On Shabbat Zachor, we read a short but powerful passage about Amalek:
“Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—how he happened upon you on the way, and struck down all the stragglers at your rear, when you were faint and weary; and he did not fear God… Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.”
(Deuteronomy 25:17–19)
Two phrases sit in tension: remember Amalek, and blot out the memory of Amalek. The Torah tells us not to forget radical evil; at the same time it imagines a future in which that evil, and even its memory, is gone because the danger it represents no longer exists.
We see this already in our calendar. Shabbat Zachor always comes just before Purim, when we read about Haman, whom the rabbis describe as a descendant of Amalek. In other words, Amalek is not just a tribe in the wilderness; it becomes a pattern that resurfaces in history whenever power is used to terrorize the vulnerable and deny another people’s right to exist.
This year, Shabbat Zachor comes just as the United States and Israel have launched major strikes against Iran, aimed at degrading a regime that has called for Israel’s destruction and armed terror proxies across the region. It is natural to feel that the Iranian regime looks, in some ways, like Amalek: it has targeted civilians, supported attacks on the vulnerable, and spoken in genocidal language about another people’s existence.
But it is dangerous and too easy to say simply, “Iran is Amalek.”
Amalek in the Torah is a symbol of unprovoked, principle‑less cruelty that goes after the weak and “does not fear God.” The attack is cowardly and opportunistic—coming “on the way” when Israel is exhausted and hitting the “stragglers at your rear.” That pattern does appear in our world—in some of the actions and rhetoric of the Iranian leadership, and in other regimes and movements as well. At the same time, Iran is also a complex society of ordinary people: students, workers, minorities, dissidents risking their lives against that very regime. To label an entire nation “Amalek” is to forget that every human being bears the image of God, even when they live under or participate in a cruel system.
So perhaps a more honest reading for our moment is this: there is an Amalek‑like pattern in the world—organized cruelty that targets the defenseless, revels in terror, and treats human lives as expendable. Our task on Shabbat Zachor is to remember that such evil exists so that we recognize it when we see it, and to resist it when we must.
The second half of the verse speaks to the timing and the goal:
“When the Lord your God grants you rest from all your enemies around you… you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”
“Blotting out the memory of Amalek” can sound like a call to endless revenge, but the verse itself ties it to a time “when the Lord your God grants you rest from all your enemies.” The tradition reads this as a vision of wholeness: a future in which the Amalek‑pattern has been so disarmed and transformed that it no longer has any power in the world. To blot out Amalek, then, is not to erase history, but to work toward a reality in which that kind of cruelty is no longer possible—where remembering it serves to prevent its return, not to fuel perpetual hatred.
That helps frame the difficult reality we are living through. War in itself is never “good.” It always brings risk, suffering, and loss on all sides. But sometimes, when faced with a regime or movement that behaves in Amalek‑like ways, there may genuinely be no path to safety and eventual peace other than confronting and limiting that danger by force. The current strikes are being described by American and Israeli leaders as an attempt to prevent far greater destruction later, by setting back Iran’s capacity to threaten Israel and the region. That does not make war righteous; it makes it tragic and, at times, necessary.
Shabbat Zachor gives us a way to hold all of this together. It calls us into three disciplines at once: recognition, restraint, and renewal. Recognition means refusing to look away from Amalek‑like evil when it appears; restraint means confronting that evil without letting our own hearts be captured by hatred; renewal means keeping faith that the world, and even our enemies, can change.
- We do not romanticize war; we name it as a tragic tool that we hope to need as rarely and briefly as possible.
- We refuse to close our eyes to Amalek‑like evil when it genuinely appears—in rhetoric and actions that target civilians and deny another people’s right simply to live.
- We refuse to dehumanize whole populations, remembering that even in the camp of “the enemy” are people who themselves fear their rulers, and who may long for a different future.
- And we keep our eyes on the endgame the Torah describes: not permanent conflict, but a time when God “gives rest from all your enemies,” when the Amalek‑pattern is gone and war is no longer needed to preserve life.
For many of us, the news out of Israel, Iran, and the wider region lands not as an abstraction but as fear, anger, grief, or numbness. Zachor does not ask us to suppress those reactions; it invites us to bring them to God and to community so that they can be refined into moral clarity rather than left to harden into rage
That helps frame the difficult reality we are living through. War in itself is never “good.” It always brings risk, suffering, and loss on all sides. But sometimes, when faced with a regime or movement that behaves in Amalek‑like ways, there may genuinely be no path to safety and eventual peace other than confronting and limiting that danger by force.
To pray for the safety of Israelis and all civilians in the region.
To pray for a change in the hearts and structures of power in Iran, so that its people and its neighbors can live without fear.
To examine the “Amalek within”—the moments when our own fear or anger slide toward hatred—and to push back against that impulse even as we support necessary actions for defense.
Shabbat Zachor is not about glorifying vengeance. It is about moral clarity: remembering that some behaviors really are beyond the pale, that sometimes strength is required to confront them, and that our ultimate hope is for a world in which those behaviors no longer exist. As we watch events unfold, we can let this Shabbat sharpen both our resolve and our humility: strong enough to resist Amalek when necessary, and faithful enough to keep yearning for the day when there is, finally, nothing left of Amalek to remember. In our daily prayers we ask God, “Oseh shalom bimromav” – the One who makes peace in the high places. Shabbat Zachor reminds us that our work in history is to prepare the ground for that peace: to resist Amalek‑like cruelty without becoming it, and to help bring about a world in which the memory of such cruelty no longer needs to be kept alive.
