Amalek’s Mother

In a diminutive verse, the Torah alludes to the troubled childhood that birthed Am Yisrael’s worst enemy. The verse is so unassuming that the Sages make it the archetypical throw-away line. They protect it by equating all scripture in importance, one can’t dismiss this verse without undermining every verse including: Shema Yisrael.

וְתִמְנַע הָיְתָה פִילֶגֶשׁ לֶאֱלִיפַז בֶּן עֵשָׂו וַתֵּלֶד לֶאֱלִיפַז אֶת עֲמָלֵק

And Timna was concubine to Elifaz, the son of Esav and birthed to Elifaz, Amalek.

(Genesis 36:12)

Tucked away in this passing detail, Chazal read the drama of a woman scorned and how that lead to an angry young man who would trouble the Jewish people in every single generation following.

It is a story typical of Jewish guilt. In some roundabout way, the Sages make us once again responsible for our own misfortune. The Midrash does this over and over again. King Solomon’s indulgences at the inauguration of the First Temple lay the foundations of Rome which will eventually destroy that Temple’s sequel and begin a two-thousand years of dispersion. In a Talmudic passage composed sometime during the Byzantine years of early Christian power, the Sages make themselves responsible for Jesus. His teacher, Yehoshua ben Perachia was just a tad too strict with him. Had he been just a bit more forgiving, no inquisition, no pogroms, no blood libels. It’s an incredible historical lens and the antithesis of the entire thrust of social sciences today. Somewhere, sometime, a Jewish adult made an understandable but mistaken decision about a student, about a convert, about a lover and that lead to a historical avalanche of essentially avoidable consequences. Yes, there are entrenched enmities between people that get passed from parent to child. Yes, there are power struggles and economic disparities that divide people, make them rivals over limited resources that can lead to war. Yes, there are narratives that explain why an act of violence makes sense from a certain perspective but at root, always, the Jewish imagination says, we can do this better. This doesn’t have to be this way. And it’s our fault. If we are in possession of the Torah and the Torah promises peace, prosperity and good health to those that follow it, then the fact that we are suffering from lack of peace, lack of security must be due to that fact that we are not following it correctly. This, then, shapes the Jewish mentality of responsibility, of parenthood, of guilt, and what it means to be chosen.

Here is the tale of Timna (Sanhedrin 99b, with my own embellishments):

Timna was born to nobility. High born; she had the pick of the crop. Suitors came from far and wide, but she was unimpressed with their uninspired, brutish ways. She longed for a man that commanded with his mind, whose greatest strength was his wit and would make her laugh. She wanted a man passionate, but in control, lawful but not slavish, adventuresome but not rash. She wanted a life that was creative but did not tear down what preceded it and she wanted independence from the whims and fads that blew this way and that, from the idols of fashion and pop culture that changed with the seasons. She wanted to stand firm against the stream of change without being rebellious. She found monotheism, a single organizing idea that spoke to every facet of the human personality. It integrated law and economics, sex and family, morality and science. It was literate and powerful and intelligent without being belligerent, arrogant and domineering. Then she met Yaakov and wanted a Jewish husband. She presented herself for conversion and cast an eager eye over his strapping sons. Without explanation, she was rejected, shut out from the family of her dreams. But Timna was nothing if not determined. Yaakov had a brother, Esav, and Esav had a son Elifaz. But Elifaz was not interested in a wife either. Whether, he had tried and was burnt, or had several wives already, or was just not interested in being encumbered, Timna was given but one choice, be his mistress or leave. And so Countess Timna became concubine to Elifaz. She preferred handmaid to the Abrahamic master race than queen to her own idolatrous barbarians. (Master race, was her description, Yaakov never spoke in such terms.) She gave birth to Amalek, whose father was but a shadow in the night but whose mother filled his days with stories and dreams and resentments. His defining ambition was to show that rejection by Bnei Yisrael meant nothing.

Many Jews chaff against employing Amalek as a window into today’s conflict. They are wrong. It is a deep and complex integration of ideas that explain our world better than some of the shallow, unidimensional formulae offered by self-serving academics. The academy simply reinforces the false tropes that brought us to this impasse in the first place. The Torah and the Midrash together describe Amalek as Israel’s recurring nemesis. Amalek is ideologically opposed to Israel, inimical to our very existence. It is not something which can be negotiated; they are defined by their opposition to us. The origin story above locates their hatred but does not mean to offer a remedy. The hatred can take root in different peoples in different times, it can burn openly or simmer on a low flame. It can be managed but it can’t be expunged. The hatred defines the people, not the other way around. There is no people, no race defined by their endemic antisemitism. Amalek is a statement about the perennial appeal of antisemitism. It recognizes the truth that time and again racist, scapegoating, false solutions will raise their ugly heads with their appeal to broad resentments and promises of quick fixes with no change required on behalf of those hurling the accusations and harboring the resentments. This Amalek narrative enjoins us not to blame ourselves for its recurrence or obsess over its origin but instead, accept the fact of antisemitism and confront it. Amalek possessed Germany in its time but no longer. It currently defines much of Gaza. Whether that continues to be true is much of what this conflict is about. In trying to extricate ourselves from this current wave of antisemitism, I believe it behooves us to understand the interplay of Amalek and his mother.

Timna was rejected, perhaps rightly so. She looks from outside, resentful, jealous of the success of Bnei Yisrael. Instead of comporting herself to whatever standard of entry was being demanded, she searched for an alternative to get what she wanted without complying to the demands made of her. She becomes the voice of resentment that places responsibility for her self-perceived dispossession on someone else. She becomes the embodiment of the oppressor-oppressed narrative and the matron of Palestinian suffering. You can hear Amalek’s mother calling for a truce, a cease-fire in Gaza today. You can hear her in the stern warnings against Israel which, according to popular opinion, are a necessary bulwark against the wanton aggression that Israel is likely to commit were it not for Amalek’s mother and her watchful eye. You can hear Amalek’s mother stammering some excuse for antisemitic behavior and calls for genocide against the Jews as protected free speech, as understandable reaction to years of abuse as anything but the immoral behavior that a voice of caring, a voice of morality, a mother is meant to oppose.

When an ethic of compassion becomes aligned with a specific chosen child then corruption of that ethic is inevitable. Compassion as a guiding ethic, or as the mandate of an organization cannot have a favorite child. But, of course, they do. That means that the United Nations and the Red Cross and other such bodies can no longer claim to be implementors of some neutral charter of human rights. They are not guided by a color-blind concern for human welfare. They are not instruments of humanism where every person in need has a claim to their good offices. Rather, they are matrons, sponsors of specific peoples, furthering their interests even when those interests are no longer humane. It is no longer a function of morals but of motherhood. And in some respects, that is a very Jewish idea. We should demonstrate extra compassion for our own children, differently from a neighbor. We should exhibit differential giving where those closest to us receive more of our time and resources. But mothers should not masquerade as international aid organizations.

Her child learns that nothing he does will forfeit the compassion he is owed and hence there is no restraint to his demands. When mercy has no master, a prodigal son is born. Such a son learns to ask for the sky because nothing is too much for unconditional love. Such a son gets protected from the tempering education that overreach and antisocial behavior would normally teach. Instead of rethinking the efficacy of selfish, me-first behavior, Timna’s favorite son is shielded from a badly needed education about how the world works. About what it means to attack the Jewish people from behind. About where that sort of politics gets you.

It is not clear to me that Amalek’s mother won’t prevail this time as well. That instead of the devastating, unambiguous defeat these Jew haters require, they might instead emerge vindicated. That a policy of obstinate, uncompromising, unapologetic total opposition to Israel and the Jewish people might score big in some grand deal being discussed. It will be touted as a victory for diplomacy and mediation. Everyone loses something but also gains. You know, you can’t have everything you want – everybody needs to compromise – say the suits from far-away Washington. It will be the beginning of a Palestinian state whose Independence Day will be celebrated every year on October 7^th. In reality, it will be a capitulation to the wrath of Mother Amalek. A shirking of responsibility to root out evil and instead, behind a cowardly moral evasion, we will content ourselves with some returned hostages, with a temporary cessation of hostilities, and the avoidance of a manufactured humanitarian disaster. All the while, kicking the problem down the road, more entrenched and fiercer, for our children to face. Because we want to forget the thing the Torah begs us to remember. There are such people whose only desire is to harm us. They are not content with a garden and picket fence, with a cellphone and 5G reception, with a 4 by 4 and somewhere to drive it. There are nations who, for a time, become Amalek and whose driving ambition is to prove that it means nothing to attack the Jewish Nation. It’s a difficult thought to accept. It flies in the face of everything humanism would have us believe. No one is that wicked, just misunderstood. Treat them well, show them some trust, break the cycle of violence and everyone gains. Remember, enjoins the Torah, that in every generation such a force as Amalek will rise. Mother Amalek obscures our vision so that we look past a Nazi, a Hamas terrorist, a complicit Gazan to the wounded child within. We cannot afford such willful blindness, such obfuscations. We confront a Nazi, an Amalekite, a Hamas terrorist as a soldier not as a social worker, a preacher, or as a diplomat. The problem they present is not solved by compassion, reason or compromise. That just feeds the beast. It is ideological, incorrigible and proven wrong by the sword.

So what are we guilty of this time? How are we responsible for this predicament? That is the wrong question to ask. It’s the question Mother Amalek invites us to wring our hands over, while strengthening her own hand. Guilt has been weaponized in this conflict to great effect. It has been manufactured and deployed by a great many media outlets, supposed humanitarian organizations and lawfare. “When did you stop beating your wife Mr. Sabra,” goes the insidious courtroom accusation. “I never beat my wife,” comes the muted but true defense. But it’s already too late for these jurors because good men shouldn’t even be accused of such things. My liberal leaning Jewish friends have contributed fuel to our enemy’s fire. It is wrong to see Amalek in the conflagrations of Gaza, they claim. It is inviting the dehumanization of a people. It makes the possibility of some crazed religious fanatic, mowing down innocent Gazans all that much more likely. I concede that employing Amalek language has a danger. I concede that the Purim massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein thirty years ago was probably influenced by such thoughts. But Baruch Goldstein is the exception that proves the rule. If all you can see when large kippa wearing, tzitzit flying, gun-slinging settlers sing their Purim songs is a bunch of potential Baruch Goldsteins then your liberal prejudice has gotten the better of you. Despite the provocation, despite the overwhelming firepower, despite the anger of having brother, sister, neighbor killed in this terror attack or that bus bombing, despite decades of terror that has claimed a frightening amount of victims, drip, drip, drip, with weekly attacks – before October 7^th, we have been stellar in our restraint. Yes, innocent victims of police brutality exist. Yes, plenty innocents have died in Gaza. That is the nature of war and policing and a function of Hamas’ brutal attack. The fact that we have killed too many of our own in Gaza proves that war invites chaos and can never ever be both effective in defeating an enemy and blameless in its exercise of force. Hamas took hostages and embeds itself in hospitals and civil populations as its most potent weapon against Israel. Guilt. Hamas forces us to become the people it accused us of being. Belligerent, aggressive, conquering men. And thank God, our sons, the beautiful, gentle, educated, screen addicted, boys we raised have not forgotten how to be such men. For today it is necessary. Liberal Jews have sat uncomfortably through Megillah readings long before October 7^th. Many edit out the violent culmination of the story as not suitable for modern sensibilities. Tradition begs us to remember Amalek and what it takes to stop him.

There is a danger in employing the language of Amalek and there is a bigger danger in refraining from doing so. People refrain from labeling Gaza, Amalek in deference to some universal humanism that I believe has been hijacked by Mother Amalek. Timna, her name meaning “restraint” in Hebrew, implores adherence to some code of ethics that only holds back our soldiers, benefiting Hamas. The IDF, all on its own, adheres to a code of war, rooted in our Jewish tradition that believes that aims should be achieved with the least collateral damage necessary. If the IDF bombs a target with civilians, it is necessary to win this war. When international bodies and worried Jews voice their concerns over loss of life, they are superfluous. Worse, they implicitly tarnish the IDF with their self-important claim that were it not for their watchful eye, the IDF would be less restrained. Encouraging the voice of Timna to further encumber our soldiers and their freedom of operation materially endangers them. And the moralizing, guilt-filled sermons about maintaining humanity in Gaza only serve to introduce ambivalences that have no place on the battlefield.

If we are guilty of something in this war against Amalek it will be of stopping short. It is the swirling moral confusion and corruption of compassion that makes it so challenging to fight the nefarious duo of mother and child. It is not the strength of their arms. The mother and son team allows the prodigal son to do whatever he wants in pursuit of his ambitions while the mother chastises anyone attacking her son, intoning all the pathos of a grieving mother. It’s a brilliant strategy and is working effectively to restrain us from consummating this war as needed. In a world of such moral inversions, it takes a very sober, strong-minded approach to keep track of who is Haman and who is Mordechai in this story. Our Sages, years ago articulated the inherent difficulty in confronting Amalek: if one falls into the temptation of showing mercy to the cruel, he will end up being cruel to the merciful. It is the sin of Saul. Having won a great victory, he held the Amalekite King Agag in his hand. Why kill him, if my objective of peace has been achieved, he must have asked, what profit is there? Saul failed to recognize that his entire victory is made tenuous, the justification for his use of force undermined, by leaving Agag alive. Will we make the same mistake this time?