Tetsaveh
Exodus 27:20-30:10
Deuteronomy 25:17-19
I Shmuel 15:2-34
Among the pieces of Torah I learned in rabbinical school, one stands out powerfully in my memory.
Every Friday evening, as the community of students and faculty gathered for Kabbalat Shabbat services, one faculty member offered a brief d’var Torah (biblical interpretation). One evening, the d’var Torah was offered by David Weiss Halivni, a world-renowned Talmud scholar, a soft-spoken man of great sensitivity and wisdom. Halivni spoke of the mitzvah of “shichechah” (forgetting) — the mitzvah of leaving forgotten sheaves of grain for the poor.
The law simply states, “When you reap the harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the orphan and the widow” (Deuteronomy 24:1).
Halivni, a Holocaust survivor, spoke in the soft cadence of Yiddish-accented English, with a faraway look that hinted at terrible things he had seen and experienced. I remember as if it were yesterday that he said slowly, “Sometimes forgetting is a blessing.”
He was saying that the mitzvah of shichechah was not only a teaching about agriculture, not even just about communal care for the poor. The Torah was teaching us a spiritual truth about forgetting, about letting go, about moving beyond memory, for the sake of life and love and joy.
This Shabbat, the Jewish world gathers to embrace the opposite piece of wisdom, the mitzvah of remembering. This Shabbat prior to Purim, we attach to the weekly parasha the special maftir reading recalling the attack of the Amalekites on the straggling Israelites on their way out of Egypt.
“Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt — how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:17-9)
To Jews of the 20th century, the meaning of this mitzvah is excruciatingly clear. The Torah in its time singled out a particular act of cruelty and aggression against our people and adjured us never to forget. In the mitzvah of remembering Amalek, the Torah teaches us that some heinous crimes must be carefully remembered, to protect us from their being repeated, because this crime has something to teach us, because this event in our past is central to who we are.
Of course, remembering is central to Jewish life. Remembering is the way we nurture our identity as a people and our sense of mission in the world, and the way we teach our children the richness of Jewish life. As Jews, we cherish positive acts of remembering among our most sacred practices. We remember the creation of the world, reminding ourselves that we are God’s creatures, with an important but small role in the universe. We remember the exodus from Egypt in order to recall that we are God’s people, dedicated to the ongoing process of liberation.
Yet there are times — for us as a people, and surely for us as individuals — that forgetting is a mitzvah, a blessing, a requirement.
Sometimes we need to forget because the burden of remembering everything is so heavy that it impedes us from living. There are times when it is best to forget slights and insults and even injustices done to us. Even when our righteous anger feels enlivening and powerful, nursing that anger may really poison our lives, hurting us more than it punishes the object of our ire.
Sometimes it is a mitzvah to let go of attachments to the way we would like things to be or mental images of who other people are, if we want to be open to forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.
This Shabbat, as we prepare for the mixture of memory and frivolous forgetfulness that is Purim, may we learn something about when we must remember and when it is best to forget.