Last weekend, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of New York’s Central Synagogue said the following in an interview: “We know what kind of city we want to live in. One in which people of all faiths, classes and colors feel belonging. For Jewish New Yorkers, it has to include both safety and security on a physical level, and knowing we will not be demonized, marginalized or harassed for supporting a Jewish homeland.”
Rabbi Buchdahl was referring to the violent attack in her congregation last Friday night during which an intruder interrupted Shabbat services, struck a 63-year-old woman in the face, spat on and head-butted a security guard, and knocked over a set of candlesticks.
Late last month, on Tisha B’Av, another man stabbed two men in broad daylight on the Upper West Side shouting Allahu Akbar!
Here in LA, back in April, in Pico-Robertson where I lived for 5 years, a Jewish father of three was assaulted on his way home from shul. A man jumped out of a car, threw him to the ground, and said, “Free Palestine.”
None of these incidents would have been in any way justifiable if the victims had been carrying Israel flags or singing Hatikva, but they weren’t doing these things. They were doing just one thing: being Jews.
That’s what my friend Janis Coulter was doing 24-years-ago last month. Janis and I met in the summer of 1996, on Kibbutz Ein Hashofet in the Galil, as I arrived in Israel for Ulpan and a year of study at Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus. We had a brief romantic relationship, but all year long during our year abroad, and for many years after, remained friends. In June of ‘02, Janis joined Miriam and me at our wedding in Ann Arbor. In July, she was back on Mt. Scopus escorting foreign exchange students as part of her job at Hebrew University. Dining in the crowded Frank Sinatra Cafeteria, a bomb planted by Hamas operatives tore into her and 84 other people, seriously injuring 14 and killing 9, including my friend Janis. She was 36-years-old.
Jewish tradition holds that there are essentially three cardinal sins: idolatry, weaponizing sex, and murder. But I want to suggest to you there is a fourth sin which is also seen as deeply reprehensible. That sin is terror. At times terrorism takes the form of murder and other violence. Other times, it’s about intimidation, fearmongering.
I surely won’t stand here and claim the sin of planting a bomb in a crowded university cafeteria is equivalent to targeting and intimidating Jewish college students on Yik Yak, broadcasting conspiracy theories, or pushing a man with a yarmulke to the ground. We all know verbal and physical attacks against us have skyrocketed of late.
I also won’t claim that terrorizing people is uniquely done to Jews by those who hate us. There are acts of terror being conducted far too frequently these days by Jews on Palestinians in the West Bank. And last weekend saw not only an attack on a shul in New York but the vandalization of a wonderful synagogue Kol Neshama in Jerusalem, in that case apparently by Israeli Jews seeking to terrorize a community supportive of LGBTQ inclusion.
Finally, I’m not here to define terrorism per se. There are legal definitions of that term, here, in Israel, and around the world. I’m not a lawyer nor a politician. Those definitions matter, but I’m not talking about those legal definitions. What I am talking about, the throughline for us as students of Torah, is violence, words, or other methods, which seek to diminish, dehumanize, or intimidate others simply because of who they are or what they might believe.
This is that fourth sin, and it features as a powerful subtext in this week’s parasha. Parashat Ki Tetze is famous for being the sedra with more halachot, more laws, than any other. At first blush, they are a random assortment of mitzvot: don’t leave an executed person’s body rotting in public, care for your neighbor’s animals, their property, build a parapet on your roof, avoid mixtures of linen and wool, abhor cult prostitution, don’t be a predatory lender, don’t abuse a day laborer or withhold their wages, don’t torture beasts of burden by muzzling them while they are working. 74 of the 613 mitzvot appear in today’s parasha.
While it would be hard to claim they are all of a kind, there is a predominant theme claims Rabbi Harold Kushner z”l in his “Drash” commentary from our Etz Hayim Chumash. That theme, he says, is “the irreducible dignity and worth of a human being. Even the most marginal members of society, such as the criminal or the female war captive, are fashioned in the image of God and are to be treated accordingly.”
I would add that this theme is underscored by the parasha’s first and final verses. Bracketing this lengthy legal portion, are two descriptions of warfare. The first, at the very beginning of Ki Tetze, demonstrates how we are meant to behave. The second, at the very conclusion, shows how we must not.
כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה עַל־אֹיְבֶ֑יךָ
“When you go out against your enemies….”
I’m going to read a bit more, but keep in mind these instructions, to our modern ear, are not only insufficient, they’re likely offensive. Treating women as such would not and should not be acceptable in our day. And it’s also important to understand the historical context of our Torah, in which ancient women were often viewed as chattel and where men could far too often do with them what they wished, including enslave them or leave them financially destitute. It’s in response to those backward mores that our parasha says the following:
When you go out against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her and would take her to wife, you shall bring her into your house, and she shall trim her hair, pare her nails, and discard her captive’s garb. She shall spend a month’s time in your house lamenting her father and mother; after that you may come to her and possess her, and she shall be your wife. Then, should you no longer want her, you must release her outright. You must not sell her for money: since you had your will of her, you must not enslave her (Deu 21:10-14).
So, the beginning of Ki Tetze says even a human being viewed as subordinate, either because she is formerly an enemy or because of her gender, is due certain basic rights. She is to be given time to mourn her family and respected as a daughter. She must be treated as a wife and not a concubine, or worse. She may not be enslaved. In other words, there are rules to ensure her safety and security. She is to be made aware of these rules. She is not to live in terror.
What about the second bookend? The end of our parasha also describes warfare, and this time not the accepted practices of the Israelites against their enemies but a description of the worst of our enemies, the archetypal nemesis of the Jewish people, the name we summon to mind when confronting the most severe Jew-hatred: Haman, the Holocaust, Oct. 7.
זָכ֕וֹר אֵ֛ת אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה לְךָ֖ עֲמָלֵ֑ק בַּדֶּ֖רֶךְ בְּצֵאתְכֶ֥ם מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃
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, 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… (Deu. 25:17-19). What do we do? Blot out the name of Amalek!
What is so reprehensible about Amalek? Why are the Amalekites, more than the Egyptians, Hittites, even the Philistines, regarded as our greatest enemy? The Malbim, Rabbi Meir Leibush Weisser, the 19th Century Eastern European sage, suggests that Amalek’s great sin is that he doesn’t abide by any acceptable rules of warfare. The Malbim takes our passage point by point and names five specific ways Amalek violates these norms:
1. Nations sometimes make war on a land in order to conquer it and to expand their borders. But this was בַּדֶּ֗רֶךְ “on the march” and not once [The Israelites] were settled in their land.
2. Nations will draw near to the border of [enemy] land because they wish [to defend their borders]. But this was בְּצֵאתְכֶ֥ם מִמִּצְרָֽיִם “after you left Egypt.”
3. People make war [with a prior enemy] in order to provoke them. But [the Amalekites] “surprised you,” depicting a chance encounter. There was no prior quarrel between these parties.
4. In order to demonstrate strength and might, nations make war face to face. But he “cut down כׇּל־הַנֶּחֱשָׁלִ֣ים אַֽחֲרֶ֔יךָ all the stragglers in your rear.”
5. Nations sometimes make holy wars. because they think they will find favor in the eyes of their gods…. But Amalek was לֹ֥א יָרֵ֖א אֱלֹהִֽים “undeterred by fear of God.” The central reason for this war was heresy against God…. and he [Amalek] wanted to demonstrate to all [the Israelites] that God could not save them.
The upshot of Malbim’s stunning interpretation is that Amalek is an agent of chaos. Much like the Joker in Batman, he seeks to inflict pain and instill fear. He is a terrorist, without any discernable moral compass, and with no intended outcome but victory at all costs. He likes to keep his victims off balance. He sees no problem attacking the weak. His immorality is a product of his amorality. To borrow a line from journalist Adam Serwer, “the cruelty is the point.”
It is especially hard to battle enemies like this: people whose inclination is wanton cruelty, the marginalization or sacrifice of the other on the altar of base assumptions. The reductive justifications of the bigot. A fuller analysis of our best response to such an enemy is probably a sermon for another day.
On this day, I’ll invite us briefly into the wisdom of our maftir Aliyah:
תִּמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק מִתַּ֖חַת הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם לֹ֖א תִּשְׁכָּֽח׃
…you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!
The response to cruelty and caprice begins with a paradox. We must remember and we must blot out memory. Because if we only remember, we run the risk of becoming obsessed with the forces that tormented my kids and maybe your kids, or assaulted shul goers on Shabbat, or took the life of my friend Janis. We dare not become consumed by our rage at these things. Our tradition forbids it. But we also dare not forget, those whose lives were taken, whose safety is imperiled, whose confidence teeters, bracing for the bully’s next attack. Remember and forget; we must do both. “We know what kind of city we want to live in,” said Rabbi Buchdahl. Indeed, we know what kind of world we want to live in. One in which fear and intimidation cannot win, where terror cannot prevail. Our tradition, in my estimation, tells us we dare not give up on that dream.
