"The Words That We Speak"
Thoughts on Parashat BeShalah 2022
Following the battle against Amalek, God instructed Moshe:
Write
this in a document as a reminder, and read it aloud to Yehoshua: I will utterly
blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven. (Shemot 17:14)
Remembering Amalek
is a unique missvah. While God commanded that Moshe write all the missvot
in the Torah, this one entailed “writing in a document” and “reading aloud,”
as well. What is the meaning of this dual directive to both write and speak
about Amalek?
Several years ago, I
unexpectedly discovered the significant difference between the words that we
read and those which we speak. I was asked to teach a class to a
large group of adults, on the topic of “How is the Talmud Relevant to the 21st
Century?” I prepared several seemingly “theoretical” discussions which are found
in the Gemara, planning to show their central role in determining contemporary
issues. I was barely through my introductory sentence, though, when a man stood
up from his seat. “I don’t understand the purpose of this class!” he shouted,
“Learning Talmud is necessary because it informs us of our national history.” I
objected that I it would probably be easier to understand our past by reading a
book written by a historian – on history. A woman chimed in, “The Talmud is
important because it teaches us how to think.” I told her, as well, that she’d
probably prefer a book on Jewish philosophy in order to learn how to think as a
Jew. The men and women broke into a chaotic debate on this issue for the next
few minutes, each one yelling at the next. The room then fell to a silence. Everyone
looked in my direction for perspective.
I paused for a
minute to collect my thoughts. Clearing my throat, I began to recall the first siyum
that I made as a young man. It was on Masekhet Bava Kama. I remembered
how as I stepped down from the podium on that day, my grandfather approached
me, tears in his eyes. “The only masekhet that I learned in Romania
before the War was Bava Kama,” he told me, “Listening to you talk about
it now, I felt that world which I’d lost come alive.”
I explained to the
class that while the many books that I own on history and philosophy are for
reference – to research a particular era or idea, Gemara is my life.
It is for me – and our nation for over a thousand years – a “way of speech.”
We’ve viewed the world through the lenses of Talmud, discovered God’s ways on
its pages, and found ourselves in its words. Gemara is different than the many
books which collect dust on our shelves because its words transcend the pages they’re
written on. They express our sense of self and our way of life.
Write
this in a document, and read it aloud to Yehoshua…
God demanded that Am
Yisrael remember Amalek during their first days in the desert. Write
this in a document. He taught them, though, that the lesson of Amalek is greater
than just a fulfillment as the other missvot which are written in the
Torah. Remembering Amalek represents the pursuit of goodness and the
destruction of evil from this world. It is our moral compass. And so, remembering
Amalek determines how we speak about ourselves. We articulate our values and spread
our mission through its words. Read it aloud to Yehoshua.
We fulfill the Torah’s
lesson from Amalek in so many ways. We spread goodness by speaking words of
gratitude to the cashier, smiling at the people on line, and helping the
elderly cross the street. We obliterate evil by repairing our fractured
relationships and brokering peace amongst others. And we do so by investing our
time and money to bettering the health and lives of others. But vanquishing
evil and practicing goodness aren’t just words that we read and aspire to
achieve. They’re our way of life and mode of existence. They are the words
that we speak.