Torah Talk for Ki Tetze 5780 Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19 (end)

Deut. 25:17 Remember what did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt— 18 how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. 19 Therefore, when the LORD your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek [q$ElDmSo rRk∞Ez] from under heaven. Do not forget!

Ex. 17:14 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Inscribe this in a document as a reminder, and read it aloud to Joshua: I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek [q$ElDmSo rRk∞Ez] from under heaven!” 15 And Moses built an altar and named it Adonai-nissi. 16 He said, “It means, ‘Hand upon the throne of the LORD!’ The LORD will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages.”

Bava Batra 21 [Koren translation] [21a] The Gemara cites a proof for the opinion of Rav Dimi of Neharde’a: This is as it is written: “For Joab and all Israel remained there six months until he had cut off every male [r™DkÎz_lD;k] in Edom” (I Kings 11:16). When Joab came before King David after this episode, David said to him: [21b] What is the reason that you did that? Why did you kill only the males? Joab said to him: As it is written: You shall blot out the males [zakhar] of Amalek, i.e., the male descendants of Amalek, who descend from Edom. David said to him: But we read the verse as stating: “You shall blot out the remembrance [zekher] of Amalek” (Deuteronomy 25:19). Joab said to him: I was taught to read it as zakhar. Joab went and asked his childhood Bible teacher. Joab said to him: How did you read this word to us? The teacher said to him: I read it as zekher. The teacher had read it the proper way, but he failed to notice that his student had learned it incorrectly. Joab took a sword to kill him. The teacher said to him: Why do you want to kill me? Joab said to him: As it is written: “Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord with a slack hand” (Jeremiah 48:10),h and you taught me incorrectly. The teacher said to him: Leave that man to remain as cursed. This is a sufficient punishment; there is no need to kill me. Joab said to him: It is also written: “And cursed is he who keeps back his sword from blood” ( Jeremiah 48:10). There are those who say that Joab killed him, and there are those who say that he did not kill him. In any event, this episode demonstrates that an error learned in one’s childhood stays with him his whole life.

Bava Batra 21 [Soncino translation] Said David: But we read, the remembrance [zeker] of Amalek? He replied: I was taught to read zekar.

HALOT: rDkÎz: —1. man, male person rRk´z: —1. mention (of a name): of Amalek Ex 1714 Dt 2519, …

* rRk‰z, rRk`Îz, n.m.; rkz; short form of (…w)hÎy√rAk◊z ; 1C 831, = hÎy√rAk◊z 937. †

1Chr. 8:31 Gedor, Ahio, Zecher [rRk`Dz]. 1Chr. 9:37 Gedor, Ahio, Zechariah, and Mikloth; e-mail: [email protected] iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/torah-talk/id291683417 web: http://mcarasik.wordpress.com/category/podcast/ contribute: https://www.paypal.me/mcarasik © 2020 by Michael Carasik, except for translations from Tanakh, by permission of the Jewish Publication Society. Commentators’ Bible (Deuteronomy): http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/jps/9780827609396/ https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/biblical-hebrew-learning-a-sacred-language.html

Jeffrey Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary 19. when God grants you safety According to the book of , the first attempt to eliminate the Amalekites was assigned to , who lost his kingdom over his failure to implement the assignment completely. David later conquered the Amalekites, and they are not heard of again apart from a reference to “the last surviving Amalekites,” living in Mount Seir, who were destroyed by five hundred men from the tribe of Simeon in the time of King Hezekiah.

"Sabbaths, Special." Encyclopaedia Judaica 8) SHABBAT ZAKHOR Sabbath of Remembrance"), the second of the four special" ; ַשׁ ַבּת ָזכוֹר .Heb) Sabbaths. It is the Sabbath before Purim. The name derives from the additional Torah portion read from Deuteronomy 25:17–19 whose theme is the duty "to remember" what Amalek did to Israel. The traditional belief is that the Agagite was a direct descendant of Agag, the king of the Amalekites (e.g., I Sam. 15:9ff.). In some rites special piyyutim are recited.

RASHI: You shall blot out the memory of Amalek. “Men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses” (1 Sam. 15:3)—there must not be even an animal left of which someone can say, “This once belonged to an Amalekite.”

https://hebrewbooks.org/43656 - רכז ,(”David Kimhi, Sefer Ha-Shorashim (“The Book of Roots

Yosef Peretz, “Zekher Amalek,” Bar-Ilan University, Shabbat Zakhor – 5758 (1998) It is common practice in most Ashkenazi congregations to read the words z-kh-r Amalek, in Deut. 25:19, twice: once with a tzere under the zayin (zekher) and once with a segol (zekher). Sephardic congregations, however, who do not distinguish between the pronunciation of these two vowels, read it only once, and they point it with a tzere. What is the origin of this practice, when did it begin, and is this double reading necessary to fulfill the command of reading these verses of Parshat Zakhor, the special reading on the Sabbath before Purim? … * R. David Kimhi mentions two methods of pointing which he observed in Sephardic manuscripts: zekher and zekher * The disciples of the Vilna Gaon disagreed about how their Rabbi used to read this word in Parshat Zakhor, whether with a tzere or a segol. * Because of uncertainty as to which was correct, the Mishnah Berurah ruled that z-kh-r Amalek should be read twice, once with tzere and once with segol. * The findings presented by R. Breuer and Dr. Penkower prove conclusively that the correct and original pointing of this word is zekher (with a tzere). Therefore, in their opinion, one should return to the ancient practice, and all Jewish communities ought to read the word only once, as zekher.

e-mail: [email protected] iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/torah-talk/id291683417 web: http://mcarasik.wordpress.com/category/podcast/ contribute: https://www.paypal.me/mcarasik © 2020 by Michael Carasik, except for translations from Tanakh, by permission of the Jewish Publication Society. Commentators’ Bible (Deuteronomy): http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/jps/9780827609396/ https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/biblical-hebrew-learning-a-sacred-language.html