To forgive is exclusively divine

Abstract

The story of Amalek is about God’s desire for Israel to repent so that God may forgive them and nurture a relation­ship with them. It is a story that reminds us that God for­gives all those who repent of moral evil. But because God has chosen Israel for a special relationship, God nudges Israel toward repentance. As Heschel and Wiesel once noted, the Jewish people cannot forgive unrepentant moral evil because forgiveness is not a human trait. But they can, like all people, remember their obligation to strive for moral perfection. Acting upon this obligation is an affirmation that God engages in the human realm, continuously longs for Israel, and, for mysterious and incomprehensible reasons, invites a covenantal people to participate in a transcendent relationship that can mobilize the world toward moral perfection. (from Conclusion)