Who Is Fighting Amalek?

The contrast is extraordinary

This morning, just before I was about to leave for shul with my sons, the first sirens sounded. After spending the requisite time in our safe room, we decided that it would be prudent not to go to our regular shul, which is several minutes’ walk away, but instead to a shul across the street. This is a shul without a rabbi and without a clearly-defined hashkafah, but largely charedi-lite, along with Anglos of various hashkafic persuasions who davven there for convenience.

We listened to Parashas Zachor, remembering how the tribe of Amalek tried to massacre us in the very first war of our national history, and we fought back. Amalek has become the symbolic epitome of the enemies of the Jewish People.

We used to be pretty unanimous about who those ultimate enemies are, but in recent years, different views have sprung up. A decade ago I reported about how R. Nissan Kaplan, a rebbe at the Mir who is popular with Americans (even those who profess to be supporters of the State of Israel), declared that Rav Steinman classified government ministers as Amalek and deserving to be killed. And this was merely one example of frequent labelling of politicians or court justices who seek to limit the charedi freeloading off the rest of Israel as being “Amalek.”

The baal kore punctiliously repeated the reading, in order to cover different views as to the precise pronunciation. And then, immediately after he finished, my older son got the call. He was being mobilized, along with his friends from his hesder yeshiva, to defend the northern border against any potential Hezbollah invasion. Had we been davening in our regular shul, where there are over 80 young men in IDF service, there would have been a swarm of departures, as happened on October 7th. But in this shul, there weren’t many other young men in the IDF; most of them would be staying in shul to continue their day and their lives as normal.

I left shul with my son to help him pack his bag and send him off. I was a lot more composed than I thought I would be, but my wife was weeping. My son hugged us and said, “Don’t worry, this is what I’ve been trained for.” We gave him berachos and off he went.

Afterwards, I was struck at how the first war in our national history is commemorated by different groups of Jews today.

There are people like the many dozens of young men in our shul who are truly walking in the footsteps of their ancestors, fighting as the Bnei Yisrael did to protect us from those who, like Amalek, are trying to kill us. They are not just reciting the Torah; they are living the Torah.

And then there are those for whom that’s just an abstract concept, with fighting against Amalek being merely something to punctiliously recite accurately, with no bearing on reality.

And then there are even those who rate the state and its supporters who are trying to fight Amalek as themselves being Amalek!

May God help protect our pilots, who have been placing themselves in great danger all day, along with my son and all our armed forces who work so hard and sacrifice so much to protect us from our enemies. And may all the Jewish People attain clarity on who those enemies are, and how we need to fight them.

My son, holding a Tanach alongside his gun in his swearing-in ceremony.