My last post about the obligation to execute genocide on Amalek reminded me of my school days when a friend would make fun of the original passage. Here is the text (from Deuteronomy 25):
You shall remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you went out of Egypt, how he happened upon you on the way and cut off all the stragglers at your rear, when you were faint and weary, and he did not fear God. [Therefore,] it will be, when the Lord your God grants you respite from all your enemies around [you] in the land which the Lord, your God, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget!
“You must not forget to forget!” quipped the friend. And although surely the passage was written seriously, the utter silliness of commanding someone not to forget to blot out someone’s memory is apparent.
Of course there is a serious side to this as in orthodox Judaism today it is quite popular to identify any prominent modern antisemites as descendants of Amalek. Also the fact that the lineage of the tribe of Amalek has been lost through time has meant that it is uncertain who the commandment would apply to for modern Jews. Which is actually a great and lucky thing for Judaism — think how uncomfortable it would have been for Amalek to have been discovered today, with the Torah follower forced to renounce the Torah’s unerring command, support genocide today or invent some other justification for not killing children on the street. (If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know I lean towards the 3rd option as the path most people are likely to take.)
In actuality, orthodox Judaism is not so lucky. The writers of Deuteronomy did not know too much about population genetics and evolution. As far as I understood from The Ancestor’s Tale (and it makes sense once you think about it), if you have kids chances are, within a few generations everyone on earth will be a descendant of yours. So there’s a very good chance most people alive today are descendants of Amalek. Even if we take patrilineal descent only, it might still be hundreds of millions. So much for the inapplicability of the command! There are lots of people for the Torah-observant person to kill.
But maybe this passage doesn’t even deserve any semblance of dignified analysis. On the weekend while listening to Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, there was a passage which made me laugh, as it mirrored the Deutoronomist’s silliness even better than the Deutoronomist did!
Mrs. Palmer, in her way, was equally angry. “She was determined to drop his acquaintance immediately, and she was very thankful that she had never been acquainted with him at all. She wished with all her heart Combe Magna was not so near Cleveland; but it did not signify, for it was a great deal too far off to visit; she hated him so much that she was resolved never to mention his name again, and she should tell everybody she saw, how good-for-nothing he was.”
Since I support laughing at death, I think this is also a perfect illustration of a great principle. Sometimes the most vile and violent teachings are worthy not of argument (which takes them seriously) but an endless derision that mocks them for their Pythonesque silliness.
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