You never know what will happen when you send an email to fifty thousand people. Several times a year, Sara’s employer, the Jewish educational website, Sefaria, sends out emails, in her name, to tens of thousands of regular users announcing some new educational resource, a new text that has been added to the digital database, or to solicit money for the not-for-profit’s operations. And, twice in the past two years, people have seen the name “Wolkenfeld” in their Inbox and reached out with memories from many decades ago.
The most recent example was a ninety-seven year old man, who today lives in Washington Heights, and who responded to a Sefaria email with distinct memories of Moritz Wolkenfeld, my grandfather, who managed the bristle factory in Nuremberg that his parents owned and operated. I called this man a month ago and asked him about my family.
“I’m not a youngster,” he said, “ I’m 97 years old, but I remember your grandfather. He was a very very kind person. Whenever I visited the factory he would always talk to me. When I was sixteen years old, he was sent to Poland, just before the war with the other Polish Yiddin.”
He then shared a childhood memory of walking one Shabbat from Nuremberg to the neighboring city of Furth for a bris in the Wolkenfeld family. I’m fairly confident that bris was the bris of my father, who was born on Shabbat in 1938 and whose bris should have been on the following Shabbat. This man and I spoke on the 8th of Adar I, the first iteration of my father’s yahrzeit (the second iteration, the 8th of Adar II was just yesterday) and it gave me chills to realize that there is someone alive who may have attended my father’s bris and remembers the walk. But it was even more intense for me to speak to a man who had first-hand memories of my grandfather.
Indeed, my grandfather, along with the other “Polish Yiddin” the so-called ostjuden were deported from Germany to Poland in the months prior to the outbreak of the war. My grandfather was on one of those deportations shortly after my father was born and nobody in our family ever saw him again. My father had no memories of him. My grandfather’s siblings and wife have all died in the past decades, and my uncle, who died several years ago was, so I thought, the last living person with meaningful memories of grandfather. But I now know that is not true. There is a 97 year old man living in New York City who remembers the kind man who managed his parents factory.
This is an illustration of the rabbinic understanding of the phrase, זֵכֶר צַדִּיק לִבְרָכָה which is often transalted as “may the memory of the righteous be a blessing” but which means something somewhat different. The phrase appears in the Mishnah while discussing two groups of families in ancient Jerusalem who had proprietary knowledge about manufacturing items needed for the beit hamikdash. Some families kept that information as a closely guarded piece of intellectual property and were condemned by the Mishnah in harsh terms. Other families had a more “open source” ethos and shared their knowledge with others. The Hebrew root, zayin, chaf, reish, does not just refer to memory in the sense of a cognitive experience. It additionally refers to some action, and specifically to some form of speech. When the Torah says
זָכ֛וֹר֩ אֶת־י֥֨וֹם הַשַּׁבָּ֖֜ת לְקַדְּשֽׁ֗וֹ it does not mean “remember” the Sabbath day, but it means to “mention” the Sabbath day, a mitzvah that we fulfil when we recite kiddush. So too, the phrase זֵכֶר צַדִּיק לִבְרָכָה means that mentioning the names and deeds of the righteous is a source of blessing. We are inspired by their example and we are comforted to know that they are still remembered and loved.
This understanding can help us to resolve a seeming paradox in the special maftir Torah reading for this Shabbat.
The Shabbat prior to Purim is known as Shabbat Zachor because of the special verses from Sefer Devarim, Deuteronomy 25, that are read each year. The mitzvah of public Torah reading is considered a rabbinic mitzvah, enacted in the time of Ezra, but hearing these verses read from a Torah scroll, according to many, fulfills a biblical mitzvah to recall the treacherous and deadly violence that was inflicted upon our ancestors on our way from Egypt by Amalek, a desert tribe who are paradigmatic of all irrational Jew-hatred throughout history.
זָכ֕וֹר אֵ֛ת אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה לְךָ֖ עֲמָלֵ֑ק בַּדֶּ֖רֶךְ בְּצֵאתְכֶ֥ם מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃
“Remember what Amalek did to you when you left Egypt.”
What was it that Amalek did? The Torah continues:
אֲשֶׁ֨ר קָֽרְךָ֜ בַּדֶּ֗רֶךְ וַיְזַנֵּ֤ב בְּךָ֙ כָּל־הַנֶּחֱשָׁלִ֣ים אַֽחַרֶ֔יךָ וְאַתָּ֖ה עָיֵ֣ף וְיָגֵ֑עַ וְלֹ֥א יָרֵ֖א אֱ-לֹהִֽים׃
They came across you on the way and attacked all those who were tired and wearing and were left straggling behind us. And they had no fear of God.
And then we are given instructions:
וְהָיָ֡ה בְּהָנִ֣יחַ ה׳ אֱ-לֹהֶ֣יךָ ׀ לְ֠ךָ מִכָּל־אֹ֨יְבֶ֜יךָ מִסָּבִ֗יב בָּאָ֙רֶץ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יְהוָֽה־אֱ֠לֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵ֨ן לְךָ֤ נַחֲלָה֙ לְרִשְׁתָּ֔הּ תִּמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק מִתַּ֖חַת הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם לֹ֖א תִּשְׁכָּֽח׃ (פ)
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, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!
There they are: Three short verses and one big contradiction.
In the first verse we are told to remember:
זָכ֕וֹר אֵ֛ת אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה לְךָ֖ עֲמָלֵ֑ק בַּדֶּ֖רֶךְ בְּצֵאתְכֶ֥ם מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃
In the second verse, we are told what we are supposed to remember:
אֲשֶׁ֨ר קָֽרְךָ֜ בַּדֶּ֗רֶךְ
and then in the third verse we are given instructions for what we are supposed to do in consequence of that memory.
But if we fulfill the requirement of תִּמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק מִתַּ֖חַת הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” how can we avoid violating the Torah’s concluding demand לֹ֖א תִּשְׁכָּֽח do not forget? If the memory is erased, ipso facto I have forgotten!
But, based on what we have seen, there is truly no contradiction whatsoever. There are three distinct moments in these three verses. First, we are told,
זָכ֕וֹר אֵ֛ת אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה לְךָ֖ עֲמָלֵ֑ק
to remember what Amalek did to us, but to do so in a way that has consequences beyond our own minds.
We are next commanded to eradicate the very mentioning of Amalek. Rashi explains that the name should not be mentioned because that very identity should cease to exist. Just as we don’t want anyone to consider himself a Nazi, or even dress up in their clothing, no matter what their nationality may be, we similarly would never boast of owning a vintage Amalekite piece of pottery or a home with Amalekite architecture. The Torah demands that we work towards a world where nobody calls themselves or considers themselves Amalekites, and where the attributes of Amalek no longer exist.
It is clear from Tanakh that individual Amalekites were able to convert to Judaism and so there can be no ethnic or racial element of an Amalekite identity. And it is clear from the Talmud that, except for Jews, none of the ancient Biblical nations exist any longer after the Assyrian king Sennacherib mixed all of the tribes and nations together in his empire. And yet, Rambam, writing in the middle ages in his works of Jewish law, is explicit that there is an enduring obligation תִּמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק to obliterate the mention of Amalek, the attribution of Amalek, the identity and character of Amalek.
There are two salient features of Amalek that endure and that are not tied to any ethnicity. The first is the irrational hatred that Amalek exhibited. Pharaoh enslaved us and threw our babies into the Nile, but he feared our presence in his land as a potential fifth column. And our ancestors fought many bitter wars against the Canaanite nations but they and we were each fighting over the same piece of land and there was nothing irrational about that enmity.
We did not threaten Amalek whatsoever. Their hatred of us was entirely without cause. Our threat to them was a pure fantasy. We pray for a world where all conflicts are resolved by peaceful means, but we are commanded to eradicate baseless hatred rooted in irrational fears.
Amalek attacked us from the rear where we were defenseless. We had allowed our stragglers to fall behind without protection. Amalek chose to target those weakest members of our community. Every death is a tragedy and each and every soldier who dies on the battlefield was somebody’s child and represents a world destroyed. But targeting those who are unable to defend themselves and represent no risk to the aggressor is a particularly vile and cowardly form of evil. We pray for a world where all conflicts are resolved in peaceful means, but we are commanded to eradicate violence that targets unarmed civilians.
We found out from a friend and companion of his after the war that my grandfather survived work camps in Poland and the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany until just a few weeks before the end of the war. That means he lived long enough to know that Nazi Germany would be defeated and his wife and children in England would be safe. But he could not have imagined that years after their own peaceful deaths, he would be remembered last of all by his boss’ kid who used to come to visit the factory from time to time. That’s the power of kindness. That’s the power of memory: זֵכֶר צַדִּיק לִבְרָכָה.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 