Remember What?
Sefer HaChinuch offers a MASHAL (analogy) to explain what was so bad about Amalek that we are commanded to remember, never to forget, and to blot out their remnant from under the sky. Because the wicked hearted and tempered Amalek, without any feelings for a new almost-nation, wantonly attacked Israel, this opened the way to other nations to not have the proper reverence for G-d and His chosen nation.

To what can this be compared? To someone jumping into a cauldron of boiling water. Even though he gets burned, he has cooled the water down for the next person who is looking to jump in.

Okay, that’s important. But there is another angle to what Amalek did — more, what Amalek was. This is shown to us by the Sages’ choice of when we are to observe the mitzva to remember Amalek. By juxtaposing it to Purim, Chazal were saying much more than “Haman was a descendant of Amalek”. More than Esther and Mordechai were part of the fulfillment to wipe out Amalek.

Our Sages were saying: Look at the Megila and see what an Amalekite is. Because that we can relate to many periods of Jewish History - not just to a once-upon-a-time, a long-time-ago kind of story.

Haman, as a high-ranking nobleman in Achashveirosh’s kingdom was entitled to demand honor. And when a lesser subject defies the king’s orders, he is subject to the “off-with-his-head” type of discipline. But that’s not what happened. Haman’s hatred of one individual who refused to show him respect and subservience changed to a maniacal, obsessive desire to destroy every man, woman, and child of the nation of Mordechai.

That kind of hatred is Amalek-like. More than his biological descent, was Haman’s inheritance of the worst characteristics a human being can possess. Hatred for its own sake is very potent indeed.

One can surmise that Amalek per se would not “merit” the strength of the three mitzvot contained in this week’s special 3-pasuk Maftir. It is because Amalek is alive and well in so many different settings of Jewish History and Life, that we find that these three p’sukim are the only portion of the Torah’s 5846 p’sukim that we are obligated by the Torah itself to read. All the rest is rabbinic. This alone is a powerful statement.