Remember clearly, Remember faintly, Don't forget!

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Dvarim (Deuteronomy) 25: 17-19 (to be read specially on the Shabbat before Purim, called Shabbat Zachor [Shabbat “Remember”]

[Three admonitions based on twists of memory.]

Remember what Amalek did to you on the road going out from Mitzrayim (the tight places)! How he met you on the road and he attacked your stragglers, those at the end –- the vulnerable ones in the back of the march, those who were exhausted and faint – and he didn’t have awe/fear of G!D.

Remember your boy-friend who beat you. Remember the Congressman who voted to halt child-care subsidies you needed for your kids because the Covid emergency was over. Remember the Supreme Court Justices who tortured precedent and the Constitution to impose the theology of an all-male Roman Catholic clergy and an almost all-male evangelical Christian clergy about abortion on Jews and all other religious and conscientious communities. Remember the corporation that poured heat into your neighborhood until those beloved lovely trees burst into flame and killed your seven-year-old. Remember the cruel attackers who killed hundreds of your kibbutz-mates. Remember the pilots and their commanders who killed your husband and your children as they screamed in pain from the rubble where those aircraft bombed your home.

For all these are Amalek!

And in the future when YAH [the Breath of life] your G!D gives you rest from all the enemies surrounding you, in the land which YAH [the Breath of life] your G!D has given you as an inheritance to possess, you are to blot out the name of Amalek from under the heavens.

And when you and your friends have together built a women’s rest-and-restoration home where you are safe;

== when you and your friends have convinced Congress to pass a law of sharing so all children have free child care;

== when you and your friends have worked hard and succeded in engraving abortion rights into your state Constitution;

== when you and your friends have replaced heat-producing CO2 from fossil fuel corporations with wind and solar energy;

== when you and your friends have built a world where all peoples have self-determination and none shall make them afraid —

Cease to be obsessed with Amalek, do not let his name and his memory rule your life.

Don’t forget!

Don’t forget the whole process. Don’t forget to remember clearly and publicly until you have built a safe place of freedom. Don’t forget that sometimes Amalek erupts within you, and must be cleaned out with care and with love. And when you have cleaned yourself — whether your own individual self or your whole country — don’t let Amalek obsess you.

— Central text by Torah, Midrashic extensions by Rabbi Arthur Waskow with advice by Rabbi Phyllis Berman and Dr. Barbara Breitman.