Museums and Dreams – Tetzaveh
This year Shushan Purim falls out on Shabbat Tetzaveh and as the Ba’al HaTurim says - whenever we have a festival, we can find hints to that festival in the parsha preceding and following it and על אחת כמה וכמה when the festival coincides with Shabbat and the parsha itself.
So we will בלי נדר be looking for hints to Purim in this week’s parsha, together with references to bread as is my custom, all the while trying to understand an important, fundamental principle.
Our parsha begins and ends describing the remaining two כלים in the היכל – the מנורה and the מזבח הקטורת. In between it describes the בגדי כהונה and the inauguration ceremony of the כהנים in the Mishkan. Here we have our reference to bread in the parsha, the מנחת מילואים , the offering brought by אהרון כהן upon his inauguration. It is an interesting korban with parallels to the תודה, which I will leave to explain in another shiur בלי נדר.
Megillat Esther begins with Achashveirosh throwing a party, 180 days long in fact, to which everyone in Shushan was invited. This was actually less of a party and more a kind of a “museum” expo in which he showed off the treasures of his kingdom. Which treasures? The כלים from the המקדשבית that נבוכדנצר had captured.
The Gemara in Masechet Megillah says that throughout the 180 days Achashveirosh was wearing בגדי כהונה of the כהן גדול, the same priestly garments mentioned in our parsha. I heard a very interesting shiur from HaRav Baruch Rosenblum shlita who says that “clothes” feature very prominently in Megillat Esther (Achashveirosh in בגדי כהונה, Mordechai in sack cloth, Mordechai on the king’s horse in royal garments, Mordechai wearing Tchelet etc.) and it is all connected to the בגדי כהונה in our parsha.
Why davka 180 days? The midrash in Shmot Raba says that each day Achashveirosh would show off 6 אוצרות. An אוצר is defined (in masechet Shabbat) as 5 utensils, therefore each day he flaunted 30 כלים from the Mikdash until he ran out of כלים – which was after 180 days (there were a total of 5400 כלים in Bayit Rishon according to Sefer Ezra, including מדידה, כלי בזיכים, מזרקים הדם, כלי קיבול ,נגינה כלי ,כלי אפייה etc.).
Chazal say that Achashveirosh hated Am Yisrael even more than Haman. In a story very similar to Pharaoh with Moshe, Chazal say that Achashveirosh was told by his soothsayers that he would eventually be succeeded by a Jew. Since he wasn’t particularly fond of Am Yisrael to begin with, he incorrectly assumed that the only way this could possibly come about was if the Jews staged a coup and overthrew him. When Haman popped up and suggested his “final solution”, Achashveirosh was delighted that he finally had someone and a concrete plan to dispose of the Jews. Only later when Esther revealed that she was Jewish and he realized that it was actually his Jewish son that would succeed him (דרויווש) did Achashveirosh do a 180 degree flip in his relationship to Am Yisrael.
To understand what follows, a little historical background is required.
Fifty years following the destruction of the first Beit Hamikdash (585 BCE) Ezra Hasofer returned from בבל to Israel after a beneficent decree passed by the Persian emperor Cyrus (who had conquered בבל from the Babylonians) and together with Zerubavel they rebuilt the מזבח and restored the עבודה. It was not until about 30 years later however, until דריווש (the son of Esther and Achashveirosh) assumed the leadership, that the approval to build the second Beit Hamikdash was given in the time of the prophets Zechariya and Chagai.
Since the destruction of the first Mikdash and the exile to בבל an entire generation of Jews was born in exile, where (for the most part) they prospered financially. Only about 50,000 (out of hundreds of thousands) Jews returned with Ezra during Cyrus’ reign and Chazal say they were mainly poor people. The others were reluctant to go back because of their stable financial situation in בבל and the dangers associated with the journey and resettlement.
During this period between Cyrus (כורש) and דריווש there were constant, repeated and failed attempts to rebuild the Beit Hamikdash. Achashveirosh was violently opposed to this as was Haman. We know this from Chazal, who say that Haman in fact did not have 10 sons, but 208. So why were only ten hung on the tree? Because these ten were highly active in preventing any attempts at rebuilding the Beit Hamikdash. They issued draconian edicts and legislature that stymied any attempts at progress in this regard.
Originally Haman had no plans to wipe out the Jews. He believed that the destruction of the first Mikdash was enough to deal the death blow to Am Yisrael and that eventually the survivors would disappear through assimilation. Assimilation was quite prevalent at the time with many prosperous exiled Jews preferring a liberal, cosmopolitical approach as opposed to a conservative, separatist approach. Very few remained true to the old teachings and values, like Mordechai, the former head of the Sanhedrin.
Haman’s bubble burst however when he overheard a class of תינוקות של בית רבן learning הלכות מנחות taught by Mordechai. Haman poked his head in and asked the children what they were learning, to which they replied Hilchot Kemitza (a partial handful measurement for the Mincha offerings). He asked why they were learning that and they replied that it was coming up Pesach time and they were reviewing the material relating to the Omer offering in the Beit Hamikdash.
Haman then understood that as long as there were people like Mordechai around, keeping dreams of rebuilding the Beit Hamikdash alive, Am Yisrael would forever cling to these dreams and would survive even the worst persecution. Haman realized that the only way to eradicate Am Yisrael for good was to physically kill all the Mordechai’s and at the same time, all the Jews as well as part of a “package deal”. Many people erroneously think that Amalek are a bunch of dim witted barbarians, when in fact they are extremely knowledgeable about Judaism and the Torah and extremely clever and devious in their diabolical attempts to cause us harm.
According to Chazal, Haman knew that the fact that Am Yisrael gave מחצית השקל every year for funding the ציבורקרבנות in the Mikdash, was a כפרה for selling of Yosef. He erroneously thought that if the Beit Hamikdash was no longer in existence, this “protection” would disappear and the ס"מ would be able to be מקטרג that Am Yisrael were no longer bringing the מחצית השקל and this would lower their Divine defenses. So Haman deliberately “donated” 10,000 gold coins – to give Tzedaka to the Jews! To insure that his plan would succeed and that HKB”H would punish Am Yisrael for not continuing to atone for the sin of Yosef with the מחצית השקל. This devious scheme was foiled when Haman saw Mordechai practicing ונשלמה פרים שפתינו , that they were still doing the avodah of the Mikdash through prayer and study.
Although the story of Purim has a happy ending, it was (at the time) one of the most serious threats to our existence ever in history, and …….. it was entirely PREVENTABLE!
According to Chazal, when Achashveirosh threw his 180 day party, he sent out invitations to everyone in Shushan, including all 18,500 Jews. Following this a major argument ensued between Mordechai and the “political” leaders of the Jewish community, whether the Jews should answer the invitation and attend this party. Mordechai was adamant that they should not because he knew how it would end up. The Jewish “politicians”, trying to find favor in the eyes of the goyim, reasoned that it was not possible to decline the invitation from such a powerful king and besides that, how could anyone turn down an offer of so much free whiskey like that? So all 18,500 Jews in Shushan defied Mordechai, the head of the Sanhedrin and went to this party.
And what happened there? We all know. It was a degrading, flaunting exhibition of the captured remnants of the Beit Hamikdash. Each day the Jews were subjected to having their “defeat” literally rubbed in their face with כלי after כלי after כלי in a grotesque parade, all the while Achashveirosh was prancing around, defiling the priestly garments of the כהן גדול.
To make matters worse, instead of lowering their heads in shame at the sins that had caused the destruction of the Mikdash a mere 50 years prior, שפיכות דמים זרה,עבודה ,עריותגילוי and praying to Hashem for forgiveness, the Jewish participants instead availed themselves freely with the beverages, became intoxicated and descended into all kinds of lewd behavior.
It was this incident (that the Megillah opens with), according to Chazal that caused the גזירה רעה of Haman in the first place, it aroused Hashem’s anger and let loose the מקטרג.
The only remedy to this גזירה was Mordechai (and Esther), the only "צדיק בסדום" as it were.
Haman thought he was invincible because he was not 100% Amaleki. According to Chazal, when Shaul Hamelech captured Agag, the king of Amalek and did not immediately execute him, in the short time (one night) between his capture and being decapitated by Shmuel Hanavi, Agag still managed to sleep with a Canaanite slave girl and this is where Haman came from. So while it is well known that Amalek’s nemesis is from the tribe of Binyamin (for example Yehoshua was sent to battle Amalek when am Yisrael left Egypt because he was from Binyamin), Haman reasoned - if someone from Binyamin tries to kill me, I will claim that I am not totally Amaleki, but part Canaanite and if someone from Yehuda tries to kill me (Yehuda is Canaan’s nemesis) I will say that I am not totally Canaanite, so either way there is no one who can defeat me!
So HKB”H turns things around on their head and sends someone to deal with Haman who was partly from Yehuda (איש יהודי היה בשושן הבירה) on his father’s side and partly from Binyamin (איש ימיני) on his mother’s side – Mordechai and the story has a happy ending.
Although we celebrate Purim today as a joyous occasion, when we understand all the underlying historical and political circumstances that were the backdrop for this story over 2000 years ago, it should actually send a shiver down our spine when we think of Am Yisrael’s current geopolitical situation and how similar it is now - to how it was then.
True, back then it was only 70 years of exile and we are currently after 1950 years of exile, but the similarities are unmistakable – the return to Tzion of a small group of people compared to worldwide Jewry (that has since mushroomed into almost a majority of Jews who are now living in Israel), but still with an almost equal number of our brothers and sisters remaining in exile for whatever reasons, justified or not.
Back in the time of the story of Purim, we were only 50 years after the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash and many people were still alive then that lived through the reality of having a Beit Hamikdash. Today, after 1950 years, we don’t even have that and I am sorry to say that the VAST majority of Jews, even those who are living in Eretz Yisrael, have practically forgotten or given up on the Beit Hamikdash and the few that haven’t, at most pay lip service to it and little else - in the korbanot in shacharit and on Tisha Be’av, but it is a distant dream to them and certainly not a live, throbbing ache that should prevent our leading our daily lives as “normal” and propel us to urgently start working to remedy that.
Today we are continually trying to politically pander to whichever פריץ there currently is among the goyim and trying to be “politically correct” as the goyim arrogantly continue to flaunt the “demise” and shame of the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash and our loss of faith in our faces, not only for 180 days, but for 365 days of the year, every year! Each time nibbling away at the last remnants of Yiddishkeit, forbidding schita in Europe, promoting assimilation through “liberalism” both in Israel and abroad and debasing our youth with materialism, its vices and devices.
If we compare ourselves today to Purim over 2000 years, little has really changed! We are still sitting on a “knifes edge” where even a tiny little incident can tip the scales against us, a modern version of Achashveirosh’s party and bring the מקטרג down on us chas veshalom.
So we drink and make merry. We wear masks (isn’t that poignant), eat hamantaschen and laugh at Haman’s foolishness - when in reality it is a tenuous, uncertain laugh, because of all the modern day Hamans waiting to pounce on us, rain nuclear weapons down on us, sever us from our heritage and try to destroy us again like the original Haman tried over 2000 years ago.
Perhaps that is why Chazal found such great similarity between פורים and הכיפוריםיום because in essence they are not that far removed from each other. We are being judged in both and not totally certain how we will emerge.
The only way we can emerge unscathed and insure return to our former glory is - if we follow the way of Mordechai and Ezra Hasofer, by discarding the enticements of the goyim and exile and working feverishly to restore Am Yisrael to what it should be, by improving our middot and emunah …. and also by keeping the dream of the Beit Hamikdash alive and throbbing - at the forefront of our consciousness and not tucked away in some drawer.
Perhaps if we do that, as Mordechai merited seeing the rebuilding of the 2nd Beit Hamikdash in his days - we will merit seeing the 3rd Beit Hamikdash rebuilt in our days בבי"א.
