If reported accurately, and we have no information to the contrary, a rabbi in the leadership of the Shas party in Israel has declared that Jews who wear knit yarmulkes are “Amalek.”
Amalek, of course, is that singularly despised Biblical personage, known for his and his people’s desire to wipe out the Jewish people. Haman, that would be genocidal killer of the Purim story, was a descendant of Amalek. Amalek denotes hate and connotes the complete absence of compassion or empathy that characterizes the psychopathic killer, the type who can smash babies’ heads against walls without a tinge of regret.
What is one Jew doing calling another Jew — let alone an entire class of Jews — Amalek?
There is a context, but even on the most sympathetic reading of that context, it remains unconscionable to invoke Amalek, even against one’s worst political enemy. The context is the bitter quarrel in Israel over what the haredi Orthodox segment of Israeli society sees as a deliberate attempt to undermine it by drafting its Torah students for army service, and over what other segments of Israeli society see as a fair distribution of the national burden. The Shas rabbi represents a haredi point of view.
What he fails to grasp — aside from his primary offense, his extraordinarily inappropriate and downright unholy attribution of genocidal intent to an entire group he perceives as opposed to him — are two realities.
First, he confirms the very worst stereotype that some of his opponents hold. If any argument could be made for modifying a system of draft exemptions for fulltime Torah students, there is none better than the ethical insensitivity of a Torah scholar who defends the system, and lets loose with an Amalek comparison. This rabbi is not representative of the haredi Orthodox leadership, but the Amalek remark is so extreme and officious that it stings nonetheless.
Second, the remark came a few days before Tisha b’Av, a time when Jews are supposed to be especially sensitive to Jewish disunity, especially careful about not speaking ill of other Jews, and especially conscious of the internal Jewish divisions that led to the end of Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land some 2,000 years ago.
“Amalek”? For shame.
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
