Am Yisrael at War (Part 4): Eliminating Amalek By Rabbi Anthony Manning

welcome thank you for coming out I just like to uh ask people if they don't mind to turn off their phones um as I mentioned last week also the Shar now runs from 10:20 to 11:20 and there's a short break uh before the next session um I'd also like to announce that the shear is sponsored today by har Frist who has sponsored the learning for all of today in memory of her late father it's his 10th yard side elaz B mosha Aon Shalom should be an alah for the n and very grateful for that sponsorship um so we are in the middle of a series which which I don't propose to to uh keep with uh for that much longer I think we need to turn our mind to other things as well uh even though the war goes on we uh need to think towards puim and then we need to think towards pesak but we have a little way to go uh and I promised you last week that we would talk a little bit today about aik uh we are in the runup to um shabas and Par Z we need to get a little bit of an understanding as to what what a Malik is hasic Hally how that works before I start is it going to be too warm in here I already feel that it's going to be too warm in here is is that because the heating's on okay can I open a window okay no no I mean that's fine um okay so as I'm sure we're all aware uh the issue of uh amalik uh is one which Some people prefer not to look it too closely because it's uh great sometimes on our 21st century ears although it's not always clear whether we everybody agrees that we still live in the 21st century from from the way that where we see people acting um but defin nevertheless we have ethical sensibilities and a Malik is a often a challenge to those and maybe this is a um an opportunity to get a deeper understanding and appreciation of the Mitzvah and I brought you at the top of the sheet a POS from I'm not going to be embarrassed by the uh by the Mitzvah if I don't understand a Mitzvah if a Mitzvah bothers me concerns me we should take that as an opportunity uh and a challenge to look more deeply at it now as I'm sure we're also aware the issue of a Malik um has been one which has been used cynically by people who are enemies of Israel to accuse Israel of all sorts of things that you and I know and I won't even justify the accusation by denying it or or uh or arguing in detail against it because we know our soldiers and we know what they do and we know how they act and barem we're enormously proud of them uh and the way that they conduct their operations uh but when bi Netanyahu mentioned amalik as part of his approach to trying to encourage the soldiers to go forth to fight a war which is a difficult war against a a brutal enemy uh this blew up in his face and people said oh you're encouraging the Jewish people to commit genocide etc etc I don't need to to recite all of the things that were said now there are many many reasons why that whole concept is nonsense in the way that they said it not just because we know and we're proud of the way the ethical way in which our army acts but when we actually analyze what a Malik is and how it works we'll realize that it's not um it's not what people often think it to be and this is a part an important part of our analysis for today as to see you know what really how have theik poim and the hasik MIM understood this now in terms of the ethics of War um many of the ethics of War actually are founded in mitv in the and I've listed a few of them here um the idea that the Jewish people should know that their success in war is not theirs they're not just fighting their own B battles but they are um they're not because they're not Superior to anywhere else the Torah is very clear that the reason that you're fighting against the cananim and that you will win against the cananim is not because you're better but it's because they're worse meaning you can't congratulate yourself you're fighting uh you're fighting for uh for something which is morality and they have fallen short of that the Mitzvah to offer peace before a battle which we'll see in a minute the Mitzvah not to destroy more than is necessary in a battle which we extend into the whole idea of bashid the Mitzvah to maintain kadha in the battle camp both sexually use of the bathroom which is uh which is part of my whole book on starts off with that idea which is a very foundational idea the Mitzvah of proper treatment of civilians in war especially women in war the ASAT t meaning the Torah lays out morality and ethics in war which are light years ahead of what was said and done at the time um and in light of all of that it makes amalik all the more perhaps surprising and I want to start with a with a voice from of Aron liin um there are two voices actually that I I I personally am missing right now in the whole um Battle of the Jewish people is fighting uh one is the voice of RA who I I I can't claim to have been a close talid of um and I was never in the gush Shiva I live in Alan and I met RAV Li a few times but I feel that his voice would have been uh a very powerful and important one and the other one which I miss personally much more is the voice of Rabbi sex um I I wish that we had Rabbi sax speaking um his wisdom on what's going on at the moment uh and in his absence we have to try and work out what he would have said um which I'm not going to get into today but I just say not only do I miss him as an individual uh still very much but right now his voice would have been enormously powerful on this um but let's start with revin because revin raised the issue of amalik in number one regarding certain particular cim de demine commands surely we find instances in which obedient response to God's normative demands stands in apparent opposition to what we conceive to be good this of course frames the whole question how do we know what's good how do we know what's right is by definition what the Torah says ethical or is there a standard of ethics which the Torah is trying to us trying to get us to achieve which actually exists in some way independent of the Torah so we'll we'll see how that works remember when Abraham says to hasem he's challenging us on this very issue which is um God you you said this is going to happen but that can't be because there is a standard of mishpat which you would not depart from which implies something external to What God Says so we'll talk about that and if you will to what we understand God conceives to be good here a problem arises how do we relate to this what makes the problem more acute is the fact that it arises particularly individuals who are morally and spiritually sensitive those who are relatively coarse are not concerned with these issues who's troubled by the command to wipe out a Malik those people who have succeeded in developing the kind of moral sensitivity that is important to us so R lienin is telling us if you feel bothered by this then good that's not a problem you should feel bothered by this and it should be an opportunity for you to understand it better so let's start off with a little tour around how we uh meet amalik um many of this many of these sources are well known I'm not going to spend a lot of time on them because I want to kind of focus on other things as we know Malik is the grandson of asav let's have a quick look at number two so we see right at the end of told us ased and we see the all of the told us of asav and the names of the children of as now one of the children of asav is elifas and later on we see all of the um the Lords of SE the non-jewish Edomite or not Edomite pre- Edomite Kings in that area and one of the princesses in that non-jewish court is timna so we see timna if you look at youred Tim pesas and we see that timna became a PES a concubine by the way we had a whole series of shirim on what is a PES I don't know if you remember all the things we did maybe I should kind of just start from the beginning again and go do another six years the same things that we did but but uh we had a whole series on pish what is pish it's all on the website so she wanted to be the of Al and she gave birth to and this is the the told us of as now who was this timna woman the also tells us that she was the sister of lotan okay very seems obscure genealogy so so if you go to the top of page two the G has something very interesting to say the posk says that timna was the sister of Lan non-jews mayah what is all this about says the gamar what is who is this timna woman Tim was the the mother of aik she was also a princess she had her own Al she had her own Royal part of the family the and whenever says theor it says Al this is a royal family just Without a Crown it's just a a duke or a a account or whatever it is it's not technically a m but this is a royal family the she wanted to convert to Judaism this woman saw abov and she said I want to leave my non-jewish uh family and I want to join this Jewish family or Proto Jewish Family yov she came to the family of abov the blew her and they weren't interested pushed her away Ben asav so she became a a PES she became a concubine for asav so she could for elifas excuse me so she could in some way be connected with the family because she said I would rather be a a servant a lonly PES in this special family the and I'd rather be that than a princess in the family that I came from so what happened out from that situation came amalik the Ty Israel who became the great um enemy of of Cl Israel mytimer what's the reason as if you didn't get it already the gor wants to emphasize they shouldn't have pushed her away they pushed her away too much okay when you when a g comes to become Jewish then we ask them like like what are you thinking about why would you want to be Jewish what's wrong with you keep Chev Mitzvah go toh be happy why do you need to uh become Jewish but there's a certain point at which we should accept GM and we should we should uh recognize the sincerity of they wish to join the Jewish people and because we pushed away timna we ended up with a Malik this is a very very strong kazal which is saying that the whole of the concept of a Malik comes out of our lack of sensitivity to welcome people to the Jewish people who were not originally part of the Jewish people so I think that's actually a very interesting kazal he says before you get too too um fixated on destroying a Malik just understand that you created your own enemy very very interesting kazal I think the heating is on they're turning it down yes sorry this is a gar in sanedrin okay again when K are telling us midashim this is a bigger Shear this is not an account of something that happened in Mesopotamia um in you know 2000 BCE this is a story that kazal create to communicate a very important philosophical theological hashkafic message that's what midash is you know you have to take midash very seriously sometimes if you take it literally you're not taking it seriously so I'm not interested in whether this happened as a historical event maybe it did I'm not saying it didn't I'm interested in the fact that kazal wants us to take this message away that don't push away non-jews when they want to come to agus to the point that you actually create your own enemy I need to just go on a little bit because we've got a lot a lot a lot to do so just wanted to bring that at the beginning now the first contact with amalik of course is the battle with Yeshua there are a few important points to bring out on this as well let's quickly read this Bim we're not going to read all of theim especially when we get to SCH Alf but we'll look at these [Applause] ones they' come out of Masa because they were arguing with each other the Jewish people were arguing because they were fighting with each other and they were testing and they were saying is is God still with us or not this is the group of people who had just come out of MIT and yet a very short time after they came out of MIM they were saying you know do we still have hash is God still with us or not because of that immediately amalik comes and by the way um Rashi points out inim excuse me where we see a Malik again we'll see in a minute what is the para immediately before a Malik inim it's the para of uh someone who has false weights and measures because they also say meaning I don't know if God really runs the world and is going to give me the money that I need I think I need to make a little bit on the side you know I'll have false weights and false measures it's the same idea of a lack of a lack of B that God is not really there God is not really with us and then came and they came to is anded him right at the end of the shear we'll see if we get that far that some of theic Masters wanted to take this word ridim and read in it we'll see what that means if we get that far at the end of the sh so says to okay no Miracles this time which is very interesting because he could have just you know said fine we've just had esas we've just had so God will strike them down no no that's not how it works you got to call up the Army we need a and we need to get everybody out there and we have to go out and fight them and I'm G to hold the staff of God again I'm going to go quite quickly because I'm sure you're familiar with this when's hands were high and the Jewish people were were successful and as his hands went down then amalik started to win and there's a very beautiful ramban which I didn't bring you here who says that why were his hands going down what what's wrong so the Raman explains that the the people who were not fighting were also mirroring mosha and when moshe's hands were high in the air so the people's hands were high in the air but you know something keeping your hands high in the air for a long time is very difficult so after a while you know okay there's a war on but you know all right whatever you know I'm not going to say toim anymore and enough already with Venom malanu it's like very difficult their hands went down as their hands went down his hands went down because they were supporting him their support for him was propping up his support for the Army meaning it's a joint effort and it's very difficult I'm sure we all feel this meaning we've been doing this for a long time now and it's difficult to keep that sense of momentum but it's critical because our hands go down then musha's hands go down and the leaders become dispirited and then the Army becomes dispirited and the whole thing becomes a cyle so that's that's coming up right now the MOs F him after a while they realized that something needed to be done they took a stone held up his hands and his hands were by the way the word it's very interesting if you want to know what isuna amuna is not faith that is a very non-jewish translation amuna is faithfulness meaning his hands were faithful they did what they were meant to do that's what it means emuna so the idea ofuna in Judaism is not just like I believe I believe something I have faith even though it doesn't make any sense on the contrary you're meant to try and work out to the best of your ability why God exists how God exists you're meant to try and get your head around that Rak said somebody who has a brain who doesn't try and work out the implications or the understanding of the existence of God it's like someone who has a disease who's a doctor who refuses to cure himself because he won't self-medicate do yourself a favor if you know what's wrong with you take the pills so he says if you have a brain you have to use a brain that's not emaa means now you've worked it out are you prepared to kind of live with it and and live up to it are you prepared to do what it takes to live up to the reality that you worked out with your brain that's very difficult we know our hands have to be up it's very hard to keep them up okay and Yeshua weakened Amal did not destroy did not defeat am and he put them to the sword put this now down in a book by the way I brought you in a footnote this is the first time in tanak that we see anything referred to as written down it's an astounding thought in the whole of safe AB gracious nobody ever writes anything down this is the first time you have writing which is fasc inting you can debate whether the this is wrun around about the same time as the as the alphabet was being developed as well by the Phoenicians I'm not getting into that right now write this down and also have an oral law tradition with Yeshua who's going to destroy God God's going to destroy aik that's God's plan he will wipe out aik even brings builds he calls it God is my banner meaning what what is my flag that I'm taking into war with me it has to be my connection with God he said the the hand is on the throne of God it is a war of god or for God but against each generation to each generation now the reason I read these PIM in detail is because a lot of the things that we're going to see for the rest of this year come out of those even though I'm sure you knew it this of course is the laning for p this is what we lay on Pim morning it's just a little snippet it's one of the only Lings that we lay Nim rather than 10im because this is a whole par but this is a Malik so let's have a look at what the abarbanel says the Abel says so why is a Malik different from anybody else okay we F these ones we fought the midan we fought the mo we fought lots of people why is aik um singled out for a different treatment says theel amalik had no reason to fight there was no purpose to it it was just destructive the Jewish people were not going to cross amal's land and they weren't coming to fight against him such that he had to fight against them who who asked you to get involved everything was fine there was a ceasefire before you started this he didn't have any specific land or the Jewish people didn't have a land that aik wanted to conquer out of desire for the that's why people fight Wars they fight Wars because they need to conquer land or because they've been attacked he just fought them because they came out of they're on the way to get the Torah he just came as a Satan I don't have any goals I just want to destroy you I have no interest I have nothing to gain from this it's actually I'm going to actually commit National Suicide I don't care as long as I can destroy you that's all that matters o there he comes out and he gets involved in an argument in a battle that it's nothing to do with him that's what defines amalik and we'll see when we get to r as we come later we're going to have a problem because um we're going to have a very clear halakic principle that that that all the nations of the world from that time of History are no longer identifiable there are no cananim and and and amim so there are no more amim we don't know who's an Amal and yet hierarchically we have a Mitzvah to continue fighting theim door door so how are we going to do that how does that work well sik comes in on that issue okay fine um we'll just skip bam at the moment bam talks about amalik when uh he prophesies at the end of his propes in pares balak there and he talks about how Malik was the first nation to attack the Jewish people and they will be destroyed at the end of the process um in number seven and here we'll see some quite shaking ideas coming out of this how do we Define how do we describe this war we'll see what that means it's an unusual word he he he tailed you zav is tail he cut off the tail and he he focused and he he he focused on and and attacked the people who were the least able to defend themselves the weak when you were weak and either either he didn't fear God or you didn't fear God there was a reason for this and these are very important stoken for us when God has brought you to the land when we left you GI given you rest from all other enemies around you in the land that God is giving you as a inherit the land now we flipped from being God's battle now this becomes your battle don't forget so again we have an ambiguity who's going to fight aik is it God's battle is it our battle can we only do it once we fought everybody else do we have to do it now there's a lot of lack of clarity in what's going on with amalik that the poim are going to put together um I just brought you Rashi number eight uh which I found uh you know I've read many many times but now I find particularly uh striking and disturbing um if you see what Rashi says here number eight he quotes is a is a language of of T of of of impurity Shah that not only did he kill Amal Malik didn't just kill people but he he defiled them but Mish Zar he engaged in in male rape now I don't think this is intended to exclude regular rape which was tragically part of warfare and still is to some degree meaning that's almost taken for granted that a brutal enemy would do such a terrible thing to the women but they even raped the men like that's like that's that's something the normal armies didn't do this is aik they did something that no human being would do and rash picks on this word zav they actually mutilated amalik sexually mutilated the people theor claim Mala and threw their you know organs into the sky just we we've read this a million times and we think how do how do we even relate to that how do we even understand that and the just this the way that the Torah describes the way that amalik fought they would just not like a regular army these are the kind of things that they did and that's what rash is quoting is coming out of the posk rush I'm not going to read rush you can read it on your own um again says that the uh amalik had uh had no uh need to fight there was a was a completely different motivation um you can read that on your own um the Battle of Shaul against amalik which is very important which I'm not going to read theim in number 10 because I want to get into the definition of what the Mitzvah is but as you probably already know sha was commanded to fight against theim and to wipe them all out let me just bring you one p in the middle which is underlined okay do not have pity on them man or woman either even the children even the animals even the donkeys Etc and sha didn't do this obviously he saved AAG and he saved animals Etc and you had the whole confrontation between shmoel and Shaul and we'll see soon Rin picks up on this and says why it's so important that when he didn't complete what God told him to do it showed that his motivation in killing a amalik had been improper which retroactively turned the whole thing into murder or at least an improper use of power against amalik we'll see R lonstein has some very powerful things to say about that I've listed to you at the bottom of page three the other battles in tanak against amalik it wasn't just in the we meet amalik again in schim with moav and in schim later with midan shmuel we just talked about here but later on David also um attacks amalik later on amalik burns down sag and takes the women and children hostage and they have to deal with a whole hostage release situation which we talked about when we talked about the hostages King shaol is killed by amalaki the tribe of Shimon right at the end of tanos to war against amalik somewhat more successfully and of course then we see Haman Hami who kazal say is defend descended from AAG and again the lady who asked like how do we know what does this midash mean again the point here is not necessarily that he was genealogically descended from AAG maybe he was but the point is that he was spiritually descended from AAG he took over what is the amalaki way which is his attitude to the Jewish people was I don't care what the cost is we just have to destroy the Jews that's that that's that's the that was Ham's um attitude now let's get into the maim so far I think you've probably heard all of this um in different scenarios before but let's look at how the different M Define the menah so first of all the malbim the malbim if you like deals with the issue of a Malik by saying God has to fight a Malik at the end of the day it's not your fight it's God's fight and therefore you're not meant to be actively involved in the same way in in destroying amalik God will make sure that happens look at what he says number 11 apart from the fact that we have a Mitzvah a fighting against amalik the hatred that amalik has Al for the Jewish people there will come a time okay then will wipe out because Malik had this fight against God the ne that's what the say I will wipe out the there will come a time says the Mal so the Mal if you like when when we ask the question well how are we meant to be fighting a Malik today the maim says not your fight you have to be aware you have to remember I I'm really warm are you really warm is it just me it's not just me can we can I can the heating has to be on can we ask them to turn the heating off or can we ask them to turn the air conditioning on a little bit because uh you know if we'll just turn the heat off not everybody's hot okay just me okay fine don't turn the air conditioning on okay just just turn the heat off compromise okay fine maybe it's just me I'm like it's like I'm working hard okay fine okay so the the Alim deals with that by saying it's God's fight look at the smag go over the page to page four page four the smag says as follows just like we were commanded to wipe out the Seven Nations we commanded to wipe out of and there's a positive the smack says you know something your job our job is to remember and when Mia comes he'll deal with a Malik after we've already conquered says yes the MIT is on you but the mitvah is not on you today the Mitzvah is on you when mhia has come so that's the position of the smack the position of the UR is that the Mitzvah is only on a me which raises an interesting question is do we have a m or do we not have a m and we talked a little bit about this last week which is it could be the state of Israel is considered to be a in which case then this Mitzvah would still apply or would again apply but let's look at the in a little bit more detail because the actually differentiates look at the number 14 we are commanded to destroy the descendants of a and to destroy to wipe them out from the world it sounds like everybody who are called includes everything you have to remember what has to be done so first of all he says this is a Mitzvah not on individuals this is a Mitzvah on the nation no individual at least at this part of the Mitzvah has this Mitzvah to wipe out of so three mitz given to the Jewish people when they came in the land okay to appoint a king who live not to destroy so what do you and I have to do on all Jewish males there is a if you know what you're doing and you have the ability to do it as an individual and you know who the are we'll see that in a minute there's a whole story about the Von who who killed AAL in the Mikvah I don't know if that's true or it's not true there's a whole story there how he exactly knew he was a mani but that's a whole different thing I'm not sure if that's a a reputable story but he he divides the Mitzvah into two he says there is a Mitzvah on the nation to fight against the nation of amalik and there's a Mitzvah on the individual if you happen to have the ability and you're a man and you know who the amim are then then you have to do that okay so the question of course remains how do we know who is an Amal and I I couldn't uh help but bring the story in number 16 um from R gustman um rev Gusman who was in the Holocaust and uh he reports as follows when rev Gusman reached the forest his plan was to become a partisan to fight against the Nazis and defend himself and his family however to be accepted as a partisan there was a single condition one had to bring a weapon R Goodman's opportunity came when he saw a lone Nazi Soldier passing through a quiet place in the for R Gusman jumped the soldier through his rifle as far away as he could and killed the soldier with his bare hands in Yus RAV Gusman would look down at his hands and say I was M the Mitzvah of being I fulfilled the Mitzvah wiping out amalik with my bare hands interesting very powerful story of how RAV Gusman felt that that was what he was doing but again there was no hesitation in the way that the Jewish people understood that the nazzi shakam were part of what a Malik was and his fight against amalik was part of that fight how did he know what where's he coming from so this is where I want to bring in the uh the idea of RA salik but to do that we have to learn a rambam because ra salik is coming off this very important rambam please go to the top of page five so in s 17 the rambam says we have to read very carefully now there is a Mitzvah to destroy the Seven Nations you have to wipe them out if you come across one of these Etc and you didn't kill them you've broken aah but then he says at the end but they don't exist anymore so you're off the hook you don't know who they are they don't exist the nation of Canan does not exist anymore so you can't do that and now we'll have to see what does this mitvah what does word mean similarly there is similarly a Mitzvah to destroy aik what it mean similarly they also don't exist or they do exist there is a Mitzvah to always remember what aik did and how he tried to destroy us so that you don't calm down you have to be about this always that's something that's why we read it every year so we remember this is something we need to fight and we learned in the oral law mention it in your mouth this is why we Lane and in your mind don't forget you can't forget the AA and The Sinner that amalik had against us okay why don't we know who the nations are and do we know who a Malik is interestingly what does he not say at the end of that at the end of the first when he came to the cananim he said it's irrelevant because you don't know who they are he never said that with amalik why did he never say that he should have said or maybe he did say that by saying at the beginning depends on how you're going to read it now in terms of why we know who they are this is a very interesting H principle if you look at the razi number 18 he comments immediately when the rambam writes that we don't know who they are is messed up the world okay so s as you I'm sure you know was uh the king of Assyria who came and exiled the 10 tribes so when we read about that Exile he had a certain population uh policy whereas later koresh actually allowed people to come back to their ancestral lands and be loyal vassel States under the Persian Empire sanv in Aram in as rather had a completely different policy he his idea was to take people from this part of the Empire and take them over there and from there and over here how do we know so have a look in number 19 and then I'll tell you an interesting story about that Boba yum this is a mish in y b am this guy Yehuda an AM G came and went to the bast okay in the went to the Sanhedrin as an ammonite G but B he came to the B Med so he said to them I have a sh eminent rabbis can I marry a Jewish woman I'm an ammonite G okay ra answered him I'm sorry my friend you cannot be a g you're not allowed to be a g this is one of the debates between RAB and Rua that blew up eventually into something which was very political so Rua said no I disagree you you can be a Jewish G you can get married says the thing you can't have is a mo and an ammonite G that's exactly what this fellow is of course the whole story of Ru is is that is that the same with the women not the same with the women so says do you know who the are do you know who you don't have a clue this is in the Mna itself the king the the completely switched around the whole world and thek he brings thek that in puts into the mouth of the following comments I have moved I have taken down the differents or I've made news for the Nations I have um I have uh plundered their treasures and I have exiled vast populations it's not clear how to translate those last words but that's one of the translations and in fact as far as we're concerned that's how we understand the presence of the sh that in the tanak it says that one of the things that did is he took the shamim from somewhere in CA which is somewhere in Iran and he took them and he brought them to Shaman because the people from shamron the 10 tribes from shamron he took and he put them somewhere else this of course un narrative about the shamron that they're basically people that were brought by SV and put into shamr and and then they converted or did they convert Etc now you have to understand the shamun don't have the same Nar narrative have you been to see the shamim I recommend strongly you should go and visit the shamim I had a very interesting visit with the sh many years ago I went there on sukot I went there with a group you need to get Liv sahal and it's not so POS they live in a pretty you know difficult neighborhood um and uh their narrative is is that yes they said yes I know you think that we came from with Sano from somewhere else but we think we were originally the tribe of Ephraim and there was a big mlus and Ellie haken it goes back that far you know Jewish people remember mocus for a long time Ellie aen took off from harim and went down to Y and we stayed in harrim but we're really Jewish the problem of course is that nobody else thinks they're Jewish apart from them the Arabs should certainly know they're not Arab they don't know if they're Jewish or not but they're not Muslim so they they they they you know persecute them in fact the sukka I went to was inside the house so I was very interested in this because I thought wow this is like you know the shim claim to only have the the or the written law but not the oral law and I said to them is this some like interpretation like you have the suer inside the house they said no we used to have the Suka outside the house but the Arabs threw stones of so now we have it inside the house the Arabs threw stones at them so they brought it inside the house so I was a bit disappointed I found you know the reform sh on him they brought the MS for the Su inside the house so I said okay forget the Su so we you know talking through things so I said to them I said to the guy there very sweet guy and his daughter was there as well and the family uh I said you have separate PL plates for meat and for milk so he looked to me he said you know like you know so I said to him why why would you have separate plates for meat and milk if you didn't have any kind of oral law there is no hint anywhere in the Kash that you have to have separate plates for meat and separate plates for milk so he looked at me and he said that's a good question I'll have to ask a Coen godle they have a Coen godle they have a Coen godle so just a word of advice if you're going to visit the shamim try and visit the co godle because they'll have the the answers to this it was very interesting Exchange Ah that's that's another that's another question for the Coen God that's kind of clever I never thought of that question okay fine maybe maybe there was some people that stayed around from shid Ley there's a there's a village called sh if you go up there Route 60 past and all the way through through you get there and there's one side is and the other side is sh and you just go to sh and uh very very interesting they have everything written in if you remember we had a whole sheer on the original script I and they have them as a inscribed into the door over the door Etc it's very interesting people go there to the cor pesak they don't have the same calendar there's a million interesting things about the shamron anyway the point here is that we don't know who these people are okay so we don't know who the malim are so why is there still a Mitzvah to fight a Malik so we'll get to that in a in a in a little bit okay the ramban by the way says interestingly that there is a Mitzvah not only to fight but to offer them peace in advance this is also very interesting because if you say well we have a Mitzvah to wipe out the whole nation of amalik so why are we offering them peace and the rambam says no you don't you have to offer them peace which is very interesting let's look at the rambam in number 20 we never ever fight anybody Shalom until we first give them an option of peace and before you tell me yeah but surely not in a no even in a you have to offer them an option of Peace if they won't make peace or they will make peace for they won't accept basic Morality In the way that they live the then we have to fight etc etc and he even understands his position is and I brought you the K Misha who says this clearly the Ram's position is even with the Seven Nations even with amalik we have a Mitzvah to offer them War offer them peace excuse me before we make war number 21 okay um all all they need to do is accept the it's a fascinating this is a key K mishna he's saying that if they decide to accept the sh mitvah they are no longer a Malik they are no longer the Seven Nations what we thought was a genealogical hereditary national race issue is clearly not because the minute they say I'm happy to keep the mitzvas oh I'm happy to live with you as well no you're not not anymore you used to be but now you're not which is very very interesting the a also also AA understands it this way number 22 if they are and they just accept to be moral non-jews that they don't murder and they don't steal Etc we don't count anything against them we don't have any issues with any particular group don't we have a principle in Judaism the people are not punished for the sins of their ancestors unless they continue to live in that way so to withal we don't hold it against you that you that your grandparents were a do Chu and keep the mitz which is actually very interesting the the rived by the way says maybe they need to do a little bit more he says he disagrees with the r he says I think this is a mistake it's not enough that they keep the seven they have to become Jewish if they prepare to become Jewish then everything will be fine which is very interesting it reminds me of a conversation I once heard from Rabbi Riskin um that when Rook was trying to convince him to bring in aat into the gim movement in the 1970s they 80s rather they founded ifrat a which year was founded was it 82 83 something like that um this Rood was towards the end of his life and he's went came to Rav Riskin I heard this from R Riskin and said I assume that you'll bring a frat into gim so rabar Riskin in class Rabbi Riskin mode said I'm not so sure because why not he says but what about all the millions of Arabs that are living in your hood of a sham I mean I'm not so sure this whole gim project is exactly how you going to deal with that Rabbi so he said to me took his hands in his hands and said Al don't worry they're all going to become Jewish interesting okay they all become Jewish who knows yes I heard it from Riskin okay yes very it seems to but the problem is we have a b we have a Mitzvah to continue fighting them and yet we also have a halic principle that we don't know who they are because the genealogies have all been messed up and that's the core of the problem if I have a Mitzvah to continue fighting them but on the other hand you're telling me you don't know who they are then well then how can that Mitzvah apply and the answer is it's a Mitzvah to fight but not to fight this race it's a Mitzvah to fight people who are like this that's the point and that's how we understand a Malik it's not genocidal it's about what the people decide to be like and actually T if you go over to page six you'll see that the says quite famous tabra that the uh the the descendants of hamon ended up learning Torah in babra why exactly they wanted to go to ponich rather than the Mir is I don't know exactly but they he clearly had descendants and they clearly had something to add and to contribute so now to Rav solvic RAV solic has a piece that he um penned in 1956 when the seist crisis was brewing so let's have a look at it together Divine Providence is testing us once again via the crisis that has overtaken the land of Israel let it be clearly stated the matter does not just affect the political future of the land of Israel the designs of the Arabs are directed not just against the political sovereignty of the state of Israel but against the very existence of the yesu in the land of Israel they wish to destroy heaven forbid the entire Community both men and women infl and suckling ox and sheep at a mrai conference I cited the view expressed by my father and master of mosha salik of blessed memory that the proclamation the Lord will have war with a Malik from generation to generation does not only translate into the communal exercise of Waging War against a specific race which we in theory yes but we don't know who they are but includes as well the obligation to rise up as a community against any people or group that filled with maniacal hatred directs its enity enmity against knesset Israel when a people emblazons on its Banner come let us cut them off from being a nation that the name of Israel will be no more in remembrance which is what we hear from certain nations of the world every day of the week and they somehow rather they never accused of being genocidal it becomes thereby a Malik it becomes a mik in the 1930s and 40s the Nazis with Hitler at their head filled this role they were the amalekites the standard bearers of insane hatred and enity during the era just passed today their place has been taken over by the mobs of NASA and the Muti if we are silent now as well I know not the verdict that will be issued against us by the God of Justice meaning I can't say what the consequences are for inaction but he says I tell you this do not rely on the quote unquote liberal World sense of equity those same righteous liberals that were around 15 years ago that was during the Sha and they looked with indifference upon the extermination of millions of people they did not even lift a finger if heaven forbid yet a second spectacle of blood were to take place before their very eyes it is likely they would not even lose a night's sleep over it very powerful words very powerful solic um and you can read the footnote on your own in 26 he goes into it in more detail and he says that again on an individual level we don't know who the amim are um but the the the mantle of amalik if you like is taken over um By Any Nation of this kind so let's just spend a few minutes towards the end of the sh looking at a very interesting idea um some moral and ethical approaches and here I want to actually bring in Rabbi Lam Rabbi sex and also again Rin so Rabbi lamb raises this he has he has a very important book Rabbi Lam also has an essay uh on amalik which is very much worth reading um and he has a book called faith and doubt which is an excellent book and really recommend it very strongly and he here talks about this issue there are two elements of moral concern one is a Malik where by the descendants of a Malik are forever condemned to death apparently without regard to their own conduct which we've seen is not the case run the least the terrorist explanation implies a genetic defect in the amalekites and the other is the Seven Nations and first of all he brings you the K is and thean is basically says okay I don't know why you're asking questions if God says this is correct then that's the ethical thing to do the word of God is all you need the word of God equals ethics okay that's one approach and Rabbi lamb disagrees respectfully with that and he says that there is an ethic which is beyond just individual mitzvot which is made up of the the Torah as a whole when you you can't just bring in your ethic from some foreign Source but the Torah of a whole is trying to bring you to an ethical and moral sensibility this is a very important point for example there are meta mitzvot in the Torah you have to be Kad you have to do the right thing these are macro Mitzvah Mega Mitzvah that um if you look in the ramban on each of these having picked up the sensitivities of how to keep all of the individual mitzvah you're meant to build up a picture of what it means to be an ethical moral sensitized Jew and that will inform you on how to make broader ethical and moral decisions it's the Torah which informs you but not from the micro Mitzvah Mitzvah but from the macro um ethical understanding so Rabbi Lam has that approach again he says the Khan is not Rabbi sax comes up with I think a brilliant thing and in case you've been wondering when would youth Pro come in here it is okay I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it right but have a look in number 28 in Judaism the youthi pro dilemma does not exist what's the youthi pro dilemma it's a famous Greek dilemma is the right right because the gods said it's right or is it right and therefore because it's right that's what the God said to do which is it is it right because God said it or is it right and therefore God told us to do the right thing is it wrong to murder people and therefore God said said you know something you wouldn't want to do that don't murder people but we knew already before the Mitzvah that it was wrong or is it only wrong because God says and therefore murder here is wrong but over here is fine everything came from that's not true AR ainu didn't have a revealed system of Torah he didn't have a mat T he didn't have a har he he had to work it out for himself he didn't have mitzvot it had to be worked out intuitively and ah so maybe your answer actually is Rabbi Sax's answer when you say everything look in number 28 actually cuz I think you might have put your finger on it in Judaism the youth Pro dilemma does not exist God commands the good because it is good without this assumption Abraham's challenge over the fate of Saddam shall the judge of the earth not do justice would be incomprehensible God and humans are equally answerable to the claims of justice but the good is what God commands because God the lawgiver is also God the Creator and the Redeemer it's a very important Point morality mirrors the Deep structure of the universe that God made and called good Plato's challenge arises because the Greek gods were not creators matter was eternal the gods had no special Authority except for the fact that they were held to be powerful Plato was therefore correct to challenge the popular Cults of his day by in effect drawing a principal distinction between might and right the gods may be strong but that is no reason to invest them with moral Authority for the Bible however ever God who teaches us how to act in the world is also the maker of the world in which we act which is maybe the point that you just made this means that in monotheism morality means going with not against the grain of the cosmos and history it's very important Rabbi Sak talks about this a lot monotheism doesn't just mean having one God as opposed to three or 10 or 25 monotheism means that you don't see any dichotomy between science and religion between the world and ethics and and Mitzvah it's all part of the same system God himself empowers His prophets to challenge Kings even himself in the name of justice and mercy to be sure there are occasions most famously The Binding of Isaac in which God seems to demand pure obedience but this itself suggests that the story may be more subtle than it seems taken as a whole Judaism embodies Divine faith in the moral capacity and literacy of humankind we could go on and read Rabbi saaks forever but he's making a really important point that whenever we talk about morality we don't see a dilemma there the morality of the Torah should Accord with a morality that we get from understanding the world as a whole not just from other non-jewish necessarily non-jewish systems but from a broader understanding of the world and Rabbi Lenin picks up on this and I'm not going to read obviously the whole of number seven because you can read it in your own time but RAV Lenin and for that matter by the way RAV amital sometimes made themselves a little bit unpopular with the religious right if you remember back to the Lebanon war um I was a little kid during the Lebanon war so I don't remember the specifics but um ravenstein after Sabra and shatila came out and wrote some quite unpopular things and challenged whether the morality of how Bean had conducted the war was correct rather Amal also and in this piece he rehearses the arguments between him and the other religious uh leaders on the quotes unques right in the religious Zionist world and he he goes through that you can read ravenstein his balance and his approach on the one hand on the other hand U let me just leave you with two ideas and with this we'll finish and more cic ideas so on the bottom of page eight I brought you a piece from the kadas leich says a very beautiful idea which is yes as individuals we don't have a MIT for to destroy amim because we don't know who they are and therefore as a nation there's this idea and amalik is more a kind of concept of whoever takes on the mantle of but I tell you I'll tell you where you'll find the Malik he says you'll find it inside every single person everyone is a world in and of themselves it's a very 19th century idea and aik is a force in the world meaning it's a force within you within me and we have a Mitzvah to destroy theal within us which is weakening us and this is where he says is there's something inside us which is which is undermining our connection with our and we have to just destroy that and he's not denying the Mitzvah of amalik but he's saying that on a regular daily basis everybody is engaged in a Mitzvah in themselves of of which is maybe one of the reasons why we have some people have a Min to say it every morning to remember it that it's not just about purm but it's about perfecting themselves in so far as they can and the last thing I let give the last word to uh theat em where theas says that one of the important things about a Malik is to understand that a Malik is singled out as a nation which will never ultimately have any redeeming features but that tells you that every other nation in the world will and therefore he says that we need to try and understand that a Malik is different from everyone else and everyone else the Americans the Germans the whoever even the French maybe even the French have features within them that will ultimately come to kadha and he brings the the the uh examples at the end where he talks about theim for mashiah that all nations will come to God except amalik amalik will be wiped out but that again Spurs us on to not just see a critique of the non-jewish world but find ways to identify the Kusha inherent in other nations as well which may not be manifest yet but will one day um be manifest okay right now the United Nations is a mess but the concept the concept is a concept which we believe in uh we just have to make it work U because at the end of the day it's they realize this one themselves they wrote from shahu on First Avenue there which are understanding that this is a this is the the Messianic ideal and the road to mhia is Bumpy and we'll we'll we'll work it out but hopefully that will give us some understandings of amalik and we'll go into z a little bit more understanding of that so I wish you all a good week next week I want to give the last in the series then we move on to other things and uh but EZ will move forward