Fast of Esther Quiz
Fast of Esther Quiz

Can you name two main ideas, hinted at in the upcoming Shabbos and in the Shabbos that passed some ten days ago, that our Rabbis saw in the Purim story? And, what is the connection between the two?

Bonus question: why was the story of Esther included in our Bible, the Tanach, but the story of Chanuka was not?

Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine, addressed (in Ma’amarei Ha’R’Iya, pages 247-250) our bonus question: The difference between the two holidays hinges, in his view, on the difference between the written Torah (she’bichtav) and the Oral Torah (she’baal peh), and the miracles associated with them. The effect of the Sinaitic giving of the written Torah was to cause an immediate spiritual elevation to the highest spiritual levels of the title Yisrael, Israel. Thus, when the Children of Israel said “Na’aseh v’Nishmah” at Sinai (Exodus 24,7), thereby accepting the Torah, they underwent an instantaneous paradigm shift to the height of “ you are angelic, sons of the Most High are you all”( Psalms 82,6). The written Torah is like the ideal Yisrael to which it leads: a finished product, immutable, capable of no change. That is why a Torah scroll with even one letter missing or altered is void.

This is also the spiritual level of the Purim story. The setting of Megillat Esther is after the Churban, the destruction of the first Temple. The entire Jewish people are exiled in Babylon, with not one Jew in the holy Land. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 105a) relates that the Jews asked the prophet Ezekiel if, in such circumstances, they still had any connection at all to G-d; perhaps they need not keep the Torah, all Covenantal promises possibly being void. Like a woman divorced from her husband.

This, of course, was the Haman/Amalekite/Nazi approach to Jewish history and significance (or rather, lack thereof, in their opinion: no land =no people-hood=no significance whatsoever, a god-delusional scapegoat ripe for massacre). Ezekiel replied with Isaiah’s (7,1) famous line: “ Where are the divorce papers of your mother?”. A paradigm shift in attitude was necessary, and it occurred with the miracle of Purim, “upa’al aleihem she’alu b’vat achat el medreiga krova l’madreigat kabalat haTorah ”: and the Purim miracle acted on them to cause that they were elevated at one shot to a level close to that of those who accepted the Torah at Sinai, as the Megilla (9,27) says: Kiymu v’Kiblu, the Jews re-accepted the Torah.

That is why, explains Rav Kook, that the Talmud (Yoma,29a) says that Psalm 22 is referring to Esther in: “ For the conductor, on the radiance of the dawn”. Just as the dawn is a sudden shift from night to day, so too was the miracle of Purim a sudden,polar shift from Jews separated from their G-d, to a renewed close relationship.

The Torah that the Jews accepted on Purim was the Oral Torah (which had not been accepted at Sinai). This was the oral Tradition we know as the Talmud, and it has accompanied us through history as our guiding light. As such, it, unlike the Written Torah, is constantly changing (within Halachic bounds) , as every generation has its own concerns and problems, and addresses them. This Oral Law lifts each generation up toward where it should be spiritually, but not all the way to the heights.  And the miracles associated with it are the same: they perform a partial cure of the ills of each contemporary time. As such, the miracle of Chanuka rooted the spiritual holiness of the Nation so that it could withstand the coming great, second Exile; each future generation would receive little bits of the Chanuka-miracle, to uplift it partially. As such the Chanuka-miracle is part of the Oral Tradition, and not written as part of the Bible.

Rav Matis Weinberg examines this idea of the Purim-time acceptance of the Oral Torah. The Jews had declined to take it at Sinai, specifically because of the difficulties associated with its acquisition (including learning it for years in Yeshiva, and remembering it, as in the word “Zachor”). “We’ll take the Written Torah, and if we have a question, we’ll ask Moshe Rabbeinu, and he will ask the Lord”- Presto! Instant, easy answers from Moses. But under no terms would they accept the uncertainties of a Torah of Hester(= Esther), of Exile, darkness, uncertainty,hard work -i.e., a Torah as existed in the time of the Purim exile, before the miracle.

This is specifically connected to the above-mentioned Psalm 22. In it, Esther, Rabbi Weinberg notes( quoting the Talmud Megilla ), calls King Achashveirosh a dog: “ Rescue my soul from the grip of the dog” ( verse 21). She immediately loses her Ruach HaKodesh, Holy Spirit. So she immediately changes this to: “Save me from the mouth of the Lion!”, and her Ruach HaKodesh returns. Rabbi Weinberg notes that this is the source of our Adar/Purim happiness: a Jew’s troubles are not “a dog”, but rather the Jew’s opportunity for personal greatness. His life is not “a dog”, a source of depression which would require Prozac to relieve. A Jew’s life has significance, both individually and as part of the historic Jewish Nation: like an Esther responding to what could have been viewed as a tragic, voluntary approach to the King, yet achieving everything for which she, a royal descendant of King Saul, was created.

This significance is the source of our Purim/Jewish happiness. And significance is the lesson of both Parshat Shekalim, read ten days ago, and the upcoming Parshat Zachor  read next Shabbat. Shekalim deals with the half-shekel coin that every Jew brought to the Temple. Every Jew was significant. Similarly, the lesson of Zachor is that history is significant. In Zachor we battle Amalek, a nation that declares that there is no significance to history: to Amalek, it’s all a bunch of random coincidences (like a “Pur”, a lottery), with no relation to G-d (Hester,Exile) and no particular significance to people or time (so, we can kill people).

Moreover, the half-shekel teaches that each Jew joins with another to comprise a full shekel, a united Nation. In that vein, Rabbi Weinberg makes the following point: at the first Taanit Esther, Fast of Esther, she did NOT order Mordechai:” Lech knos et kol HaYehudim v’tzumu “= go gather all the Jews and fast to save the Jewish people. What she ordered him was: “Gather the Jews and FAST FOR ME!” Fast for Esther! All for one, literally: Esther, the individual Jew, is so significant that all should fast for her, to come out alive from her meeting in the lion’s den.

And the Jews did it. They fasted FOR ESTHER. And we have a fast for Esther to this very day.

This should come as an incredible idea to a nation that, as PM Ariel Sharon said, disengaged the Jews from Gush Katif “for the greater good”(sic). In 2005, Sharon gave a speech in which he said it “pained him to have to take ( I would say, throw) these Gush Katif Jews out of their homes and communities”.

In this, he exactly parroted Chaim Rumkowski, head of the Lodj ghetto Judenrat, whose final public speech is written on a wall in the Yad VaShem:” It pains me, but give me your children , your old and your infirm, to hand to the Germans, for the greater good of all of us, so the rest of us may live”. They all were killed. Rumkowski and Sharon exhibited the lowest behavior of Jews in exile, turning on their fellow Jews.

Five Jews, members of the Fogel family, evicted by Sharon, were killed this week by the Arab/Amalekite enemy. But the Jews who fasted for their fellow Jew in Shushan long ago, merited the miracle of salvation of the few from the Amalekite who “sought to destroy, kill and obliterate all the Jews”( Al HaNisim prayer), and to return to the Land of Israel, rebuild the Temple, and regain sovereignty and independence. It’s the lesson we should be thinking about as we fast this Taanit Esther.

For then, we pass the quiz.