Amalekites Among Us

Though posted today, I was inspired to write this blog entry while attending Sabbath services yesterday, the day before the Jewish holiday of Purim which commemorates victory over Haman, an evil minister of ancient Persia who sought to annihilate the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. Haman is thought to have descended from the nomadic tribe of Amalek, a people reviled for their unprovoked attack on the vulnerable rear phalanx of the Israelites as they made their way through the desert to the promised land after the exodus from Egypt.

Each year, the Saturday before Purim is called Shabbat Zachor, the Sabbath of Remembrance. Congregations read a Torah portion commanding Jews to remember Amalek’s treachery: “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 famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore...you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.” (Exodus 25: 17-19)

Listening to one of our temple members expound on the need to safeguard the disadvantaged and vulnerable in our society against both outside attackers and complacency from the more strong and fortunate, I couldn’t help but think we have in our country present-day Amalekites. They’re people who would turn their backs on the infirm, the uninsured, the jobless, the dispossessed, the homeless, the hungry, the needy, in short, the less fortunate. My first instinct was to label all of them Republicans. But that would be too easy, and, in truth, not inclusive enough.

Disregard for one’s fellow human knows no ideological bound. No religious border. No political persuasion.

Who has not been rightly moved by the tragic pictures from Japan, or from Haiti, or New Zealand? In an instant, the forces of nature overturned societies. Americans opened their hearts and wallets to the victims.

But why does it take a natural disaster to make us emote and care for the downtrodden, either here or abroad? How is it the citizens of the richest country on earth tolerate poverty in our midst? How is it some don’t accept it is not Christian charity to deny anyone a living wage, that it is within our depths of compassion and resources to provide sustenance and shelter for the needy? I’m not advocating a welfare state of handouts. Anyone receiving public assistance should be required to compensate the government for it by working on community projects or the like.

By virtue of luck, we were either born or emigrated here. We enjoy a standard of living married to institutional values second to none. Judeo-Christian precepts underpin our national psyche. Those precepts are imbued with concern and care for the poor and disadvantaged. They cherish learning and tolerance. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Bible knows it is not a libertarian treatise. There are codes of law that define proper personal and public behavior, by the individual and state.

Yet, while so many of our citizens espouse religious values, they fail to live by them. We have allowed our educational system to backslide. Infant mortality has risen. Some promote the right to life for the unborn but turn their backs on public support of the young once they breathe their first. Health care increasingly is reserved for the elite, and the battle is joined when proponents advance the idea of coverage for all. Driven by the pursuit of profits, corporations shut down domestic employment in favor of foreign workers, leaving individuals and communities forsaken.

Through the centuries Jews cast anyone who sought their destruction as an Amalekite. Today, an Amalekite has a more universal inhumanity. Our hope, as one biblical commentator put it, “is to blot out from the human heart the cruel Amalek spirit.”