Thursday, March 9, 2017

Parshas Zachor - More Genocide

Everything I wrote here Parshas Matos - Mass Murder applies to Parshas Zachor and the commandment to destroy Amalek. Every year we read how we are to commit genocide against Amalek, kill every man, woman and child, and no one cares. And yet, when this happens to us, we scream bloody murder. The Nazis did nothing worse then what the Bnei Yisrael did to Amalek at the time of Shaul (except maybe more efficiently) and are commanded to do even today. If we can wipe out Amalek, killing men, women and children, why can't the Nazis wipe us out? What is the difference?

R' Aharon Lichtenstein addressed this problem as follows:
 I recall in my late adolescence there were certain problems which perturbed me, the way they perturb many others. At the time, I resolved them all in one fell swoop. I had just read Rav Zevin’s book, Ishim Ve-shitot. In his essay on Rav Chayim Soloveitchik, he deals not only with his methodological development, but also with his personality and gemilut chasadim (acts of kindness). He recounted that Reb Chayim used to check every morning if some unfortunate woman had placed an infant waif on his doorstep during the course of the night. (In Brisk, it used to happen at times that a woman would give birth illegitimately and leave her infant in the hands of Reb Chayim.) As I read the stories about Reb Chayim’s extraordinary kindness, I said to myself: Do I approach this level of gemilut chasadim? I don’t even dream of it! In terms of moral sensibility, concern for human beings and sensitivity to human suffering, I am nothing compared to Reb Chayim. Yet despite his moral sensitivity, he managed to live, and live deeply, with the totality of Halakha—including the commands to destroy the Seven Nations, Amalek and all the other things which bother me. How? The answer, I thought, was obvious. It is not that his moral sensitivity was less, but his yirat Shamayim, his emuna, was so much more. The thing to do, then, is not to try to neutralize or de-emphasize the moral element, but rather to deepen and increase the element of yirat Shamayim, of emuna, deveikut and bittachon.
Truthfully, I was expecting a better answer from R' Lichtenstein. This answer does not help me at all.

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