Beshallah
              In our Torah portion, as the Israelites journey through the desert, a clan known as Amalek attacks the vulnerable stragglers at the end of the Israelite line. Joshua leads the Israelite army against Amalek, while Moses stands on a hill overlooking the battlefield. Whenever Moses raises his hands with his staff, the Israelite army is winning but when he is tired and his hands droop, Amalek is winning. Eventually, two people stand on either side of Moses and help hold up his hands. Joshua and the Israelite army triumph. Amalek became a symbol in the Jewish tradition of all that is destructive in the world. In the rabbinic imagination, it is no longer a specific clan, but anyone who preys on the most vulnerable. The struggle against evil is not over with the liberation from Egypt. It continues until Amalek no longer exists.
            The miracle of the victory over Amalek is a strange one. Why couldn’t Moses alone bring about an Israelite victory? What is the point of a contingent miracle that is based on an old man’s strength? The verse (Ex. 17:12) says the two people standing on either side supported his hands, which then remained steady until the sun set.  The Hebrew word for steady is emunah a word which is usually translated as faith. Emunah clearly doesn’t mean faith here, rather meaning a steadiness resting on the support of others. From this specific physical meaning in the Bible emunah comes to mean a steadiness, an assurance and consistency based on support--hence a faith, an ability to rely on another. When you have faith, you are not alone.
           We live in a world that is filled with many who are tired and straggling, falling ever farther behind the progress of society. Weighed down by poverty, disability, and discrimination--and with the deck stacked against them--they are easy prey for Amalek, the enemy of our common humanity. How do we fight Amalek? By standing by the side of those who are struggling and supporting them, helping them hold up their hands as they stretch to reach for all that they can be. Our hands joined with theirs will be enough so that they feel both supported and secure in the faith (emunah) that the future remains open and that they are still on a journey that can lead to a promised land.
 

Each of us can only seize by the scruff whoever happens to be closest to us in the mire. This is the “neighbor” the Bible speaks of. And the miraculous thing is that, although each of us stands in the mire our self, we can each pull out our neighbor, or at least keep him from drowning. None of us has solid ground under our feet; each of us is only held up by the neighborly hands grasping us by the scruff, with the result that we are each held up by the next one, and often, indeed most of the time…hold each other up mutually. All this mutual upholding (a physical impossibility) becomes possible only because the great hand from above supports all these holding human hands by their wrists. It is this, and not some nonexistent “solid ground under one’s feet” that enables all the human hands to hold and to help. There is no such thing as standing, there is only being held up.                                                                                                                                         Franz Rosenzweig