Deuteronomy alone makes clear the gravity of Amalek's crime. Without fear of God, Amalek had spurned the most basic tenets of human decency. To savage the least threatening and most innocent members of society placed Amalek beyond the pale of humanity. If Israel stands for the ultimate dominion of human virtue, Amalek symbolizes the darkness of the human heart. The contest never ends because our hearts remain divided.
Memory is the lifeblood of Jewish being.
A flood of associations come to mind. In truth, Judaism is one long and daring effort to shift the ground of religion from nature to history, from changes in the seasons of the year to turning points in the destiny of the nation. As this web of associations suggests, Judaism has not been absorbed exclusively with its calamities. Its preferred mode of organizing the past in the Middle Ages was in terms of the inner life, the names and books of leaders who were responsible for rejuvenating and transmitting the tradition. Only in the wake of the massive expulsions of Sefardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in the last decade of the 15th century did Jewish chroniclers increasingly focus on the history of persecutions and martyrdom.