The Purim story is our stand against nihilism
“Sometimes you will not know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory” Dr Seuss
Memory seems to hold a central place on Purim. On the Shabbat prior to Purim we customarily read parashat Zachor (Deuteronomy 25:17-19), in which we find the command to remember the surprise ambush launched by the nation of Amalek against Israel during their journey out of Egypt. “Zachor… lo tishkach!” “Remember! Don’t forget!” Somehow, memory is our strength and defence against the likes of Amalek in the world.
In order to heed this charge, we must better understand the nature of the enemy. There is no nation that we can identify as Amalek today. But the dark philosophies that the nation espoused live on in the world and are as menacing as ever.
The people of Amalek were possibly the first organised nihilists in the world (in spite of the fact that “organised nihilist” is oxymoronic). They believed that there was no meaning to the world or to life. The world was random. And if there was a God, He certainly did not lower His divine gaze to the puny speck of dust that is humanity on earth. And if God did not impart meaning from outside the system, nothing could be truly meaningful.
Sure, we could always attribute our own value on to the world, and live only in what things mean to us, but in doing so we would essentially live in a world of our own minds and making rather than an external reality. Amalek knew that the real world does not go away even with the strongest wishful thinking. They believed that we must face its randomness and meaninglessness if we are to live real lives.
Of course, the Amalekian philosophy (like its modern existentialist-nihilistic counterpart) leaves us with a universe that is cold, random and indifferent.
The word for random in Hebrew is keri from the root k-r. It is also the root for the word “happening”, mikreh in Hebrew. In the Torah we are told that Amalek “happened upon us” or karecha baderech, meaning it was a random, unprovoked attack. They did not attack us because we had an old score to settle, or because we did anything to hurt them. They attacked us in order to damage any sense of value that we held or exhibited, which came as a consequence of the miraculous events that led to our freedom.
In the eyes of Amalek, the world was nothing more than a random conglomerate of incidental happenings. There is no sanctity, no value, no meaning. It is not surprising then, that the Hebrew root for “random” is the same root for the word “cold”, kar. For most of us, this nihilistic vision is too cold to subscribe to as a way of life. But many of us dip into its frosty pool at times.
Whenever we look at a current event and see it as a local or arbitrary phenomenon and forget it is a culmination of occurrences that led up to it, when we see the condition of our lives as local circumstances rather than the emergent reality that has built up over months, years, centuries and millennia, we cool down the heat of the intensity and deep meaning of life. We edit the richness of history and of our identity and we lose, to the degree that we do so, the gravitas of a moment and the honour and dignity of life.
This is memory’s place in our stronghold against the weltanschcauung of Amalek. Israel remembers everything. We remember not only because we have been around for so long, but because we know that it is in memory that value is found.
When we remember, as opposed to dis-member, we make connections and integrate details into a rich fabric of life that emerges and gains meaning in the seat of human consciousness. We see the flow of God through it all.
Yet, when those same details are isolated and seen as random events, they become stripped of all meaning. To isolate a moment, a bit of information, or any detail for that matter, is to remove it from meaning and from its place within the Divine flow of life.
The binding factor for Jewish memory is God. He powers it all, binds it all, embraces it all. The crucial difference between the thought of Israel and Amalek is not the exist- ence of God or lack thereof, but the care of God or lack thereof. Israel believes God cares, Amalek and their philosophical heirs do not. And in that care is the source for all the world’s value, meaning and warmth. It moves a world of randomness (keri) into one of preciousness (yekar).
It was on Purim that we discovered in a story — a series of otherwise random events — the glory of God, and, in that glory, the reflection of our own. It is with the mitzvah of reading the story of the Megillah, the Book of Esther, and seeing moments as woven together that we begin to understand that life is not made of cold, detached, random events, but rather of the warm, integrated and meaningful moments that shine with the hallowed presence of the Holy One within it.
Life is not made up of cold, random, detached events ’
Joseph Dweck is Senior Rabbi of the S&P Sephardi Community