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R. Micha Berger wrote:<BR><BR>
> Rather, he was obligated to fully exterminate Amaleiq. By<BR>> killing everyone but Agag, Sha'ul haMelekh didn't fulfil the mitzvah<BR>> -- which then turns the killing into genocide rather than mitzvah.<BR>
<BR>
Or rather, a justifiable genocide? I mean, you wipe out an entire <BR>
nation for, as I like to put it, the crime of choosing the wrong <BR>
parents--it's genocide. It just happens to be a mitzvah in this case. <BR>
I for one am glad Amaleich's not around and I don't have to <BR>
grapple with what for me is a serious moral dilemma.<BR>
<BR> <BR>> Timkheh es zeikher Amaleiq implies that the problem is having anything<BR>> that makes us think of them and their values. The focus on us, and how<BR>> having them around will affect us. I could see constructing from this<BR>> a taam hamitzvah that has nothing to do with what they deserve.<BR>
<BR>
I think the last two ideas are complementary: they're exterminated because <BR>
they deserve it; having them around affects us badly because they're the <BR>
sort of people who *do* deserve it.<BR><BR>
I've always figured "timkheh es zeikher Amalieq" is idiomatic for "destroy."<BR>
Remember the rest of that maftir: "al tiskhakh." You can't refrain from <BR>
forgetting if you literally erase the memory. This meshes with what <BR>
I've said in another thread--whatever Amaleikh is needs to be <BR>
destroyed.<BR>
<BR>
Nor do I think literally erasing the memory of an evil is a good idea. What <BR>
if Ahmadinejad and his ilk were to succeed in displacing the memory of <BR>
the Holocaust? That would open the path to another, r"l, as would nothing else.<BR>
<BR>
This was manifested by the fact that, as news reports regarding certain recent <BR>
debates in the US Congress pointed out, as Hitler Y"S (not literally!) outlined <BR>
his plans for the Final Solution, he asked rhetorically, "Who today speaks of the <BR>
Armenian genocide?"<BR>
<BR>
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