Tetzaveh
Do we remember or forget?
Reflection by Or HaLev Teacher Zac Newman:
"This week is Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of remembering. As an addendum to the weekly parsha, Tetzaveh, we read three verses from Deuteronomy about Amalek’s attack on the Israelites. It is a short but powerful passage. Some say it is the only Torah reading that every individual is required to hear.
`Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt -- how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were hungry and weary, and cut down those in your rear. When YHVH your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that YHVH your God is giving you, you shall wipe the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.` (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)
In a number of ways it is a challenging passage. Torah frequently is. For one, how do we make sense of the fact that on the Shabbat of remembering, we are to wipe a memory? How do we reconcile the beginning of the passage, `remember what Amalek did to you…`, with the end, `you shall wipe the memory`?
Lakol zman, teaches Kohelet, `everything has its time` (Ecclesiastes 3:1). A time to remember, and a time to let go. Spiritual practice asks for inner agility: at one moment practicing in this way, at another time practicing in that way. Sometimes, in ways that feel safe and supported, we need to turn toward our pain. We come home to it, offer love, and meet it in the body: re-member.
At other times, we release. This is not pushing away. It leaves everything where it is, and opens, out beyond what has been holding us, deliberately giving the attention to something else, something more than what is painful. We lift up our eyes. The Hebrew word used for wiping the memory of Amalek is also - surprisingly, instructively - the word for clapping: `let the rivers clap their hands, the mountains sing joyously together` (Psalm 98:8).
`Do not forget.` Forgetting goes both ways. Certainly, let us not forget our past. And let us not forget, either, the freshness of each dawn. Let us cherish those who have fallen by bringing them along, carrying them in our hearts, remembering the deepest yearnings and delights which we shared, and working to realize them anew."