Just one stop before arriving at Mount Sinai, at a place called Refidim, the Amalekites attacked the Israelites. The Jews succeeded in conquering them temporarily, but it became clear that this would be an eternal struggle: “… [there shall be] a war for the Lord against Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16). Following this, the Jewish people were given what is perhaps the harshest commandment in all the Torah: to eradicate all memory of the people of Amalek.
Fortunately, the people of Amalek have disappeared from the world (and not because we eradicated them; we didn’t), so we don’t have to deal with this commandment on a practical level. But the question still remains: What does Amalek represent spiritually? What is the deeper meaning of the battle with them?
Amalek as Radical Skepticism
According to the teachings of Hasidism, Amalek represents the power of doubt. Amalek is an agent of skepticism, whether arising from inside or from outside of us, that makes us question every belief we hold. The fundamental clue pointing us to this interpretation is the fact that the numerical value of the word “Amalek” in Hebrew equals that of the word for “doubt” (safek). But a clear indication to this notion can also be found in the Biblical text itself: The verse, “And Amalek came and waged war with Israel,” (Exodus 17:8) appears directly after the phrase, “Is the Lord in our midst, or not?” This latter verse describes the doubt in faith which arose among the Jewish people surrounding their lack of water to drink. At the very moment the Jewish people experienced doubt about the presence of G-d, Amalek attacked them.
But is skepticism necessarily bad? Of course not. Without skepticism, there would be no science, and Judaism too celebrates the asking of questions and the re-examination of principles. In order to comprehend the association of the evil Amalekites with doubt, we must fine-tune our definition. What Amalek really stands for is radical skepticism. Radical skepticism is the kind that is never satisfied with any answer or evidence. In the face of any and every conclusion we reach, it argues: “Who says? Maybe you’re wrong? Do you know this is true with absolute certainty?”
Skepticism may offer a positive contribution in certain contexts, but without the capacity for decisiveness as a counterbalance, it ultimately traps us at square one forever. To live in such a perpetual state of doubt is like trying to build a house of cards opposite an open window: the wind will constantly hit it and cause it to collapse.
This understanding of Amalek aligns beautifully with both the meaning of the name “Amalek,” and the name of the place where the battle against Amalek is waged, “Refidim.” The name Amalek can be read as a contraction of two words, am molek, which mean a decapitating nation—a nation which, so-to-speak, decapitates its opponents, or, more abstractly, causes their thoughts to be dissociated from their actions. When you think about it, this is exactly what radical skepticism does: It confines all ideas to the head, not allowing even a single one of them to descend into practical action.
As for the name Refidim, the Sages interpret it as alluding to rifyon yadayim, literally “limp hands.” They explain that Amalek was able to attack the Jews because they “weakened their hands from performing the commandments,” i.e. became lax in their religious observance. But it is also possible to reverse the order of cause-and-effect, and to regard the weakness of hands as a result of the war with Amalek: so long as one grapples with radical skepticism, one remains paralyzed, empty-handed, and unable to advance toward their next destinations.
“Amalek, You’re Right!”
So how is one to conquer the skepticism of Amalek? This, too, can be learned from the manner in which the Jews conquered Amalek in the desert.
The battle was conducted on two planes, the material and spiritual. While Joshua and his soldiers fought Amalek’s military forces on the ground, Moses ascended the top of the adjacent hill and lifted his hands heavenward. When Moshe’s arms became tired and fell, the forces of Amalek overpowered. And when Moses’ arms were strengthened and lifted again heavenward, the Jewish forces overpowered. Thus did the battle wage on all day long, until by the end “Joshua weakened Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword” (Exodus 17:13)—the Jewish people prevailed.
Three things about this story raise questions. Firstly, the raising of hands is a universal symbol of surrender. In Hebrew, and probably other languages too, when we say that someone “raised his hands” we mean that he gave up. Secondly, the choice of wording in describing the Jewish people’s victory, “And Joshua weakened Amalek,” is unique and perplexing: did all Joshua accomplish was weakening Amalek, not conquering them? Thirdly, the story is concluded with a paradoxical commandment from G-d: “Inscribe this [as] a memorial in the book… that I will surely obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens” (Exodus 17:14, later repeated in similar words in Deuteronomy 25:17-19). We are told at once to remember Amalek and to forget them. How is that possible?
The answer to all three riddles is one, and it is a very deep one. What is in our power to do when confronted by skepticism which demands absolute certainty? The answer is: nothing. It is an exercise in futility, as no amount of arguments and evidence will ever satisfy radical skepticism. The unavoidable conclusion is that we must lift up our hands in surrender to Amalek and tell him: “You know what Amalek, you’re right. I don’t have all the answers and there is room for doubt. But, as you’re so fond of saying, ‘Who says?’ Who says that you have to have proof for every single thing? Who says that I have to provide it to you? Who says you get to have the final word on my life? You’ll never be satisfied anyway. So go ahead and keep doing your thing, walking alongside me and trying to dissuade me, and I’ll go ahead and do mine—march on to my personal Mount Sinai.”
This approach to dealing with Amalek, which in essence gives it room to remain a presence in our life, completely disarms it. In fact, it uses its own weapon against itself: It uses its skepticism to throw doubt on the very ideology of skepticism as the highest ideal. It doubts doubt itself.
All three riddles are thus solved: Moses raises his hands because he surrenders to doubt; Amalek is only “weakened” here, not fully vanquished; and, paradoxically, the forgetting of Amalek is achieved through ‘remembering’ it—i.e., integrating it into our lives.
“He was with his hands in faith”
A short excursion into the world of the Kabbalistic sefirot can transform this entire story into something even deeper.
We said that Amalek so-to-speak “decapitates” the head from the body. In Kabbalistic terms, the power of the soul which Amalek attacks is called the sefirah of Da’at, or Knowledge. This is the sefirah which connects the intellectual faculties with the emotional faculties, and which corresponds in the human body to the neck. The insistence of Amalek on absolute certainty results in an overtaxing of Da’at, of the capacity to “know,” creating a kind of blockage in the free flow of insight from head to heart.
The solution is bypassing Da’at—generating a direct line of communication between our heart and the super-rational power of faith, skipping over the intellect entirely. The power of faith resides in another sefirah, that of Keter or Crown, also referred to as the “superconscious.” When the intellect is ridden with doubts, this is the only way to go.
But how can one bridge the heart, which resides in the chest, and the superconscious Crown, which resides above the head? The answer, of course, is by raising our hands. The uplifted hands of Moses express the creation of the direct channel between the heart and the power of faith. This is the inner meaning of the verse, “So he was with his hands in faith until sunset” (Exodus 17:12). Moses’ hands reached unto that place where the bright sun of certainty sets, and in its place rises the moon of faith (by the way, the Hebrew word for faith, emunah, can also be spelled e-moon-ah :).
On the face of it, the two interpretations we gave for the raising of the hands symbol—that it signifies a surrender to doubt, and that it is a channel to faith—appear contradictory. But in reality, they go fully hand-in-hand: Raising one’s hands is humbly submitting, “I do not know, but I have faith.” And what is the difference between knowing and having faith? That faith integrates within itself the element of doubt. Faith, by definition, revolves around that which we do not have absolute certainty of. Faith and doubt are two sides of the same spiritual coin.
So the next time you find yourself facing an important decision, such as a career choice or marriage, and you are attacked by the demon of doubt, answer back: “Amalek, you’re right. I don’t know for certain that this is the right decision… But I choose to believe it is.”