Combatting the Haman of Today

Rabbi Naphtali Hoff

An anti-Semitic poster seen in Europe.
Photo Credit: OzTorah.com

Much has been made of the timing of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. Delivered just two days before Purim (just over one day for those celebrating in Israel), it conjures up memories of a historic fight for survival against a nihilist enemy that was bent our national destruction.

The holiday of Purim celebrates a triumphant end to a harrowing saga, when Haman the Amalekite presented his Final Solution to Achashveirosh. Haman did not question God’s existence, but rather His willingness to intervene on behalf of a nation that “rebelled against its God (during the first commonwealth) and still have not changed their wicked ways.” (Esther Rabbah 7:13)

Haman sensed a weakness in the bond between God and His chosen nation when he observed its frivolous conduct at the royal feast in Shushan, and seized on the opportunity to permanently break that sacred link. Only through the efforts of Mordechai and Esther to focus their nation on the importance of reconnecting with its Maker (through fasting, prayer and repentance) were the Jews able to overcome the terrible decree of annihilation and emerge victorious over their archrival.

Of course, it was this same assault on the spiritual connection between the Jews and their God that inspired the Nazis, the modern day Amalekites, to attempt to achieve their goals.

Despite Hitler’s stated objective to combat attacks on German nationalism and racial purity, ideals that the Jews, in particular, had allegedly defiled through their corrupt modernistic and leftist leanings, the Nazis focused primarily on the Jewish religion, and aimed to completely debase the possessors of that special heritage.

As Emil L. Fackenheim expressed it in What is Judaism, “The whole purpose of the [Nazi] program was to reduce Israel to excrement. That program included the God of Israel.”

Historian Lucy Dawidowicz concurred:

The refinements of cruelty were reserved for pious Jews and rabbis, whose traditional Jewish garb and whose beard and side locks identified them as quintessentially Jewish. The Germans deliberately chose observant Jews to force them to desecrate and destroy the sacred articles of Judaism, even to set fire to synagogues. In some places the Germans piled the Torah scrolls in the marketplace, compelling the Jews to set fire to the pile, and dance around it. Another German pleasure was “feeding” pork to pious Jews, usually in the presence of an invited audience. [The War Against the Jews, pp. 201-202]

Read more: Combatting…