Is the mitzvah to totally wipe out the nation of Amalek a barbaric anachronism? Is it no different than the Holocaust? Should we write it out of Judaism? If not, how should we view it?
Like this?
AMALEK
By Zalman Mayberg
I never had faith,
but if I did,
I began to lose it with the story of the Amalek.
When we wipe out the Amalek,
what would be our method of this
Final Solution?
Would there be righteous Jews who save one family?
One Infant?
How would we distinguish between one –quarter Amalek
And full-blooded Amalek?
Would there be a difference?
Will we hear their shouts? Smell their burnt skin/drying blood/decaying bodies?
Do we transfer them on light rail, aircraft, Hybrids?
Do we slaughter their animals according to Halacha?
Rabbi, must we actively kill,
or would death by deprivation satisfy our duty?
Let us discuss these matters with the same fervor
as Abbaye and Rava’s debate on a cow that gores its neighbor’s cow.
Or the girl who may have lost her virginity.
We are told our generation never had the right to ask WHY?
We lost it somewhere between the rabbis of the Mishna and Tosephos.
Am Yisrael, When we wipe out the Amalek, will the rest of the world stand-by quietly as they perish?