Friday, March 10, 2017

How modern academic Talmud scholars can fulfill timcheh et zecher Amalek

In yesterday’s Daf Yomi, Bava Batra, Moo amud bet, there is a surprising mnemonic, עמלק סימן. That is, the four cases under discussion in the following section are arev (guarantor), malveh (lender), lokeach rishon (first purchaser) and qablan (a different type of guarantor), who may or may not testify on behalf of a certain other party as to ownership of a field. The letters spell out Amalek.
This is surprising, to use Amalek as a mnemonic, when we are supposed to blot out the memory of Amalek. And Hagahot Yaavetz (Rav Yaakov Emden) has an explanation about how it is OK to use it to remember Torah, and how there is a tipcha (disjunctive accent) on the lo of lo tishkash, לֹ֖א תִּשְׁכָּֽח , somehow telling us that it is sometimes OK for the sake of not forgetting.

The Masoret HaShas, besides pointing us to the Hagahot Yaavetz, points out that the Dikdukei Soferim notes that in many kitvei yad, this mnemonic isn’t present.
Thus, for example, we don’t find it in Ktav Yad Firenze, Paris, or Vatican.

Ktav Yad Vatican
Ktav Yad Firenze
Ktav Yad Paris

If so, perhaps we should cross out this siman, this zecher, from our gemaras. In this way, we can literally fulfill the positive command of תִּמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק.

2 comments:

Yavoy said...

Odd to think that if not for the מצוה of תמחה את זכר עמלק nobody would remember they ever existed these days.

SPACE said...

Thought to mention, if you look from Lithuanian capital Vilnius 60 km north, there's town Ukmergė, in August of 1941 there was killed 1646 Jews under command of SS OberSturmführer J.Hamann. Sources are from ethnographical museums and local newspapers.

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