירת ענינם זה נאמר (דברים כה יז) זכור את אשר עשה לך עמלק בדרך בצאתכם ממצרים.
(1) To remember what Amalek did to us: That we were commanded to remember what Amalek did to Israel - that he began to harass them when they left Egypt, before any other nation or kingdom raised their hand against them; and as the matter is stated, (Numbers 24:2) "Amalek is the first of nations." Its [Aramaic] translation (Onkelos Numbers 24:2) is "The first battle of Israel was Amalek" - because everyone was afraid of them when they heard of God's great hand that He used for them in Egypt. But the Amalekites, due to their evil hearts and evil disposition, did not turn their hearts to all of this, and harassed them [by waging war]. And as a result of this, Amalek was able to remove the great fear from the hearts of the other nations. And it is like the matter that our Rabbis, may their memory be blessed, analogized it (Pesikta Rabbati 12, Midrash Tanchuma on Devarim 25:17) to the analogy to a large boiling pot that no person could enter and [then] one [individual] comes and jumps and enters it. Even though he is burnt, he cools it for others. And about the memory of their matter is it stated (Deuteronomy 25:17), "Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt."
(א) למחות זרעו מן העולם - שנצטוינו למחות זרעו של עמלק ולאבד זכרו מן העולם, זכר ונקבה, גדול וקטן, ועל זה נאמר (דברים כה יט) ''תמחה את זכר עמלק'', שבכלל זכר הוא הכל. וכבר טעה בנקוד תבה זו גדול הדור, והוא יואב בן צרויה, והשאיר מהם הנקבות, לפי שרבו לא השגיח יפה עליו כשלמדו מקרא זה ונשתבש יואב וקרא זכר במקום זכר כמו שבא בבבא בתרא פרק לא יחפר (כא, ב).
(1) To blot out his seed from the world: That we were commanded to blot out the seed of Amalek and to destroy his memory from the world - male and female, old and young. And about this is it stated (Deuteronomy 25:19), "you shall blot out the memory (zekher) of Amalek" - as all are included in "the memory." And a great man of the generation (gadol hador) already erred in the vocalization of this word - and that was Yoav ben Tzeruiah - and he left over the females from them. As many were those that did not pay careful attention when they learned this verse and Yoav jumbled [it] and read "male" (zakhar) instead of "memory" (zekher), as it comes [down] in Bava Batra 21b in the chapter [entitled] Lo Yachpor.
(ב) שלוש מצוות בתורה עוסקות בעמלק. הראשונה, מצוות עשה, לזכור את אשר עשה לנו עמלק, שנאמר (דברים כה, יז): "זָכוֹר אֵת אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה לְךָ עֲמָלֵק בַּדֶּרֶךְ בְּצֵאתְכֶם מִמִּצְרָיִם". השנייה, מצוות לא תעשה, שלא לשכוח את אשר עשה לנו, שנאמר (שם יט): "לֹא תִּשְׁכָּח". השלישית, מצוות עשה, למחות את זרעו של עמלק מן העולם, שנאמר (שם): "וְהָיָה בְּהָנִיחַ ה' אֱלוֹהֶיךָ לְךָ מִכָּל אֹיְבֶיךָ מִסָּבִיב בָּאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר ה' אֱלוֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לְךָ נַחֲלָה לְרִשְׁתָּהּ, תִּמְחֶה אֶת זֵכֶר עֲמָלֵק מִתַּחַת הַשָּׁמָיִם".
(2) Three mitzvot in the Torah relate to Amalek. The first is a positive commandment to remember what Amalek did to us, as the Torah says: “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, as you left Egypt” (Devarim 25:17). The second is a negative commandment not to forget what Amalek did to us, as the Torah says: “Do not forget” (ibid. 19). The third is a positive commandment to eradicate Amalek’s offspring from the world, as the Torah says: “Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” (ibid.).
R. Avraham Borenstein, Avnei Nezer: Orah Hayim 2:508
It [the position of Maimonides, that we can make peace with Amalek] is troubling to me, since even if we can make peace with the seven nations, how do we know that we can make peace with Amalek?...
It seems to me that the seven nations are different [from that of Amalek] in that they sinned themselves and performed all the abominations and thus became liable to death. I thus might think that repentance would not suffice for them, just like anyone liable to the death penalty is not freed from their liability through repentance [which is why we need explicit sources stating that we can make peace with them].
But with regard to the seed of Amalek, who are punished for the sins of their fathers, it is presumably contradicted by the verse, “Fathers shall not be put to death on account of their children, and children shall not be put to death on account of their fathers” (Deut. 24:16). However, it is revealed and known before the Holy One, blessed be He, that their [Amalek’s] hatred [for the Jewish people] is buried in their hearts. Go and look at the deeds of Haman the Aggagite!
And when they [the Amalekites] grasp onto the deeds of their forefathers, it is written “placing the sins of the fathers on their children” (Exodus 20:4). But should they [the Amalekites] repent and accept upon themselves the seven commandments, it is clear that they are not holding onto the deeds of their forefathers, and thus they cannot be punished for the sins of their fathers.
Excerpts from Sermon by Rabbi Irwin Huberman, Glen Cove, NY
The Sephardic scholar Rabbi Yaakov Culi perhaps said it best when he wrote in his eighteenth-century commentary Me'am Loez, "In every generation Amalek rises to destroy us, and each time he clothes himself in a different nation."…The Roman Empire, Stalin, Nazi Germany, Iran, Hamas, and white supremacy.
Is Amalek dead? No: Amalek lives today… Today, it relates to the disturbed and racially motivated, carrying weapons manufactured to murder, used to attack the most exposed and helpless…For in every generation, descendants of Amalek will rise and victimize the exposed and the helpless…Society must protect our most weary, our most vulnerable, our most helpless. We failed to do so in Biblical times.
From The Punishment of Amalek in Jewish Tradition: Coping with the Moral Problem by Professor Avi Sagi
Rabbi Moshe Amiel (1883-1946), ruled that we should not understand Amalek as being a particular ethnic group. Rather, he viewed Amalek as the symbol of armed might. In Rabbi Amiel’s view, a permanent war prevails between the sword and the book, and “one can only be built on the ruins of the other”. [Derashot el Ami, 3.132, 3 volume set, Tel-Aviv, 1964]
Rabbi Amiel directly confronts the moral problem that exists from the excessive view, which states that descendants of Amalek must die, which of course is a contradiction to the Torah’s injunction that a child may not be punished for the sins of its parents. Rabbi Amiel concludes that Jews must not harm Amalekites, and writes “the view of Judaism is that the prosecution cannot turn into the defense, evil cannot be extirpated by evil means, terror cannot be eliminated from the world through the use of counter-terror”. [Ibid, 3.132] Rather, Jews wage “war” against Amalek with the book – “Write this for a memorial in a Book” Exodus 17:14. Thus, Rabbi Amiel states that the blotting out of Amalek is not meant as physical destruction...the obligation to blot out the memory of Amalek should not be understood literally:
Because it is written [in Psalms 104:35] “let sins be consumed out of the Earth, and not “let the sinners”. And as for Amalek too, the Torah stresses mainly the “remembrance of Amalek”, when Amalek turns into a memory, a culture, a lofty ideal, a sublime notion….It is this remembrance of Amalek that we are commanded to blot out. [Derashot el Ami, 143]
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1880), the founder of Neo-Orthodoxy, progenitor of Modern and Centrist Orthodoxy, holds a view similar to that of Rabbi Amiel. Hirsch notes that Jews do not kill Amalekites, rather Jews only remove the remembrance and glory that Amalek desired. He elaborates on this in his exegesis of the verse ” ‘I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek’ – not Amalek, but rather its remembrance and glory.” [Commentary on Exodus, 171, Exodus 17:14]
(46) Another version of what appears to be an identical attempt to resolve this difficulty is cited by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in the name of his father, the late Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, in a footnote to his "Kol Dodi Dofek," Ha-Dat ve-ha-Medinah, ed. M. Rottenberg (Tel Aviv, 5724), pp. 192–93. Rabbi Soloveitchik argues that the commandment with regard to Amalek is really a twofold one: (1) an obligation devolving upon each individual Jew to destroy the genealogical descendants of Amalek; (2) a communal obligation to defend the Jewish people against any enemy threatening its destruction. These differing obligations are indeed recorded as separate commandments. The commandment recorded in Deuteronomy 25:19, "you shall erase the memory of Amalek," is addressed to all individual Jews and refers only to genealogical descendants of Amalek. Exodus 17:16, which speaks of "the war of God against Amalek," is addressed to the community as a whole and lends sanction to a preemptive war undertaken in the face of impending danger. Since the latter type of warfare, although categorized as a war against "Amalek," must be waged against any would-be aggressor, Rambam eliminates mention of the fact that the genealogical descendants of Amalek are no longer identifiable. This thesis leads to a conclusion contradictory to that of Rabbi Gershuni. While Rabbi Gershuni's explanation would lend sanction to a war of aggression against professed enemies, according to this analysis only preemptive or defensive wars may be undertaken even against the avowed foes of the people of Israel.
מבני בניו של סנחריב לימדו תורה ברבים ומאן נינהו שמעיה ואבטליון מבני בניו של המן למדו תורה בבני ברק
Among the descendants of Sennacherib were those who taught Torah in public. The Gemara asks: And who are they? The Gemara answers: They were Shemaya and Avtalyon. The baraita continues: Among the descendants of Haman were those who studied Torah in Bnei Brak.
Excerpts from Purim and the Sin of Amalek – Rav Yehuda Amital
[Quoting Maimonides / Rambam and commentators:] the commandment to wipe out Amalek applies only where Amalek refuses Israel's call to make peace…it is not sufficient for Amalek to make peace with Israel; they must accept upon themselves the seven Noachide laws.
From the above, we understand that the war against Amalek is not a national war, but rather a cultural one. Judaism has no problem with the people of Amalek, but rather with their culture and ideology. If Amalek would change their behavior and accept upon themselves the seven Noachide laws, there would no longer be any reason to wage war against them.
What exactly is the culture of Amalek, against which we are commanded to wage war?... what characterizes Amalek throughout the generations is the concept of "mikreh" – attributing everything to randomness and coincidence... Amalek maintained an ideology of non-ideology: everything is permissible; there is no journey, no direction; everything is coincidental; there is no absolute value that must be held dear.
From chabad.org, Teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, "Amalek: The Perpetual Enemy of the Jewish People"
Though the name Amalek refers to a nation that actually existed, it also describes a character trait within ourselves. Just as Amalek stood in direct opposition to the Jewish people, the trait symbolized by Amalek defies the very foundations of our divine service.
The Midrash describes the nature of this trait in its commentary on the verse, “Remember what Amalek did to you...as you came forth from Egypt, how he encountered you on the way and cut down all the weak who straggled behind you.” The Midrash explains that the Hebrew word korechah (קרך, “he encountered you”) can also be rendered as “he cooled you off.” Amalek represents the cold rationality which makes us question everything we do or experience.
Stepping Beyond the Intellect
To achieve complete service of G‑d, we must transcend our own intellectual limitations. Therefore, before the Jewish people received the Torah, they declared, Naaseh VeNishma— “We will do and we will listen.” “We will do” refers to the desire to carry out G‑d’s will, and “we will listen” to the effort to understand G‑d’s commandments intellectually. By proclaiming “We will do” before “we will listen,” our ancestors implied that they would fulfill G‑d’s will without hesitation or doubt, whether they understood it or not. By the same token, our commitment to Torah must at all times leap beyond the limits of our understanding.
A commitment of this magnitude is challenged by our internal Amalek which tells us: “By all means accept the Torah, but wait, consider carefully exactly how much you can study, and precisely which mitzvos you can fulfill. Don’t bite off too much.”
Within this context, we can understand the numerical equivalence between Amalek and the word safek , the Hebrew word for “doubt”. Amalek causes doubt and hesitation which cools the ardor of our divine service. Victory in our inner war with Amalek means devoting ourselves to G‑d’s service without reservations, observing Torah with diligence and enthusiasm that are not confined by our reason.
Excerpt from Israel Crime of Genocide (Prevention and Punishment) Law
…In this Law, "genocide" means any…acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group…
A person guilty of genocide shall be punishable with death...A person guilty of an offence under this Law shall be punished whether he is a legally responsible ruler, a member of a legislative body, a public official or a private individual.
This Law…is consequent upon the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide adopted by the United Nations General Assembly… ratified by the State of Israel
DAVID BEN-GURION Prime Minister
PINCHAS ROSEN Minister of Justice
CHAIM WEIZMANN President of the State