In three weeks, at the maftir of Ki Tetse, we will read: Zachor et asher-asah l'cha amalek, baderech b'tzetchem mimitzrayim. Remember that which Amalek did unto you, on the way when you exited Egypt. It is an understandable imperative not to forget the attempted destruction of the Jewish people, an attack which left a significant number of dead. It is a commandment which we observe to this day, in the annual reading of this maftir as Parshat Zachor, on the Shabbat before Purim. Memorializing the murder of our ancestors is a natural, human reaction, one which has sadly become a recurring element in our tradition. But there is a troubling aspect to this response. What are we recalling? Do we remember the people who were killed? Or do we merely take notice of the manner in which they died? In our own day, when the Holocaust dominates our perception of Jewish national tragedy, we face the same problem. With six million of our own dead, and a total exceeding eleven million murdered by th Nazis, we risk making the same mistake: reducing these human beings to statistics, remembered only for the circumstances of their death. Last summer, I was privileged to travel with the Zamir Chorale of Boston, with whom I have sung sing 1992, on a remarkable pilgrimage to central Europe. The occasion was the centenary of the original Zamir Chorale, a Jewish chorus founded in 1899 by Joseph Rumshinsky in Lodz, Poland. One of the goals of our tour was to bring Jewish choral music back to the lands where it first flowered, and where it had not been heard in over fifty years. But another goal was for us to remember our ancestors and predecessors for the way they lived, and not for the way that they died. In Lodz, our first stop after a reception hosted by the provincial governor was the building in which the Ha-Zomir Society used to rehearse. We learned about the ways in which Ha-Zomir shaped the life of the Jews of Lodz, how it was not only a performing group but also a social organization: holding dances, arranging theatre parties, and hosting both a fencing club and a library. Lodz also provided us with an appreciation of the reality of today. Simcha Kellerman, the rabbi of the twenty-person Jewish community that now lives in Lodz -- the second-largest city in Poland and one that was over forty percent Jewish before the war -- has bodyguards, wears a bulletproof vest, and has seen his house firebombed, twice. On the buildings, graffiti routinely included Jewish stars. "Oh, don't worry about that," we were told. "It's graffiti from rival soccer teams. One team's fans will spray paint a slogan, and then another group of fans will deface it with a Jewish star, implying that the first team is just a bunch of Jews. But they don't actually HATE Jews; it's just a slur. It's like calling someone a 'faggot' doesn't mean you hate homosexuals." Somehow, that didn't make us feel any better. But in person, we received a warm and enthusiastic reception. People seemed genuinely happy to see us. Over and over we heard about how important the Jewish presence had been, and how proud they were that we felt it was important to bring some of it back. Over the course of our tour, we oscillated between joyous occasions like the concert we gave in Krakow to a crowd that literally spilled out of the synaogue doors into the street, and the depths of despair at Auschwitz and Terezin. We were at Auschwitz on the fast day of sheva-asar b'tammuz, and I was privileged to have the Levi aliyah at minchah. I don't think I will ever forget what it was like to read Torah next to the crematoria, to call out "Bar'chu et Hashem haMevorach" and have fifty voices reply "Baruch Hashem haMevorah le-olam va-ed" -- forever and ever, in the place where forever almost ended. The words of the fast-day liturgy will never be the same for me: "Avinu Malkeinu, aseh l'ma'an ba-eh va-esh uvamayim al kiddush shemecha" -- Forgive us for the sake of those who went through fire and water for the sake of your Name's sanctity. And the power of that moment was intensified, because those who went through fire were no longer abstractions. They were Gideon Klein and Viktor Ulmann, musicians who might have gone through life untouched by their Jewish roots, but who were sent to Terezin and while there wrote some of the most moving Jewish music that I have ever sung. They were David Beigelmann, who wrote the ironic lullaby "Macht zu di Egelech," and his singers from ha-Zomir in the Lodz ghetto. They were my great-grandmother, and her son. They could have been us. The words of Naftali Imber's poem, haTikvah haNoshana, took on a different meaning. "Lashuv le-eretz avoteinu," to return to the land of our ancestors, well, that's exactly what we were doing, wasn't it? (Maybe not the land Imber envisioned, but the land of our ancestors nonetheless.) "Lihyot am chofshi," to be a free people, that was the only difference between us and them. And by walking in the streets where they walked, performing on the same stages they used, and singing some of the same songs they sang, we remembered them as the vibrant, spirited, LIVING Jews that they were. The maftir of Ki Tetse, with which I began my remarks, continues and addresses the troubling question I raised earlier. We are commanded to remember the slaughter of many Israelites by Amalek; but wouldn't it seem more holy to remember the Israelites for their lives, rather than to remember their murders and their murderers? The answer, as usual, is right there in the Torah: Timcheh et zecher Amalek mitachat hashamayim. Destroy the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. In other words, when you remember the Israelites, and remember what was done to them, do not focus on Amalek. Resist the temptation to focus on the evildoer, and to reduce the Jews to nameless, numbered victims, their identites forgotten. Destroy the memory of AMALEK Timcheh et zecher AMALEK mitachat hashamayim, Lo tishkach. And do not forget. -- Andrew Greene Shabbat Eqev 18 Menachem-Av 5760 (19 August 2000)