There is a Gemara (Chulin 139b) familiar to many of us which quotes a
Posuk in this week’s Parsha: “Where do we find Haman in the Torah? As it says,
‘Did you eat from [Hamin] the tree?’ (Bereishis 3:11). Where do we find Esther in the Torah? As it says, ‘I will
surely hide [Astir] My face’ (Devorim 31:18).
Where do we find Mordechai in the Torah? ‘Pure myrrh’ (Shmos 30:23), which we translate as Mara Dachya.”
Why does the Gemara
use the Posuk referring to Hashem’s concealment in the world to refer to
Esther, whose entire role in the Purim story was to remove the concealment
covering Hashem’s presence? Esther was the remedy to the previous concealment.
So why does her name refer to the problem – the concealment itself?
Haman and Amalek’s
wickedness was personified by their subterfuge. The Posuk says, “And Haman said
in his heart...” (Esther 6:6). The Midrash (Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer 50) says,
“It is the way of the people of Amalek to scheme secrets in their hearts which
they do not reveal with their mouths. Just like ‘And Esav said in his heart’ (Bereishis 27:41).” Esav’s way was to “trap with his
mouth” (ibid. 25:28). That is why Chazal (Bereishis Rabbah 65:1) compare him to a pig, which displays
its external signs of kashrus, its cloven hooves, as if to say, “Look at me! I
am kosher!,” while it lacks the inner sign of kashrus – it does not chew its
cud. Amalek inherited this subversive approach.
The usual modus
operandi of the physicality and superficiality of this world is to fight out in
the open; to keep everything in public and on the surface. It blasts temptation
and distraction in our faces through Twitter, Facebook, the Internet, on
billboards, and in the streets. It does not, nor does it need to, go
underground. It has no inner life.
Chazal in this
Midrash, however, reveal that Amalek has an even more subversive and dangerous
strategy – “to scheme secrets in their hearts which they do not reveal with
their mouths.” This evil which “lurks in the hearts of men” poses an even
greater danger to us than the open warfare of the physical world in general.
This is akin to
something that exists in the world today – “cyberwar.” This strategy does not
involve soldiers with guns, tanks, or missiles. It is fought by programmers and
hackers in hidden rooms using computers. Some warn that by shutting down
electrical grids, communication systems, or water supplies using cyberwar,
terrorists could potentially wreak even greater havoc than they could with
conventional weapons.
To fight off a form of
spiritual evil that has an internal life, we must develop an inner life of
holiness. We will lose the hidden war if we only fight the forms of evil which
manifest themselves in the most obvious ways. This is what the Gemara was
trying to teach us by pointing out that Esther’s name is hinted at in the
words, “I will surely hide My face.” She drew her ability to battle Amalek’s
hidden war by living a hidden life of holiness from Hashem’s ability to live a
hidden life. By living a life of holiness beneath the surface, she was able to
defeat Amalek, personified by Haman, in its underground war against the Jewish
people and the side of holiness.
Esther, who comes from
the tribe of Binyomin, also drew her ability to work behind the scenes from her
great-grandmother Rochel (Bereishis
Rabbah 78:5): “Rochel
grasped silence as her portion [by not revealing the code she had agreed-upon
with Yaakov, in order to avoid embarrassing her sister Leah under the Chuppah].
All her children therefore became masters of mystery.” That is where Esther got
the strength to live her inner life, “Esther did not tell [the identity of] her
nation” (Esther 2:10). That is the secret of (Bereishis Rabbah 73:5) “The seed of Esav will only fall
through the hand of Rachel’s children.” We need Rochel and Esther’s ability to
stay silent, to live a modest and rich inner life, to defeat “Haman said in his
heart” and “Esav said in his heart.”
This is why the Gemara
says Haman is rooted in the Torah’s story of Adam and Chavah eating from the
tree of knowledge of good and bad. Before the sin, there was no distinction
between internal and external. There were no secrets. There was no such thing
as a secret scheme. That is why they saw no reason to wear clothes.
After the sin, after
they had internalized the influence of the snake, Adam and Chavah “knew that
they were naked” (Bereishis
3:7). Therefore, “They
hid, the man and his wife, from before G-d...” (ibid. 8). They began keeping secrets – living and thinking one way in
private and another way in public. That is why Hashem said to them “Where are
you?” (ibid. 9). He was asking them: “Why are you
hiding? Have you gone underground, trying to portray one image in front of Me
and living another way in private? Which is your true self? Your public persona
or your secret life?”
When our children
begin living secret lives behind closed doors, the real problems have begun. At
a certain point, many parents must make the difficult choice to invite their
children to do things of which they would not have approved so that they will
do so out in the open, with their knowledge, rather than in secret. Children
learn, at a certain point, to put on a certain wholesome persona in front of
their parents in which they only talk with them about things with which they
are comfortable. When children or teenagers “go underground”, it is generally
far more dangerous for them than whatever they will do out in the open, with
their parents’ knowledge, even if those things are outside the parents’ comfort
zone.
Let us look at
Mordechai’s “origin story.” His name comes from the Posuk meaning “pure myrrh,”
a fragrant herb. Rav Tzvi Elimelech of Dinov, zy”a, in Bnei Yissaschar
(Cheshvan, 1), tells us that all of Adam and Chavah’s senses were implicated in
their sin except for the sense of smell. Chazal teach us that this is most
ephemeral, internal sense (Brochos
43b): “What does the
soul enjoy? Smell.”
Mordechai, whose name
hints at pure myrrh, a spice meant to appeal to the most refined sense, the
sense of smell. And this myrrh to which the Posuk referred, was for the
anointing oil, used to anoint the vessels to sanctify them to be used in the
Mishkan and the Holy of Holies, the place so exalted that virtually no one was
ever permitted to enter. It was also used to anoint the Kohen Gadol, who was so
elevated that he was the only person permitted to enter the Holy of Holies on
Yom Kippur. Mordechai had access to the most inner world, the world of the Holy
of Holies. It was only because of his sanctified inner life that he was able to
defeat Amalek and Haman, who personified the evil expression of inner life.
The prerequisite to
having a sanctified inner life, and, accordingly, any chance of defeating the
external and internal manifestations of Amalek and Haman, is having at least
have some inner life to begin with! The biggest threat to having a holy inner
life is having no inner life. If a person has no Holy of Holies, no inner world
of thought, contemplation, and privacy, he has nothing to sanctify.
So many people use
social media to post every thought that passes through their heads, every meal,
and every ache and pain. Does the whole world really need to know that Chana
Schprintza stubbed her toe while going to change the baby at 2:18am last night?
Do they really need to see the selfie she took of herself holding her aching
foot? Does the whole world really need to read about every (hopefully) cogent
thought one merits to have on politics or Israel on a second‑by‑second basis?
The students of the
Chevron Yeshivah, a very Lithuanian-style institution, once suspected their Rosh
Yeshivah, Rav Simcha Zissel Broyde, Zt”l, of secretly studying kabbalah and Chassidus.
A small, self-appointed committee of students launched an investigation to
determine the truth of the rumours. One day, they waited until Rav Broyde left
his office and searched it, examining the bookshelves, desk drawers, and
anywhere else they could look, hoping to find some contraband. Unfortunately,
their search did not yield any kabbalah Seforim or the like. When the Rosh Yeshivah
returned to his office, he noticed that things had been disturbed and realized
what had happened.
Rav Broyde said
nothing, however, until a shiur he was giving approximately three weeks later.
In the shiur, he said, “Why is it that curious people are unable to keep a
secret? What is the connection between these two character defects? The reason
is that curious people, those who always want to know what everyone else is up to, who must
always keep up with the latest news, live in a world completely outside of
themselves. They have no inner life. Consequently, they cannot keep a secret
because they simply have no inner world in which to contain the information.
That is why it comes out automatically.
The Rosh Yeshivah then
quoted the Gemara’s story of the holy Nazir’s rebuke to his own evil
inclination when he found himself tempted to use his good looks for licentious
purposes after seeing his own beautiful reflection in the river (Nedarim 9b): “Evil one! Why are you taking pride
in a world that does not belong to you!?” Using these words to take the
busybody students in Yeshivah to task, he said: “Why are you busying yourselves
with a world that is not your own? A Jew must build an inner world for himself,
a private place where he alone can go to center himself and seek the truth in
his own service of G-d.”
So many people race to
post everything that they or their families or friends do and every thought
they have on social media, that they never stop to process or experience the
present. They fail to think about what those people and experiences mean to
them. In their rush to post that selfie of themselves with a little bit of
Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon in the background, they do not contemplate
the awesome beauty of those wondrous sights. They have no inner life, and
therefore no hidden world of holiness with which to counterbalance the hidden
evil of our enemies.
May we learn from our
mothers, Rochel and Esther, to increase our silence and discretion in order to
augment our inner lives, to live more often in the Holy of Holies of our own
minds. In that merit, may we merit to see the final annihilation of the power
of Amalek and Esav in the world with the coming of Moshiach and the complete
redemption soon in our days!
Wishing Klal
Yisroel a Happy Purim and a Kosher Pesach – without unKosher distractions…
