Ki Teitzeh - Remembering Amalek in Poems

I Forget What This Poem is About – A Poem for Haftarah Tetzaveh / Shabbat Zachor by Rick Lupert
February 23, 2018

Shabbat of Remembrance –
I’m having trouble remembering
all the things I’m told

my biological DVR should hold.
I have a vague memory of
standing at a mountain

but the details of what
I was supposed to do with
Amalek’s sheep are fuzzy.

Kill them all? Can that be right?
That doesn’t sound like me.
Is this why Saul almost lost

his anointed job? Because he
wouldn’t kill the sheep? I had to
look up the word prostrate

because I forgot what it meant
or maybe I never knew. I can’t
put my face on the floor for

every mistake. It’s so dirty like
the floor of the sea was, which I
remember every time I

put on my shoes. Or dirty
like the gallows after Haman and
his sons hung there for days.

I eat a three sided cookie
to remember this because
nothing paints a picture like food.

Haman and his great great
no-one really knows ancestor Agag
their names written on our shoes.

Our mandate – to wipe them
from our memories, as every year
we remember them.

HOW THEY SPENT THEIR 'GOD OF CARNAGE' VACATION (KI TETZEI)

by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat 2009

At every opportunity
they remembered Amalek

who attacked from the rear
without warning.

They had been famished, weary,
and then the screams in the night...

As God was their witness
they would never be victims again.

They put their trust in rebar
and concrete,

distributed machine guns
for teenagers to fondle.

Taking action felt so good.
Was this what God meant?

This fierce attachment
the opposite of forgetting.

No one knows how to blot out
without holding on.

Memory by William Wordsworth

A pen—to register; a key—
That winds through secret wards
Are well assigned to Memory
By allegoric Bards.

As aptly, also, might be given
A Pencil to her hand;
That, softening objects, sometimes even
Outstrips the heart's demand;

That smooths foregone distress, the lines
Of lingering care subdues,
Long-vanished happiness refines,
And clothes in brighter hues;

Yet, like a tool of Fancy, works
Those Spectres to dilate
That startle Conscience, as she lurks
Within her lonely seat.

Oh! that our lives, which flee so fast,
In purity were such,
That not an image of the past
Should fear that pencil's touch!

Retirement then might hourly look
Upon a soothing scene,
Age steal to his allotted nook
Contented and serene;

With heart as calm as lakes that sleep,
In frosty moonlight glistening;
Or mountain rivers, where they creep
Along a channel smooth and deep,
To their own far-off murmurs listening.

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
by Edna st Vincent Millay

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,–so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

So Remembering Him: The Paradox and Paradigm of Amalek by Ilana Kurshan

In an effort to forget her lover, the poet seeks out a place that bears no trace of his memory – a place where he is utterly blotted out from under the heavens. When she finally finds such a place, her instinctive reaction is to point out that indeed, in that place, “There is no memory of him here!” And thus the very absence of any trace brings back a torrent of memories.

Perhaps this is the same paradox of memory and forgetting that we find in Parshat Zachor. We must blot out any memory of Amalek, but in so doing, we must be acutely conscious of what it is that we are blotting out. In the holiday of Purim, which we will celebrate this coming week, we are commanded to drown out the name of Haman, who is considered a descendant of Amalek, by sounding noisy groggers whenever Haman’s name is read in the Megillah. Paradoxically, however, we are not allowed to drown out Haman’s name completely. If the sound of the groggers renders Haman’s name inaudible, the reader of the Megillah is halachically obligated to repeat the name of Haman so that everyone can hear it. Judaism is not a religion of “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Mentioneds.” We speak out Voldemort’s name loud and clear, and only then do we say Yimach Shmo. Before we erase, we must record; before we drown out, we must make sure we hear.

I hope that as we move on from Parshat Zachor to Purim, we will become better equipped to strike the appropriate balance between memory and forgetting. May our lives always be rich with learning, with the ability to create meaning from our experiences, and with the healing that enables us to move on.