[Previous sermon: "Pekudei - March 11, 2005"] [Next sermon: "Shabbat/Erev 7th day Pesach - April 29, 2005"]
Shabbat Zachor - March 18th, 2005
This Shabbat, the Sabbath which falls before the festival of Purim, is called Shabbat Zachor, the Sabbath of remembering: remembering the evil deeds of the tribe of Amalek, who attacked the Israelites during their journey through the desert by cutting down the stragglers in the rear. The connection between this episode in Torah and Purim is that the Megillah calls Haman an Agagite, and Agag was the king of the Amalekites during the reign of King Saul. The ironic part of Shabbat Zachor is that we are commanded in a special Torah reading to remember to blot out the memory of Amalek. In other words, each year we cannot forget to remember Amalek, so we can forget his memory. So are we supposed to remember him or to forget him? In an effort to unpack this seemingly confusing command, the Rabbis noticed that Amalek and the Hebrew word for doubt, safek, share the same gematria, their letters both add up to 240 and that is no coincidence. While the Israelites were in the wilderness, all the other nations trembled at the mention of their name because fresh in their memory was the awesome display of God's power in the Exodus. So no other nation attacked the Israelites except for Amalek. Amalek had no memory and, even worse, doubted the power of God. They were a tribe who lived in a reality severed from past and future, which was, for the Rabbis, the epitome of evil. And so our response, as a religious people rooted in the collective memory of our people's history as a testament to our ongoing relationship with God, is to remember Amalek: and to remember who and what we might become if we forget about our past and our God.
Another common understanding of the spirit of Shabbat Zachor is to remember what Amalek was able to do to us because WE left stragglers to languish in the rear. In this understanding, our remembering has less to do with evil of Amalek per se, and more about the evil that can reside within us all, an evil which allows us to be indifferent to the weak and the weary, leaving them behind and vulnerable.
On the one hand, by focusing our remembering on Amalek, we are reminded by our tradition that extraordinary evil can be concentrated in an individual or a group, like Amalek, Agag, or Haman. And it is no stretch to understand in a religious sense that Nazis fall right in line with that infamous cast of characters.
What is fascinating is that this religious concept is now being debated on a scientific, diagnostic level. Dr. Michael Stone, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University examined 500 violent criminals, whose murderous acts also included torturing their victims, sexual humiliation, and grisly rituals. He put together a hierarchy of evil behavior so that 'evil' can become an official psychiatric label, not just a moral judgment. On the other hand, by focusing our remembering this Shabbat on the fact that Israel left behind stragglers to be cut down by marauding enemies, we are reminded of the ordinary evil that can overtake the ordinary person. Recall the controversial experiments Dr Stanley Milgram performed in the 1960's to remember that almost all human beings have the capacity to commit brutal acts, even when they are not directly threatened. Think of all the ordinary citizens, teachers, beaurocrats, and clerks that historians have found were swept up in the violence of Nazi Germany, and the purges of Cambodia, Rwanda and Kosovo.
However, remembering evil is only part of what we do in our celebration of Purim. With lots of levity, we might try on the mask of Haman as easily as we might also don the robes and crown of Esther, whose bravery in confronting the King, by threat of losing her own life, saved our people. Perhaps our remembering can be likewise balanced between remembering the shadowy evil that lurks in the hearts of men, and also remembering our extraordinary capacity for goodness. Take the example of Harry Bingham. Just a few months ago, before Colin Powell stepped down as Secretary of State, he gave a posthumous award for 'constructive dissent' to Hiram Bingham, IV. For over fifty years, the State Department resisted any attempt to honor Bingham. For them, he was an insubordinate member of the US diplomatic service, a dangerous maverick who was eventually demoted. But the real story of his life is that Harry Bingham was born into an illustrious family. His father, on whom the fictional character Indiana Jones was based, was the archeologist who unearthed Machu Picchu, Peru in 1911.
As a young man, Harry entered the US diplomatic service and in 1939 was posted to Marseilles, France as American vice-Consul. At that time, the United States was neutral in the war. Not wishing to annoy the Vichy regime, President Roosevelt's government ordered its representatives in Marseilles not to grant visas to any Jews. Bingham found this policy immoral and, risking his career did all in his power to undermine it. In defiance of his bosses in Washington, he granted over 2500 United States visas to Jewish and other refugees, including to artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst and the family of writer, Thomas Mann. He also sheltered Jews in his Marseilles home, obtained forged identity papers to help Jews in their dangerous journeys across Europe and worked in concert with the French underground to smuggle Jews out of France, oftentimes contributing personally to their expenses. After a couple of years, Washington lost patience with him and relocated Bingham to Argentina, where he continued to annoy his superiors by reporting on the movements of Nazi war criminals. Eventually, he was forced out of the American diplomatic service completely and died almost penniless in 1988. Only recently has he been remembered and honored by the United Nations, the State of Israel and now finally by our own government for the triumphant acts that defined his life. We would do well on this Shabbat to likewise remember him.
And it is not just human beings whose memories and example can inspire us and prod us to our own betterment. On a somewhat lighter note, I am reminded of a story I heard of a five-year-old Macaque monkey named Natasha living in the Tel Aviv Zoo who almost died this summer of the stomach flu. After recovering from the illness, an extraordinary thing happened to her. While monkeys tend to alternate between walking on all fours and standing upright, Natasha began walking solely on her hind legs, as in upright. Her doctors theorize that her new stance is the result of brain damage sustained during her illness. Perhaps we humans are invited to see Natash's seeming evolutionary leap as a political statement about the possibilities for peace in her neighborhood. If a monkey can transcend her biology and stand upright, why can't the people living around her similarly transform themselves and change the patterns of hatred, violence and mistrust? Biologically speaking, it is not such a ridiculous project to compare man and macaque. We are both classified by scientists as weed species. You might say, so are rats and pigeons, Rabbi. But rats and pigeon can't be taught to play video games. Did you know that scientists have observed that monkeys play video games better than any one of us born after 1982? Simians also recognize their relatives from photographs, and instinctively organize an elaborate day care system that would shame most American corporations. All that with a brain no bigger than a plum. Given the grapefruit size of the human brain, we humans might well be inspired by Natasha to step forward into a more evolved version of ourselves. Certainly it will take an evolutionary leap for Palestinians when, as James Bennet wrote in the New York Times magazine last week, 'an optimist in Palestine these days is someone who believes that calm will prevail for a few years, before the next intifada begins.' And it will also take an evolutionary leap for Jewish religious zealots to imagine that the demands of Arabs to the same land as was promised in Jewish sacred history is something not simply to dismiss but to reconcile. But we can hope.
And speaking of evolution and biology, scientists may have identified a gene which determines a person's level of spirituality. Moreover, nature may select in favor of genes that promote an inclination to faith. In this spirit, I conclude my Shabbat Zachor remarks: We might do well remembering a recent study of nearly 4,000 people in North Carolina, found that frequent churchgoers had a 46% lower risk of dying in a six year period than those who attended less often. In addition, a study involving 126,000 participants suggested that a 20 year old person who worships regularly might live 7 years longer than a similar person who does not attend religious services. We might attribute these findings to the inclination of religious folks to adopt healthier lifestyles or that religion stimulates good brain chemicals like Dopamine to be released into our systems making us sociable and optimistic, especially when confronted with challenge. Or it may be, as I like to think, that we, like the cave men before us, know, deep down in our genes, that the key to surviving in a world that is full of both abject evil and random goodness, and with hearts that are capable of that evil or goodness, is belonging, being part of a community that presses us, encourages us, and teaches us to aspire to divine heights. And in this way, we get a glimpse of what it means to do more than just survive, but to transcend ourselves, to take that leap of faith and perhaps evolution to become what are not yet, but what we can and hope to be.
Amen.
