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Edom, Amalek, and the Hidden Faces of Rome: A Meditation on Memory and Meaning
“Zekher Amalek timḥeh”—“You shall blot out the memory of Amalek” (Deut. 25:19). This command, ancient and eternally troubling, has echoed through the corridors of Jewish history with a resonance that transcends its immediate historical context. What begins in Tanakh as a national imperative becomes, in the hands of the Sages, a symbol of eternal enmity and spiritual resistance. Yet this symbol is not static. It evolves, shifts, and at times, assumes the garments of history itself.

I. The Scriptural Foundations and Their Midrashic Echoes
In Sefer Shemot, Amalek emerges as the first nation to attack Israel following the Exodus (Ex. 17:8–16). The Torah's command is unequivocal: “God will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation.” This is expanded in Devarim 25, which commands Israel not to forget, but rather to actively obliterate the memory of Amalek.

Chazal wrestled with the difficulty of this mitzvah. In Midrash Tanchuma (Ki Teitzei 9), Amalek is portrayed not merely as a nation but as the very embodiment of kefirah, of spiritual doubt and coldness. Likewise, Bereishit Rabbah 65:21 links Esav to Amalek through Eliphaz, constructing a genealogy of opposition.

But the most striking evolution is the conflation of Edom—the nation descending from Esav—with Rome, and eventually with Christian civilization. This linkage appears already in Midrash Tanchuma, Haazinu 1, and becomes a fixed point in Jewish thought. Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer (ch. 38) identifies the "four kingdoms" of exile (Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome), with Rome/Edom as the final and most pernicious, whose exile continues until the days of Mashiach.