[Avodah] collective punishment

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Elliott Shevin wrote:
> I've always figured "timkheh es zeikher Amalieq" is idiomatic
> for "destroy." Remember the rest of that maftir: "al tiskhakh."
> You can't refrain from forgetting if you literally erase the
> memory. Nor do I think literally erasing the memory of an evil
> is a good idea. What if Ahmadinejad and his ilk were to succeed
> in displacing the memory of the Holocaust?

Timkheh does indeed mean "destroy" (or "erase" or "wipe out" or any of several synonyms), but according to Rashi, you're misunderstanding what "zeikher" means.

See that Rashi, Devarim 25:19 -- "Destroy the zeikher of Amalek: From man to woman, from infant to nursing, from ox to sheep. so that the name of Amalek will not be mentioned even about an animal, that someone might say, 'This animal was Amalek's.'"

Zeikher does not mean memory. It means memorabilia.

PS: I think zeikher has this meaning in other contexts too, such as in Kiddush: Shabbos and Yom Tov are "zecher liytzias mitzrayim". They are not merely reminders of the Exodus, they are tangible *souvenirs* of it.

Akiva Miller