Remembering and Re-membering: A commentary on the Torah portion, Va-etchannan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11)
Va-etchannan: Remembering and Re-membering
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah – MPJ E-Bulletin, 24.07.26
This week’s parashah, Va-etchannan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11) is the second portion of the book of D’varim, Deuteronomy. Va-etchannan includes the second version of Aseret Ha-Dibbrot, ‘The Ten Utterances’, better known by their designation in Christian Bibles as the ‘Ten Commandments’.
While the Deuteronomy version of the Sabbath commandment begins with Shamor! ‘Keep/Guard!’ (Deut. 5:12), the version in the Book of Exodus opens with Zakhor!, ‘Remember!’ (Ex. 20:8):
Remember! the Sabbath day to sanctify it [Zakhor! et-yom ha-Shabbat l’kad’sho].
Nevertheless, the Deuteronomy version, which is placed in the narrative in the fortieth year of the journey in the wilderness, also mentions remembrance; in this case, as a rationale for observing Shabbat (Deut. 5:15):
For you shall remember [v’zakharta] that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Eternal your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore, the Eternal your God commanded you to do [la’asot] the Sabbath day.
Significantly, the command, Zakhor! ‘Remember!’, is also used in another context, which, although it is related in connection to the story of the Exodus, conveys a very different message. We read in Deuteronomy 25:17:
Remember! [Zakhor!] what Amalek did to you on the way, when you were going out from Egypt.
The incident alluded to is narrated in the Book of Exodus (16:8-16). Zakhor! in Deuteronomy 25 is preoccupied with remembrance of a heinous assault. Perhaps, Amalek’s attack may have faded out of memory, but, like the Exodus, it was incorporated by the early rabbis into the liturgy and into the festival cycle. In addition to being part of the annual cycle of weekly Torah readings, the passage from Deuteronomy exhorting remembrance of Amalek is recited again in the Shabbat morning service before Purim, the festival of ‘Lots’, when we read the Scroll of Esther, which relates how a wicked courtier in the court of King Achashveirosh, named Haman, a descendent of Amalek (Esther 3:1), devised a plan to destroy the Jewish people.
The injunction to remember – and in particular, to remember persecution – has also been incorporated into an official litany of remembrance in another way. The traumatic experience of the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple and the city of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, recalled for all time in the biblical Book of Lamentations, was included by the early rabbis in the annual cycle of commemoration. The early rabbis created, not one, but three commemorative dates: the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, marking the beginning of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in the winter of 586 BCE; the seventeenth day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, marking the summer day when the Babylonians breached the city’s walls; the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, three weeks later, when Jerusalem and the Temple were finally destroyed. A fast day like Tenth Tevet, the principal ritual of Tishah B’Av (Ninth Av) is the reading of the Scroll of Lamentations. Parashat Va-etchannan is read on the Shabbat after Tishah B’Av, and so the portion is forever connected with remembrance of devastation.
Given our long history of persecution and destruction, it is not surprising that the Torah injunction to ‘Remember! Amalek’ (Deut. 25:17), reinforced by the biblical tale of Esther, has persisted and the Jewish people has continued to remember Amalek over the millennia in all his guises from Haman to Hitler, and into the twenty-first century. Amalek also remains eternally present because the Jewish experience of time is complex. On the one hand, Jewish time is teleological: moving from the past towards the future, the messianic days of wholeness, peace, and justice as envisioned by the prophets. On the other hand, the Jewish people inhabits an eternal now in which, through our annual cycle of Torah readings, and observance of Shabbat and the festivals, the past lives in the present. And in the land of the eternal now, Amalek is at liberty to roam, an ever-present deadly stalker of the Jewish imagination
It is not possible to dismiss this troubling underside of our eternal now mindset, because, after all, the Jewish people has experienced a succession of Amaleks. Past persecution can seem to be ever-present. As Marge Piercy puts it, in her wonderful poetic rendition of the central prayer of Jewish worship, the Amidah: ‘We are caught / in history like whales in polar ice’ (The Art of Blessing the Day. Poems on Jewish Themes. Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications, 1998).
At the same time, as the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, argues in his book, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, we have witnessed a ‘decline of Jewish collective memory in modern times’ (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1982, p.94). If this is the case, perhaps we can regard this decline as an invitation to develop new ways of remembering and reconfiguring Jewish memory. After all, the Torah exhorts us to remember our liberation from slavery and also our long history of marginality, vulnerability, and persecution for a purpose. As we read in another passage in Deuteronomy that contrasts sharply with the injunction to ‘Remember! Amalek’ (24:17-22):
You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or the orphan, and you shall not take a widow’s garment on pledge. / Rather, you shall remember [v’zakharta] that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Eternal your God redeemed you from there; therefore, I am commanding you to act on this matter [my emphasis].
Remembering can be seen not as a reflex of eternal victimhood, but rather, re-membering for renewal. Remembrance embraced as a spur to take action with, and on behalf of, the marginalised, persecuted, and oppressed today.
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
Va-etchannan: Remembering and Re-membering
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah – MPJ E-Bulletin, 24.07.26
This week’s parashah, Va-etchannan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11) is the second portion of the book of D’varim, Deuteronomy. Va-etchannan includes the second version of Aseret Ha-Dibbrot, ‘The Ten Utterances’, better known by their designation in Christian Bibles as the ‘Ten Commandments’.
While the Deuteronomy version of the Sabbath commandment begins with Shamor! ‘Keep/Guard!’ (Deut. 5:12), the version in the Book of Exodus opens with Zakhor!, ‘Remember!’ (Ex. 20:8):
Remember! the Sabbath day to sanctify it [Zakhor! et-yom ha-Shabbat l’kad’sho].
Nevertheless, the Deuteronomy version, which is placed in the narrative in the fortieth year of the journey in the wilderness, also mentions remembrance; in this case, as a rationale for observing Shabbat (Deut. 5:15):
For you shall remember [v’zakharta] that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Eternal your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore, the Eternal your God commanded you to do [la’asot] the Sabbath day.
Significantly, the command, Zakhor! ‘Remember!’, is also used in another context, which, although it is related in connection to the story of the Exodus, conveys a very different message. We read in Deuteronomy 25:17:
Remember! [Zakhor!] what Amalek did to you on the way, when you were going out from Egypt.
The incident alluded to is narrated in the Book of Exodus (16:8-16). Zakhor! in Deuteronomy 25 is preoccupied with remembrance of a heinous assault. Perhaps, Amalek’s attack may have faded out of memory, but, like the Exodus, it was incorporated by the early rabbis into the liturgy and into the festival cycle. In addition to being part of the annual cycle of weekly Torah readings, the passage from Deuteronomy exhorting remembrance of Amalek is recited again in the Shabbat morning service before Purim, the festival of ‘Lots’, when we read the Scroll of Esther, which relates how a wicked courtier in the court of King Achashveirosh, named Haman, a descendent of Amalek (Esther 3:1), devised a plan to destroy the Jewish people.
The injunction to remember – and in particular, to remember persecution – has also been incorporated into an official litany of remembrance in another way. The traumatic experience of the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple and the city of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, recalled for all time in the biblical Book of Lamentations, was included by the early rabbis in the annual cycle of commemoration. The early rabbis created, not one, but three commemorative dates: the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, marking the beginning of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in the winter of 586 BCE; the seventeenth day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, marking the summer day when the Babylonians breached the city’s walls; the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, three weeks later, when Jerusalem and the Temple were finally destroyed. A fast day like Tenth Tevet, the principal ritual of Tishah B’Av (Ninth Av) is the reading of the Scroll of Lamentations. Parashat Va-etchannan is read on the Shabbat after Tishah B’Av, and so the portion is forever connected with remembrance of devastation.
Given our long history of persecution and destruction, it is not surprising that the Torah injunction to ‘Remember! Amalek’ (Deut. 25:17), reinforced by the biblical tale of Esther, has persisted and the Jewish people has continued to remember Amalek over the millennia in all his guises from Haman to Hitler, and into the twenty-first century. Amalek also remains eternally present because the Jewish experience of time is complex. On the one hand, Jewish time is teleological: moving from the past towards the future, the messianic days of wholeness, peace, and justice as envisioned by the prophets. On the other hand, the Jewish people inhabits an eternal now in which, through our annual cycle of Torah readings, and observance of Shabbat and the festivals, the past lives in the present. And in the land of the eternal now, Amalek is at liberty to roam, an ever-present deadly stalker of the Jewish imagination
It is not possible to dismiss this troubling underside of our eternal now mindset, because, after all, the Jewish people has experienced a succession of Amaleks. Past persecution can seem to be ever-present. As Marge Piercy puts it, in her wonderful poetic rendition of the central prayer of Jewish worship, the Amidah: ‘We are caught / in history like whales in polar ice’ (The Art of Blessing the Day. Poems on Jewish Themes. Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications, 1998).
At the same time, as the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, argues in his book, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, we have witnessed a ‘decline of Jewish collective memory in modern times’ (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1982, p.94). If this is the case, perhaps we can regard this decline as an invitation to develop new ways of remembering and reconfiguring Jewish memory. After all, the Torah exhorts us to remember our liberation from slavery and also our long history of marginality, vulnerability, and persecution for a purpose. As we read in another passage in Deuteronomy that contrasts sharply with the injunction to ‘Remember! Amalek’ (24:17-22):
You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or the orphan, and you shall not take a widow’s garment on pledge. / Rather, you shall remember [v’zakharta] that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Eternal your God redeemed you from there; therefore, I am commanding you to act on this matter [my emphasis].
Remembering can be seen not as a reflex of eternal victimhood, but rather, re-membering for renewal. Remembrance embraced as a spur to take action with, and on behalf of, the marginalised, persecuted, and oppressed today.
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
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