In Disguise – Tetzaveh
וְאַתָּה תְּצַוֶּה אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיִקְחוּ אֵלֶיךָ שֶׁמֶן זַיִת זָךְ כָּתִית לַמָּאוֹר לְהַעֲלֹת נֵר תָּמִיד (שמות כז, כ).
In a regular year (not a leap year), parshat Tetzaveh is the Shabbat that precedes Purim. In this shiur I would like to bring a profound principle that combines the parsha, Purim and towards the end, the follow up and epilogue to the shiur two weeks ago about the judicial reform in Israel. Since this shiur is both for Tetzaveh and for Purim, it is a tad longer than the regular shiurim, but well worth reading through to the end!
As everyone knows, Purim is the festival where we dress up, and I am not talking about in our Shabbat clothes (although there are opinions that we should dress on Purim in bigdei Shabbat). Purim is when we get dressed up in costumes - in “disguise”. Today it is mostly the children who don the Snow White and king Achashveirosh (bureau of standards compliant, non-flammable, made in China) outfits, but it was not always so. The רמ"א, Rebi Moshe Isserles, the famous Ashkenazi commentator on the Shulchan Aruch, used to dress up on Purim, disguised as a poor man and went around visiting houses and urging people, who got carried away with their Purim seudah, to go daven ma’ariv. Where does this custom originate?
Sefer ברוך יאמרו says that one of the central themes of Megillat Esther is “clothes”. We have Achashveirosh dressing in the captured bidgei Kehuna each day of the 180 day feast. We have Vashti who was ordered to appear with “no clothes”, just a crown on her head. When Mordechai heard the decree of Haman he switched his clothes for sackcloth. When Esther heard this she sent her servant with clothes to give to Mordechai, which he refused. To reward Mordechai for saving him from an assassination plot, Achashveirosh, on Haman’s suggestion, ordered Haman to dress Mordechai in the king’s clothing and parade him through the city. After Haman’s plot failed and he was hanged, Mordechai is the hero of the day - וּמָרְדֳּכַי יָצָא מִלִּפְנֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ בִּלְבוּשׁ מַלְכוּת תְּכֵלֶת וָחוּר וַעֲטֶרֶת זָהָב גְּדוֹלָה וְתַכְרִיךְ בּוּץ וְאַרְגָּמָן וְהָעִיר שׁוּשָׁן צָהֲלָה וְשָׂמֵחָה (אסתר ח, טו). It’s all about clothes (and crowns)!
Rebi Tzadok HaCohen from Lublin in his sefer Pri Tzaddik has a recurring message. Quoting the Gemara (Bava Kama 55a), he says that if you want to understand the origin of something, you search for the first time it is mentioned in the Torah. For example, if someone sees the letter “tet” in a dream, it signals something good is going to happen, because the first time the letter “tet” appears in the Torah is in the word טוב. So the question is – Where is the first time in the Torah that it talks about costumes, disguises?
The answer is - on the third day of the Creation. Amongst other things, on the third day HKB”H created trees - וַיֹּאמֶר אֱ-לֹקִים תַּדְשֵׁא הָאָרֶץ דֶּשֶׁא עֵשֶׂב מַזְרִיעַ זֶרַע עֵץ פְּרִי עֹשֶׂה פְּרִי לְמִינוֹ. Hashem commanded the earth to bring forth trees that were “transparent”, that the wood of the tree and its fruit would taste the same (Breishit Rabba 5, 9). However, the tree, instead of innocently obeying HKB”H, did its own חשבונות and said “If the tree and the fruit taste the same, people will not just pick fruit off the tree, they will pick branches off the tree to eat as well and in the end, there will be no tree. So the tree sinned and instead manifested itself in a way that the fruit were edible, but not the tree.
Meir Panim (טו, קנח) brings a chiddush that this tree that sinned was the עץ הדעת. This tree should have blindly obeyed HKB”H without question. If HKB”H wants it to be so, then even if people would pick off fruit and branches from the tree, the tree would not disappear. The proof of this is in the עץ החיים, where the “branches” and the “fruit” are the same delicious flavor. The עץ החיים, another name for the Torah, is not diminished in any way if someone “eats” from it. It is like a candle - if someone transfers fire from one candle to another, the original flame is not diminished in any way, it springs back as before. If the original tree would have obeyed HKB”H’s command - even though people would eat both the fruit and the tree it would have immediately regenerated and “sprung back” as before.
The wayward tree, the עץ הדעת טוב ורע, failed to fulfill the basic requirement of a creation in relation to its Creator תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ה' אֱ-לֹקֶיךָ (דברים יח, יג). Instead, it relied on its own “powers” of logic and deduction כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי עָשָׂה לִי אֶת הַחַיִל הַזֶּה (דברים ח, יז), it “muddied” the infinite, Divine (טוב) with the limited, earthly (רע). If the creation would have remained תָּמִים, it would have been entirely טוב, instead it became a mixture of טוב ורע.
Outwardly, it looked like the tree HKB”H had originally intended - כִּי טוֹב הָעֵץ לְמַאֲכָל וְכִי תַאֲוָה הוּא לָעֵינַיִם (בראשית ג, ו). However, this was only in outward appearances. כִּי טוֹב הָעֵץ לְמַאֲכָל – really? Was the “tree” good to eat? The truth is later Chava and Adam did not eat the “tree”, they ate the fruit - וַתִּקַּח מִפִּרְיוֹ וַתֹּאכַל. To the untrained eye it looked good תַאֲוָה הוּא לָעֵינַיִם, but what you see with your eyes only, can be deceptive.
The עץ הדעת was therefore the first time in the Torah that a costume, a “disguise” was “worn” and examining the context, we now understand the essence of a “disguise”. A disguise is something used to hide, to cover up the truth of a thing and to portray a false visual image to the world.
Only HKB”H is בוחן כליות ולב, only He can truly see beyond the outward appearance. This is why He forbade Adam and Chava to eat from this tree, because if He had not and they had relied on their own instincts and powers of deduction, they would have been deceived by the misleading disguise of the עץ הדעת.
The incredible, mind blowing thing here is that - HKB”H didn’t get rid of the עץ הדעת! The tree sinned, it disobeyed HKB”H’s commandment and ended up as a “mutation”. HKB”H could have just “chopped down” the tree, or burnt it with His finger (like He did the groups of angels who advised against creating man). HKB”H could have leveled the ground and started from scratch, growing the originally intended tree. Actually, following the initial fiasco with the עץ הדעת, HKB”H did continue to create the עץ החיים – the originally intended tree. However, he left the עץ הדעת intact in Gan Eden and not in some dark, forgotten corner, but in the center of the Gan, alongside the עץ החיים (albeit fenced off). Why do such a thing? This in fact is the secret of the Mishkan/Mikdash, as we will see later.
The עץ הדעת was the first creation to wear a Purim “costume”, but from there on, it was a slippery slope. On the very next day, the 4th day, HKB”H created שְׁנֵי הַמְּאֹרֹת הַגְּדֹלִים, the sun and the moon. Originally the moon was equivalent to the sun in its radiance, but the moon complained to HKB”H “There cannot be two kings in the sky”. So HKB”H told the moon to diminish itself, to “mask” its radiance (the first “masked ball” in history). When we say Kiddush Levanah we pray for the time of the Geulah when the moon will be restored to its previous radiance, before being “masked”. Again we find the same thing. HKB”H did not remove the moon and scrap it. He left both the sun and the moon, alongside each other.
The next fancy dress “partygoer” (or should I say - party pooper), was an angel called ס"מ. The מלאך המוות decided to crash the “party” in Gan Eden where he was not invited, so he dressed up in disguise, so that no one could recognize him for what he really was. There was another creature in Gan Eden called the נחש. This is not the slithering creature we are familiar with, according to Pirkei DeRebi Eliezer (פרק יג) the original נחש was an upright creature that looked like a camel. The נחש was a common sight in Gan Eden, everyone knew him and nobody paid particular attention to him. The angel ס"מ chose an appearance everyone was familiar with and “dressed up” like the נחש. If the ס"מ would have appeared directly to Chava, she would have run a mile and never have listened to him, but in “disguise”, he managed to worm his way into her trust.
Adam and Chava, instead of being תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ה' אֱ-לֹקֶיךָ, ate from the fruit of the עץ הדעת (chametz bread, according to Meir Panim), made their own חשבונות and thus introduced into themselves that same element of רע that existed in the tree. What was the first thing Adam and Chava did as a result? They dressed up in disguise. They sewed together fig leaves to cover themselves, just like the עץ הדעת put on a disguise to give the outward appearance that everything was hunky dory. What follows conjures up the image of a fancy dress, masquerade ball. Adam and Chava in disguise, playing “hide and seek” in the garden, while HKB”H, as it were, calls out to Adam “Coookoooo, Where are you? coming to find you, ready or not!” HKB”H replaced Adam and Chava’s disguise with another set of clothes, כתנות עור. The Mefarshim say these were bigdei Kehuna. HKB”H promised Adam that if he ate from the עץ הדעת he would die. Did he die? Not immediately, it took another 930 years. HKB”H could have wiped Adam Harishon out with the blink of an eye and started from scratch, but no, He moved Adam east of Gan Eden to the “poor neighborhood”, Gan Eden on the one side and alongside that, Adam to the east.
And the Purim costumes keep coming. Kayin kills Hevel. Kayin is a farmer who grows flax. Hevel is a shepherd who tends flocks of sheep. HKB”H banishes Kayin, but not before giving him a Purim disguise, a mark on his forehead. By all counts Kayin should have been executed, but instead he now wears a mask that hides his true self. All those who see him think he is tzaddik and do not kill him, while in truth he is deserving of death.
More Purim disguises. וַיֶּאֱהַב יִצְחָק אֶת עֵשָׂו כִּי צַיִד בְּפִיו, Rashi says that Eisav put on a big show for his father, pretending to be a big tzaddik – he wore a disguise. Rivka and Yaakov saw through the disguise and recognized Eisav for what he was. Some Mefarshim say that Yitzchak also recognized Eisav for what he was (when he sent him off to hunt food, he stressed the halachot of shechita because he knew Eisav was lax regarding them), but Yitzchak did not banish Eisav from his house. Eisav lived in the same house, with his idol worshipping wives filling the house with the incense of עבודה זרה. To defeat Eisav and his deception, it was necessary for Yaakov himself to wear a Purim costume, dress up like Eisav, to receive Yitzchak’s blessing.
Yosef’s brothers threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery in Egypt. They took his כתונת פסים and dipped it in blood - another Purim costume, to mask the real truth (this time with nobody wearing it). Later when Yosef reconciled with the brothers he gave them a set of clothes לְכֻלָּם נָתַן לָאִישׁ חֲלִפוֹת שְׂמָלֹת, but to Binyamin he gave five sets of clothes. R’ Bachyei says that Yosef foresaw that a descendant of Binyamin, Mordechai, would one day leave Achashveirosh’s palace wearing five types of royal garments וּמָרְדֳּכַי יָצָא מִלִּפְנֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ בִּלְבוּשׁ מַלְכוּת 1) תְּכֵלֶת 2) וָחוּר 3) וַעֲטֶרֶת זָהָב גְּדוֹלָה 4) וְתַכְרִיךְ בּוּץ 5) וְאַרְגָּמָן.
The next Purim costume we find at Har Sinai. The Gemara (Shabbat 88a) tells us that HKB”H descended on Har Sinai accompanied by 600,000 angels and each angel placed a crown on the head of those present at מתן תורה. This was their reward for saying נעשה ונשמע, for not doing their own חשבונות, for being תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ה' אֱ-לֹקֶיךָ. This was the tikkun for the sin of Adam Harishon with עץ הדעת. Chazal say that at מתן תורה Am Yisrael re-attained the status of Adam before the sin. Hang a moment! Doesn’t it say in the Gemara (Shabbat 88a) מלמד שכפה הקב"ה עליהם את ההר כגיגית ואמר להם: אם אתם מקבלים התורה מוטב ואם לאו שם תהא קבורתכם ? That HKB”H dangled Har Sinai above Am Yisrael’s heads and said “Either you accept the Torah, or otherwise it’s curtains!” The Gemara there explains that when Am Yisrael said נעשה ונשמע they meant regarding the תורה שבכתב, but not theתורה שבעל פה . To get them to also accept the Oral Law, HKB”H had to threaten them. The tikkun for this took place many generations later in Shushan. The Gemara continues אעפ"כ הדור קבלוה בימי אחשורוש דכתיב 'קימו וקבלו היהודים' - קיימו מה שקיבלו כבר. During the story of Purim, Am Yisrael repaired this error from Har Sinai by also accepting the תורה שבעל פה with the same תמימות and fervor of נעשה ונשמע. How do we know this? because Am Yisrael willingly and without threats, accepted additional mitzvot that were not in the תורה שבכתב like mishloach manot, matanot la’evyonim, etc. קימו וקבלו.
From all the above we begin to understand why there is such a big deal about Purim costumes. Purim is not a minor, little, “fun” festival where we dress up and feast and drink wine and make merry. At the heart of Purim is something immensely more fundamental! Purim is in fact an reenactment of Matan Torah! and as such, it is also a resetting of the world to before the sin of Adam Harishon with the עץ הדעת.
Purim is actually a removal of all disguises and a revealing of our true selves. לִפְנֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ בְּכֶתֶר מַלְכוּת לְהַרְאוֹת הָעַמִּים וְהַשָּׂרִים אֶת יָפְיָהּ כִּי טוֹבַת מַרְאֶה הִיא. The Mefarshim say that in Megilat Esther every time it uses the words הַמֶּלֶךְ אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ it is referring to Achashveirosh mamash, but every time it says הַמֶּלֶךְ on its own (without אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ) it is referring to מלך מלכי המלכים, HKB”H. At Har Sinai Am Yisrael each received a crown from one of the 600,000 angels that descended with HKB”H. We re-attained the status of Adam Harishon before the sin. Before the sin of עץ הדעת Adam had no clothes. Adam was purely טוב, he was completely transparent, like the עץ החיים, where the tree tastes like the fruit.
Clothes are a mask! The root of the word בגד, clothes, comes from the same word meaning traitor! The fact that we now wear clothes is an eternal testament to our betrayal of HKB”H, our failure to be תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ה' אֱ-לֹקֶיךָ. HKB”H stripped away the disguises on Har Sinai and instead placed a crown on our heads, the crown of Torah. When Am Yisrael wear the crown of the Torah, without any disguises - they are beautiful! HKB”H wants to show off this beauty to all the other nations. When Mordechai left the palace after Haman was exposed, וּמָרְדֳּכַי יָצָא מִלִּפְנֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ בִּלְבוּשׁ מַלְכוּת תְּכֵלֶת וָחוּר וַעֲטֶרֶת זָהָב גְּדוֹלָה וְתַכְרִיךְ בּוּץ וְאַרְגָּמָן, he was wearing a large gold crown. None of the other garments were large and emphasized, only the crown, the crown of Torah which is the essence. In Shushan Am Yisrael reacquired the crown of Torah.
This is the essence of Purim, a stripping away of the disguises that mask our true selves, our true, pure neshama. This is why we drink on Purim, not to become paralytic drunk, but just enough to remove the קליפה, the obstacles that we erect within ourselves to distance us from HKB”H, and to let our true neshama shine through uninhibited.
If you take a close look at the components of the Mishkan (and the Beit Hamikdash) described in last week’s parsha (Truma) and this week’s parsha Tetzaveh, you notice one recurring theme. This is in fact one of the fundamental secrets of the Beit Hamikdash, our relationship with HKB”H and with one another.
Each of the components of the Mishkan encompasses two parts - a perfect/sweet/whole part and a flawed/sour/broken part. Let us explore a few examples.
The Aron HaBrit contained the whole luchot, the 2nd set that Moshe carved. However the fragments of the broken 1st set were not disposed of. There is a machloket whether the broken 1st set of luchot were placed in the Aron HaBrit itself, made by Betzalel, or in a separate Aron of wood made by Moshe. This machloket is not relevant to the discussion here, only that both the whole luchot and the broken luchot were kept in the Kodesh Hakodashim. The Mefarshim say that the נפקא מינה of this is that if we have a Talmid Chacham who has forgotten his knowledge (through some illness like dementia), we are obligated to respect him as if he was in full possession of his knowledge (I believe that by extension, this applies to anyone who suffers from dementia/Alzheimers, not only a Talmid Chacham, that we are obligated to respect them). Both the לוחות and the שברי לוחות were respected and part of the Kodesh HaKodashim.
Lechem Hapanim on the Shulchan was a matza, devoid of chametz. However in order to achieve its required dimensions, specifically the thickness of a tefach, use was made of a fermentation process - within the strict confines of הלכות חמץ. The Shulchan Lechem Hapanim was a tikkun for the sin of the עץ הדעת and has a direct נפקא מינה how we regard and deal with our yetzer harah (Meir Panim, פרק טו).
The Menorah used שמן זית זך כתית למאור, the sweetest and purest olive oil. Unlike any other fruit, whose juice tastes the same as the flesh of the fruit itself, olive juice/oil is dramatically different to the actual fruit, which Chazal regard as inadvisable for human consumption (הוריות יג, ב). The Gemara says that eating olives (that are sour and inedible unless they are processed/cured to make them edible) detrimentally affects your memory, while consuming olive oil improves memory.
The Ketoret consisted of 11 ingredients, ten of which were sweet and fragrant, while one (חלבנה), was foul smelling. However, when offered together and in the correct measure with the remaining 10 ingredients, it produced a Divine fragrance that permeated the entire region of Jerusalem and made the perfume/deodorant industry redundant. Amongst other things the Ketoret was a tikkun for מכירת יוסף.
In the בגדי כהונה, two of the garments – the Eifod (the garment worn by the Kohen Gadol on the chest above the מעיל) and the Avnet (the belt worn by all the Kohanim, that was wrapped around the chest) – contained שעטנז, a mixture of flax/linen and wool (Kayin and Hevel). They were only permitted to wear these while the Kohen was actually serving in the Mishkan/Mikdash. The Kohen was not allowed to wear these garments (or any other שעטנז) outside the Azarah. The reason that שעטנז could be worn at all in the Mishkan/Mikdash, according to the Mefarshim is that the holiness of the Mikdash cancels any negative implications of the issur (similarly with the fermentation and the Lechem Hapanim above).
There are other examples, but for now these will suffice. The question is - Why this “mixture” of wanted/unwanted in almost every component of the holiest place on earth, the Mikdash? The answer can be found in our descriptions of the disguises above. It teaches us a fundamental lesson about הנהגת הבורא.
When something goes wrong, HKB”H does not summarily dispose of it and replace it. The modern society we are currently living in is increasingly (and disturbingly) a society of disposal. Nothing is ever repaired any more - if something goes wrong it is disposed of and replaced. This applies equally to computers, microwaves, employees, even spouses. The monetary cost of repairing something these days exceeds the cost of replacing it. I would like to propose, however, that the moral cost of disposing of it, exceeds the monetary cost of repairing it. In saving a few bucks, we are inadvertently causing irreversible spiritual damage to our neshama.
HKB”H did not flatten and dispose of the עץ הדעת and replace it. He kept it, damaged and flawed as it was (שברי לוחות) alongside and together with the עץ החיים (the unbroken לוחות), in the center of the garden – in the Kodesh HaKodashim. Why?
HKB”H does not “operate” only in the “here and now”, HKB”H is infinite and His calculations are based on much larger scale timeframes. HKB”H is a “repairer” not a “disposer”. HKB”H does not want us to be a society of “sterile”, “perfect”, “genetically superior” robots. He wants (He commands) us to be a perfect society, but - only through repairing the flaws within ourselves, not by disposing of people who are flawed. HKB”H did not dispose of the ,עץ הדעת because He wants it to be repaired. הֶחָפֹץ אֶחְפֹּץ מוֹת רָשָׁע נְאֻם ה' א-לוקים הֲלוֹא בְּשׁוּבוֹ מִדְּרָכָיו וְחָיָה (יחזקאל יח, כג). He did not dispose of the moon and only leave the sun, because He wants it to be repaired. How long will that take? perhaps 2448 years, perhaps 6000.
HKB”H gave us the tools to repair the flaws in the world – the Torah. The Mikdash, the gateway between Heaven and earth, the holiest place on earth, is filled with components that, on one hand - reflect the perfection, and on the other – the flaws that need repairing, standing alongside one another. The Mikdash is a “repair facility”! It is where you send all the flawed and broken things in the world and in history – to be repaired. The Mikdash is the visual aid that prompts each and every one of us to use the same methods to repair whatever needs repairing within ourselves. Whenever Am Yisrael did עלייה לרגל to the Mikdash for the שלושת הרגלים, they took back home with them renewed energy and inspiration to effect those repairs within themselves in the interim months between the visits to the Mikdash. The Mikdash, in that sense, was a like a “recharger”.
In a previous shiur I discussed the current situation in Israel regarding the judicial reform and how essential it is to peel away the “disguise”, the farce and the lies and to repair that which needs repairing. While everyone is furiously discussing the reality of the mass demonstrations and the media fueled frenzy, I believe nobody is addressing the most important question that needs asking.
In that previous shiur I broke down the numbers and explained how the instigators of this “riot” are actually very few in number and fueled by a political agenda to preserve power. What distresses me most are the huge numbers of people who are duped by this façade and more specifically by their fear that the State of Israel will turn into a Halacha state - the fear that the Jewish state will be run according to the laws of the Torah! I am equally appalled by the constant, immediate reassurances and apologetics by the Torah parties in the Knesset - that they have no wish to turn Israel into a Halacha state.
These two phenomena indicate to me that we have two “elephants in the room” that nobody is addressing.
The first is how we have arrived at the situation where the one thing that more than half of the Jewish population of Israel (and the world) fear most – is the prospect that we will return to our own authentic heritage and essence as a nation. A dream that untold millions prayed and died for in the last 2000 years, and now that we are back and have a chance to realize that dream, we most fear the realization of that dream? I believe that the cause of this is twofold.
Firstly it is a result of trauma – trauma of almost 2000 years of exile and more recently, trauma of the Holocaust. I do not think it is coincidental that of the two main protagonists of the anti-Halacha state, one a respected juror and the other an opportunist politician, one is a Holocaust survivor and the other the son of Holocaust survivor. One cannot discount nor judge someone who experienced such trauma and emerged with a broken neshama and passed it down to the next generation.
Secondly it is a failure of the Torah world to shine the light outwards (rather than inwards) and to expose the true beauty of HKB”H and the Torah to the rest of Am Yisrael, who, as of yet, do not recognize it. We, who are closest to the Torah and recognize this beauty, have failed (so far) in our duty to attract our brethren to this beauty and to bring them back into the fold with love. Yes we are faced with enormous, powerful interference from outside societal influences, but we have not done enough in this regard. And this leads me to the second “elephant”.
All the apologetics and reassurances that “the Torah (National Religious and Charedi) parties do not aspire to a Halacha state”, just reaffirm the fears of those who have no understanding of what a Jewish state run according to the Torah is, and how beautiful it would be. We, the Torah world, do not aspire to a Halacha state? What are we communicating with a statement like that? We are communicating one thing and one thing only - a wish to perpetuate the rift in Am Yisrael, that we have no wish to “repair”, only to “dispose”. If half (or more) of Am Yisrael want to stray from the path and serve avodah zarah, “zei gezunt”, do whatever you like, just as long as you do not interfere with “our Torah frameworks and budgets, yeshivas, ulpanas, schools, etc”. Do whatever you like in Tel Aviv but do not force your life views on me in Bnei Brak or Givat Shmuel. We have developed a “disconnect” with a huge chunk of Am Yisrael (actually the majority). We have lost the concept of כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה.
Yes we need to push forward with the judicial reforms and correct the wrongs done by a broken system, but we need to be better than that system and not take revenge for the things done to us.
If we believe that we truly represent the authentic heritage of Am Yisrael, we need to seriously start working on our PR and showing the rest of Am Yisrael how beautiful the Torah is. We need to start working more like Beit Hillel and less like Beit Shamai – אַל תִּפְרֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר, וְאַל תַּאֲמֵן בְּעַצְמְךָ עַד יוֹם מוֹתְךָ, וְאַל תָּדִין אֶת חֲבֵרְךָ עַד שֶׁתַּגִּיעַ לִמְקוֹמוֹ, ..... ולֹא הַקַּפְּדָן מְלַמֵּד. I believe these sentiments will find more fertile ground in National Religious circles and less in Charedi circles (although the younger generation of Charedim is more open in this regard).
While we are on the subject of disguises: HaRav Kook zt”l regarded the “new” (now not so new) generation of secular Jews as אנוסים and תינוקות שנשבו, that they are pure neshamot in disguise. All we need to do is strip away the “Purim costume” and reveal their pure neshama.
Yes there are some amongst us who cannot be described as anything else than רשעים, (although none of us are HKB”H who is בוחן כליות ולב and sees the true heart of a person). However, even working on the assumption that they are רשעים, we must follow the הנהגה of HKB”H. We must not endeavor to “dispose” of them, but to “repair” them. The Torah way of rehabilitation is not locking the sinner in some dark hole and throwing away the key, but relocating them to a “neighborhood of tzaddikim”, or perhaps today relocating the tzaddikim to their neighborhood, so they can find their path back.
As we approach Purim this year in a less than idyllic atmosphere, typified less by מרבים בשמחה and more by מרבים בצער ויגון, we all need to make an extra effort to focus on the larger timescale, to see the bigger picture and to strip away the disguises within ourselves and release our pure neshama, so that this coming Purim, B”H next week we can all stand again at Har Sinai and reaffirm our dedication to HKB”H, the Torah and Am Yisrael. Let us approach Ta’anit Esther with the resolve to pour our hearts out to HKB”H and beg Him with תמימות and no disguises, for redemption and then B”H, נהפוך הוא, HKB”H will change our יגון to שמחה and light.
A Freiliche Purim.
