By any standards, it's a strange, almost incomprehensible law.

Here it is in the form it appears in this week's pariah.

Zachor, remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt,

when you were weary and worn out.

They met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind.

They had no fear of God. When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he's giving you to possess as an inheritance,

you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven.

Don't forget.

Now just consider, the Israelites had two enemies in the days of Moses, the Egyptians

and the Amalekites. The Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. They turned them into a forced

labor colony. They oppressed them. Pharaoh commanded them to drown every male Israelite child. It was attempted genocide.

Yet about the Egyptians, Moses commanded,

Lothedda'ev Mitzri, do not despise an Egyptian because you were strangers in his land.

Now the Amalekites did no more than attack the Israelites once an attack. They successfully repelled.

Yet Moses commands, remember, don't forget, blot out the name. In Exodus, in Seveeshemot,

the terror says that God himself will be at war with Amalek for all generations. Why the difference?

Why did Moses tell the Israelites in effect to forgive the Egyptians, but not the Amalekites?

The answer, I think, is to be found in the, as a corollary of the famous teaching in Pirkehavote.

Call Ahava Hatluya Badava.

Whenever love depends on a cause and the cause disappears, the love disappears also.

But if love doesn't depend on a cause, then the love will never pass away.

What's an example of love which depended on a cause, that of Amnon for Tamar?

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