Charleston and Amalek

The survivors of those killed in Charleston have expressed a forgiveness for the attacker.

I cannot criticize this on their part, and would not deny them the right to do this.

This forgiveness by the survivors may be very helpful to them, in an existential way. It can help them to choose to continue on with their lives as real people, and not as victims and exemplars.

For them, as they bear the direct consequences of the act, this is a supportable moral choice.  I will say that to me rage would also be a supportable moral choice.  Whatever helps them.

Much as has been made  of calls forgiveness issued by many and varied outsiders to the event (see
Forgiveness, Tolerance: Sunday Themes After Deadly Church Shooting).

But it is arrogant for the rest of us to speak about forgiveness.  Who are we to forgive, who have not ourselves been injured.

I am not, here speaking about the terrorist*.  He is an irrelevant detail.  Forgive him, if it makes you feel good.

Consider instead, Amalek.

In Torah, Amalek is a nation related to the Israelites, but an implacable enemy -- see D'varim (Deuteronomy) 25:17-19.  In later rabbinic writing, the term is used to describe all implacable evil.

The greatest of the crimes was

he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, all that were enfeebled in thy rear, when thou wast faint and weary

This passage is one of those sections of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) that makes 'modern Jews', itchy, as it goes on to say:

thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget

as it doesn't seem speak about how we would like the world to work.


However, I will suggest that this message of non-forgiveness is applicable and to the world today.

I submit that it is wrong to forget the actions of those who

• Profit from an environment of 'coded' messages
• Want the votes of racists -- without seeming racists themselves.  
• Seek to shift the blame for their policies to another people's inferiority

I cannot do better than quoting an exponent of this school, Lee Atwater

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

I know that forgiveness is viewed as a form of love, divinely sanctioned, and is the cornerstone of their faith.

So, at the risk of sounding like Koleth (Ecclesiastes), there is a time not to forgive.

And when is the time to forgive?

Consider Claudius (Hamlet III:iii 52-54):

'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder

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* Which I define here (thanks to Treebyleaf McCurdy for the inspiration of a workable definition) as a violent crime committed against non-combatents with the intent of creating pressure to change laws, policy, or social norms.