בימים ההם בזמן הזה

Rabbi Lamm

Parshas Beshalach 1976

The Jewish Center 

Consider the mad scene of international affairs: the United Nations, an organization

supposedly devoted to the pursuit of world peace, hails a gun-toting gangster; the Third World,

organized to make little countries independent of superrich powers, favors the oil imperialists

and gangs up on another little, lonely country; countries the likes of Sudan, which has butchered

hundreds of thousands of Blacks, vote to declare that Zionism is racism; the first Jewish

Secretary of State in 200 years of American history pressures Israel more than he does its foes;

the Administration of this country is near hysteria because it is afraid that the Soviets will build a

base in Angola, and yet they are beginning to push Israel to agree to a Palestinian state – which

will most certainly become a Soviet base that will threaten not only Israel, but Egypt and Jordan

and Lebanon as well; many liberals, including some Jews, refuse to take seriously or literally the

“Palestine Covenant,” which declares it a stated aim of the P.L.O. to destroy Israel, and excuses

it by saying that it is only propaganda – when the same people have had the experience of Hitler

not being taken seriously, and Nasser too, only to learn later that they meant exactly what they

said.

The Talmud (Pes. 50a) teaches: R. Joseph the son of R. Joshua ben Levi became sick and

fell into a coma. Then he was revived, and his father said to him, “What did you see?” what kind

of pure vision did you behold as you were at the gates of that other, greater existence? The son

answered,  I saw a topsy-turvy world, in which what normally is at the bottom was at the top, and what usually is at the top was at the bottom.” To

which the father said, – My son, what you saw was the clear world!” That

other world – that is the lucid one, whereas this world is the עולם הפוך , the crazy, mad, demented,

topsy-turvy world!

And so I insist: the rational and reasonable world that we dream of, the one we assume

ought to exist even if it be far short of perfection, that is the  עולם ברור , the lucid world. The

reality through which we are now living is unquestionably the עולם הפוך , the crazy and mad

world.

But craziest of all is the near universal adulation received by the P.L.O. I understand

Russia – but why China? Why the Third World? Why Japan? Why Sweden? Why the abstention

of England and France and Italy?

But, if so many nations reverence the P.L.O., then certainly there must be something to it.

Let us be honest. The P.L.O. does seem to make a case. There is something compelling about its

presentation. They are a dispossessed people, coming into their own, fighting for their own land,

writing nationalistic poetry and drama, sacrificing, building a shadow government, scoring

victories, and inspiring seemingly fair-minded people.

But of course, the answer is that all this is meretricious. It is the illusion of nobility

disguising an ugly reality. It is the paint of innocence on the face of the harlot.

Let me mention to you a strange interpretation by the Tosaphists (in the מושב זקנים , ed.

Sasoon). At the conclusion of our Sidra we read of Amalek:

“And Amalek came and made war against Israel in Rephidim.” Why, ask the Tosaphists, did

Amalek take such chances? After all, Amalek had heard of all the miracles that had been

performed for Israel in Egypt, of all the supernatural intervention on its behalf – why then the

risk of provoking a battle with Israel?

The answer they offer is almost mind-boggling: Because Amalek contemplated its own

name, “עמלק“ and discovered that the letters of this name are identical with the initial letters of

four great Jews:  עמרם משה לוי קהת. Amalek assumed, since its name formed the תיבות ראשי or initial letters of these four Israelite spiritual giants, that it too would be endowed with a supernatural triumph. But the mistake that Amalek made was that it failed to consider the סופי תיבות ,” concluding letters” of these four names. Rearranged, these letters spell the Hebrew word מיתה,” death!”

And this, they conclude, is the meaning of the verse (Nu. 24:20) by the Gentile Prophet

Balaam: "ראשית גויים עמלק ואחריתו עדי אובד,” The first of the nations is Amalek, and its end will be

utter destruction.” What Balaam meant was that Amalek may boast of “the first,” that the first

letters of the four Jewish heroes spell its own name, but its end or conclusion will be destruction

– because the last letters of those names spell מיתה, death.

Now, this sounds like an elaborate, artificial, playful word-game – somewhat unreal, odd,

and not a little fantastic. Surely it does not qualify as a lesson in Realpolitik. Yet – it is just that!

It is a brilliant, if Midrashically phrased, expose of the hypocrisy of Amalek in its numerous

incarnations in the tortured history of our benighted species.

The P.L.O.-Amalek has grabbed the ראשי תיבות , the initial letters of Jewish leadership. It

is putting itself over before the world as the Arab version of Zionism or Jewish national

liberation. If the Jews can do it, the Arabs can too – and even better. Amalek too has its

equivalents of Amram and Moses and Kehat and Levi. They have their national poets, their

heroes, their Irgun and Stern groups, their claim to the land, an equivalent of sorts of the Jewish

Agency and a shadow government and even a Diaspora...

But – that is where the comparison ends! The world sees only the innocent face, the ראשי תיבות 

 or initial letters; it ignores the סופי תיבות , the ugly reality that is beneath and at the end of

Amalek, at its own peril.

Jewish nationalism began with Abraham, and Jews never denied it. Throughout the

centuries, for every day, without cease, we knew that the Land of Israel is our land. But the

Arabs, as recently as twenty years ago, were declaiming their assertion that there is no Palestine,

that it is only Southern Syria – a view which articulated well with the philosophy of history of

the late and unlamented Arnold Toynbee.

Israel incorporated in its Declaration of Independence that it extends the hand of shalom,

peace, to its neighbors. The P.L.O. bases its covenant upon the principle of death to Israel.

The Jews fought valiantly against the British – their troops and their police. The P.L.O.

has yet to encounter Israel upon the field of battle. It fights only against unarmed civilians – men,

women, and children.

Israel, for the sake of its own nationhood and peace, has suffered truncation and

amputation from the very beginning of World War I. The article by Mrs. Golda Meir in this

week’s New York Times is most compelling when she points out that of all the land taken from

the Sultan after the First World War, only one per cent was put aside for a Jewish national

homeland. Three quarters of what was left was then put aside for an artificial country,

TransJordan. Jews then accepted the 1947 partition, which cut off even more of what should

have been ours. Indeed, if the Arabs are truly interested in only setting up a Palestinian State on

the West Bank and in Gaza – why did they not do that until 1967? The answer is, of course, that

the P.L.O. means what it says: If it gets a state now on the West Bank and in Gaza, it is only an

“interim state” until they can destroy Israel and rule over the entire area. Their goal is simple as

it is cruel: politicide.

So of this Amalek too it may be said that it poses with the ראשי תיבות  of virtue and

greatness, but behind it all are the סופי תיבות  of death and destruction.

The fact is that the blood brothers of this Amalek are cruel to their own kind. Compare

the Jewish world-wide efforts via the UJA for Israel – with all its disappointments, despite the

fact that so many Jews give nothing, and that those who give usually give far less than they

should – compare this to the cruelty of the OPEC Arabs towards their Palestinian brothers. Only

this week the United Nations released the statistics that the oil revenues of the OPEC states were

in the vicinity of two hundred billion dollars. They paid out approximately a hundred billion

dollars for imports. Hence, they had left a clear excess of pure profit in the vicinity of a hundred

billion dollars. Of this, they gave no more than about seventy million dollars to the Palestinian

refugees – which comes to the merest fraction of one per cent of their excess cash!

The world sees only P.L.O.-Amalek in its “initial letters”; at best it treats Israel and the

P.L.O. as two antagonists equally deserving of the world’s solicitude and sympathy. But the same

world has only begun to get a taste of the real P.L.O., of the death and destruction dealt out by

this contemporary Amalek.

The Arabs, through the P.L.O., have taught that acts of random death are acceptable; they

have removed all restraints from unbridled terrorism towards the rest of the world as well.

Witness the kidnapping of the OPEC oil minister a while ago. And now, most recently, the

Western-supported Angolans, threatened with military defeat, have warned the world that they

are going to emulate the P.L.O. in all their barbaric methods of unconventional warfare. Those

who have embraced this Amalek and have embarrassed the People of Israel will yet regret it –

ואחריתו עדי אובד!

I do not know, and neither does anyone else, whether or not Israel will be forced to

accede to some kind of Palestinian State. I hope not. If it is, it will be patently unjust – but it will

not be the first such injustice in the world and certainly not in Jewish history. But one thing is

certain. We American Jews, although there is no reason why we must blindly accept the program

of either the government of Israel or its internal opposition, must not falter at this point. We must

dissociate ourselves from the kind of unfortunate proposals as that by Arthur Waskow which

appeared in the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times this week – not because he is a dove, but

because he writes as if Israel and the P.L.O. are colegitimate adversaries...

We must not allow this Administration to use us in order to exert pressure on Israel in this

matter.

But above all, despite tensions and threats and possibly coerced relinquishing of territory,

we must never fear! Concern and caution, yes – but not fear and not despair.

We read this morning: Pharaoh and his hordes drew near, and the Children of Israel lifted

up their eyes and saw that the Egyptians were pursuing them – “and they were greatly afraid and the Children of Israel called out – prayed – to the Lord.” One normally assumes that the Children of Israel prayed because they were afraid, and their prayer was that they be saved from the clutches of Pharaoh. But the great Hasidic teacher, R. Samuel of Slonim, maintains that they prayed for forgiveness – for being afraid in the first place...

The State of Israel, and Jews throughout the world, will have tough decisions to make in

the days ahead. The situation will probably get worse before it gets better. But we must proceed

with intelligence and understanding, even though with regret and possibly anger; without panic

and impetuosity, without compromising on our ultimate goals – but above all else, with hope and

without fear.

We are a people that have encountered Amalek more than once in our long adventure. We

have survived him and overcome his deadly threats.

And we shall do so again – now and always. It is worth recording that promise and

today again once ears own our in it hearing “And the Lord said to Moses, write this as a memorial in a book, and place it in the ears of

Joshua” – that the Lord Himself will vanquish Amalek, and Israel shall live forever.