A Jewish woman wants to take her dog to Israel, so she goes to the travel agent to find out how. He says, "It's easy. You go to the airline, they give you a kennel, you put your dog in it when you get off at Tel Aviv go to the luggage rack, and there's your dog.
So she does, gets off at Tel Aviv, goes to the luggage rack, no dog. She goes to the lost and found, says, "Where's my dog?" They look all over the airport for it and find the dog in another terminal. Only the dog is dead.
Then one says, "Wait a minute, it's a cocker spaniel. They're common dogs.
There's a pet shop across the street from the airport. We'll get the same size, shape, color, sex. She'll never know the difference."
They bring the woman the other dog but she says, "That's not my dog." Laughingly and making light of it they say, "What do you mean that's not your dog?"
To which she responds, "My dog's dead. I was taking it to Israel to bury it."
In the haftarah of this week, Shabbat Zachor, leading up to Purim, we tell the story of King Saul’s disastrous decision which cost him his kingship.
Saul was instructed by the prophet Samuel to destroy the nation of Amalek—the people who were always dedicated to the absolute destruction of Israel. Right when the Jews left Egypt, unprovoked, and with no territorial dispute, Amalek pounced on us, trying to annihilate our people.
King Saul began the job but could not finish it. Out of compassion for their leader Agag, Saul spared his life, as he did the lives of the cattle and sheep. The following morning, Samuel informed him that the kingdom will be taken from him. Then Samuel himself killed Agag.
This mistake ultimately resulted in the birth of Haman. The result of Saul’s misplaced clemency, which extended Agag’s life for one day, was that during the night he was able to impregnate a woman, and of this seed, generations later, came forth Haman and his ten sons, who plotted the complete annihilation of the Jewish people in one day!
Why did Saul not want to kill Agag and all the cattle?
When Saul was ordered by G-d, Now, go, and you shall smite Amalek, and you shall utterly destroy all that is his, and you shall not have compassion on him… "
Nonetheless, Saul and the people bestowed mercy on Agag, and on the best of the sheep and the cattle.
What happened? In explaining the precise nature of Saul’s historic error, one of the great Rabbis, the Malbim offers a powerful explanation.
G-d never commanded King Saul against instinctive feelings of practical compassion or emotion or mercy, in response to His command to kill an entire nation of Amalek. These feelings come naturally, and G-d allowed, and even expected them, even while fulfilling His orders to obliterate Amalek. When you destroy a nation, it is painful, and a sensitive person must have compassion. When you destroy so much property and assets, it is only natural to feel bad. G-d would and could not be upset by such emotions. They are humane. When a soldier goes to battle against an evil regime, he may feel pity for all the valuables lost and should feel anguish and mercy for all the people slain, even if the war was just.
When Saul encountered Agag, the king of Amalek, he experienced that to take his life would be morally wrong. He was intellectual, his sense of justice was skewed, believing that G-d was mistaken and that he, a mere mortal, was kinder and wiser than G-d.
For Saul to feel bad that he must engage in a battle against the sworn enemies of the Jewish people—that is what made him, and makes us human. But when that feeling of pity and sadness translated into moral confusion and ambivalence, when we begin doubting our fundamental right to cut down those who wish to destroy us, then he failed miserably as a Jewish leader. He could not continue in this position; it was too dangerous. Imagine if Churchill, during World War II, would begin doubting the justice of the war?!
The Midrash defines the danger in stark terms: "He who shows compassion for the cruel will end up being cruel to the compassionate."
This must have been the dilemma of a major league American Jewish catcher while listening to a lecture of the greatest physicist of his times.
Moe Berg was a Jewish boy born in New York City on March 2, 1902. After graduating from Princeton in 1923, and finished second in his class at Columbia Law School while playing professional baseball for the Chicago White Sox.
In 1939, he quit baseball and decided to become a spy to help defeat Hitler. His superiors at the Office of Strategic Services entrusted Berg with the incredible task of determining how far the Nazis had advanced with their atomic project. If Hitler was to get the Bomb on time, he could win the war, and civilization would have been altered forever.
Enters the story of German physicist Werner Heisenberg, considered by many to be the greatest scientific mind of his generation. He had been appointed by Hitler to run develop the Atom Bomb for Germany.
So Moe Berg, the catcher, was sent to Europe as a spy to figure out where Germany is holding with the bomb.
Werner Heisenberg visited neutral Switzerland to give a lecture on physics at the University of Zurich on Dec. 18, 1944. Among the 20 people in the room was a Jewish man, Moshele Berg, with a concealed pistol. This would-be assassin was an agent of America's Office of Strategic Services, which had contrived to place within a few feet of Nazi Germany's greatest physicist a Jewish boy, who knew enough physics and enough German to figure out whether Heisenberg would soon complete the atomic bomb for Hitler.
Moshele Berg was commanded that if necessary, he was to assassinate the head of the program, Werner Heisenberg.
As an intellectual, Berg had something of a kinship with Heisenberg, who was considered the greatest scientific mind of the time. But Berg was ready to carry out his orders and assassinate Heisenberg at the public lecture, had it become clear that Germany’s nuclear program was nearing success.
Heisenberg’s lecture that evening focused on the safely esoteric topic "S-matrix theory." In the end, Berg decided not to pull the trigger. The ex-catcher employed the same keen intuition he displayed on the baseball field.
But, not sure yet he was correct, Berg garnered an invitation to a small dinner party being given for Heisenberg by a Swiss physicist. After dinner, the ingenious Berg managed to claim the honor of walking the discoverer of the uncertainty principle, to his hotel. Heisenberg was a bit suspicious. But he seems not even to have realized that Berg was Jewish (he later speculated that this enigmatic dinner guest had been an agent of the Nazi SS sent to monitor his table talk.)
Moe concluded that the Germans were nowhere near a bomb, whereupon he decided not to touch Heisenberg.
This was Saul’s downfall—he did not only have human compassion; that would have been correct. Rather, he doubted the justness of his mission. Agag pleaded for mercy with Saul—as so many SS murderers pleaded with Buchenwald prisoners when the American troops liberated the camp. Saul surrendered. He lost his moral compass.
500 years later, it was “Déjà vu”—all over again.
Saul was a righteous man; he had a soft heart and was sensitive and empathetic. But he failed miserably. Not because he had rachmanus; but because his rachmanus morphed into moral confusion and paralysis, misplaced guilt, where the innocent become the criminals.
We all have an Amalek in our lives which G-d wants us to battle.
Amalek represents paralysis, uncertainty, doubt, stagnation, fear, apathy, and insecurity, not allowing you to set your life free. Amalek will always be there to tell you, “maybe I can’t.” I am stuck forever.
We must never give in to Amalek. But how?
Here is the profound lesson. You may have strong emotions gravitating toward Amalek; that is fine, human, and normal. But let them not define the narrative and dictate your behavior.
Saul chose one path; his granddaughter Esther—the other. The difference can be survival or its opposite. Never wave in your conviction and values of who you are and what you need to do.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Jason Bennett wrote...