ZAKHOR. Antisemitism does not stop: it must be stopped

The Shabbat that precedes Purim is called Shabbat zakhor (= Remember!). This Shabbat we take out two Sefarim, one for the weekly Parasha, this year 2022: Vayqra, and the other Sefer for a special Maftir in Debarim 25:17, zakhor. “Remember… what Amaleq did to you when you left Egypt … Amaleq attacked the defenseless … and did not fear God … do not forget !!!”.

THE STORY OF AMALEQ

When we left Egypt, escaping a 140 years period of slavery, Amaleq attacked us. It was an unprovoked attack, without reason or motive. Israel was not a threat to Amaleq’s possessions or territory. The reasons for Amaleq to attack the Jews were not “logical” but rather, using a modern term “ideological”. Moreover, we were superior in number to Amaleq. But Amaleq still –irrationally—attacked us. To be more effective and cause maximum damage, Amaleq attacked the weak, the infirm, the old.

There was nothing specific about the Jews that triggered Amaleq’s hatred. It was not the power of the Jews, or the money of the Jews. The Jews had just escaped from a lengthy captivity. What power or money would slaves have? It was not a territorial issue either: we were in the desert, not even in the Promised Land. Amaleq territory was not in our plans!

What characterizes Amaleq is a radical irrational hatred for Jews.

I think the best way to identify Amaleq (and anti-Semitism in general) is that Amaleq hates Jews “unconditionally”. Is not because of what we Jews “have” or what we Jews “do” but because of what we Jews “are”: the people of God. It is an existential hatred. What the Jew has or does is something Amaleq might use as an excuse to justify his hatred. To disguise hatred as a politically correct fight against this who wish to dominate the world, etc.

Amaleq and his “ideological” descendants (known as ”zekher Amaleq”) can be clearly identified by the following characteristics:

1. UNCONDITIONAL HATRED

Amaleq’s hatred towards Jews is not motivated by territorial disputes, revenge or by feeling threatened. It is an obsessive hatred toward the Jewish people . Look for example at Iran. Iran threatens to wipe Israel off the map although it has no common borders with Israel. There are not disputed territories between the two countries.

2. CIVILIANS

Amaleq would attack and would try to kill Jews, whether they are civilians, women, elder or children. Remember Ma’alot in 1974? 22 little children were massacred by Arafat and the PLO. The murder of the Fogel family in Itamar, including a woman, her children and a baby. The synagogue of Har Nof in Jerusalem. And many more. In the last years, representatives of Amaleq have killed Jews in Israel and have stabbed to death Jews also outside Israel. In Paris, Milan, London, Brussels, Miami, California, Buenos Aires, New York, Pittsburg, and unfortunately there are no signs that this will stop.

3. SUICIDAL

Amaleq’s hatred for Israel is suicidal. Amaleq is willing to practice martyrdom (self-immolation, suicide attacks, etc.) if as a consequence he would kill a Jew. Amaleq’s hatred towards Jews is greater than Amaleq’s love for their own lives or even the lives of their own children.

4. SINGLE OBSESION

Amaleq may hate other people temporarily, but his endless obsession is against Israel. Amaleq does not hate the Jews for what happens in Israel. On the contrary, Amaleq hates Israel because is a Jewish state. Anti-Zionism is Amaleq’s way to disguise its anti-Semitism.

5. EXISTENTIAL HATRED

The most important and practical point to consider in our confrontation with Amaleq is that it is not possible to negotiate with Amaleq. Because Amaleq will never be satisfied with land, money, or even with us changing our religion. Think of the Shoa. The Nazis killed also those Jews who were willing to renounced their religion. Amaleq wants the Jewish People to disappear, period. Israeli politicians and Jews around the world are divided precisely on this point: Everyone Jew wishes to live in peace. But some believe that peace with our enemies can be achieved through negotiations. Others believe that, like Amaleq, our enemies (Iran, Palestinians, Hizbollah, BDS, etc.) will NEVER stop attacking us, even if Jews or Israel concede their demands. The greatest internal conflict of the modern Israeli politics has to do with identifying or not identifying our modern enemies with the Amaleq the Tora warned us about.

6. SELF HATRED

For many Jews, especially for those who are unfamiliar with or unwilling to accept the Biblical concept of Amaleq, it is extremely difficult to recognize and acknowledge the true nature of Amaleq. And since the behavior of Amaleq is beyond rationality, intelligent and educated but extremely naive Jews, believe that something “rational” must be triggering Amaleq’s hatred toward us. And instead of accepting the irrational nature of Amaleq’s hatred, they blame it on ourselves!. They assume, for example, that terrorist attacks or Amaleq killing of Jewish civilians, or the BDS movement that aims to delegitimize Israel is the consequences of a new settlement. Or that hatred to Jews has to do with some Jews being wealthy or powerful. When a Jews accepts Amaleq’s narrative he or she might end up hating their own people instead of holding Amaleq accountable.

7. DENIAL

Foreseeing the danger of the well-meaning but naive Jew, the Tora warned us not only to “zakhor” (remember) Amaleq. In the same text, with an exceptional tautology, the Tora exhorts us to not forget Amaleq’s suicidal obsession and irrationality (“Lo Tishkakh”).

Our Hakhamim prescribed to publicly read the text where the Tora mentions Amaleq the Shabbat before Purim. Why? Because Haman was the first descendant of Amaleq who was about to succeed in erasing the entire people of Israel off the map.

The Tora assures us that HaShem will not let Amaleq destroy us. But it exhorts us not to be naive about the true nature and intentions of Amaleq. Forgetting, can be tremendously costly for us.

Parashat Zakhor has the special status of being a biblical text whose reading is a direct commandment of the Tora. Women are also expected to fulfill this obligation and attend Synagogue to hear Parashat Zakhor.

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Purim and the Shoah

DEATH SENTENCE

Purim took place in the year 474 BCE, which corresponds to the 12th year of the Persian Emperor Ahasuerus or Xerxes. At that time, all the Jews of the world lived under the same political roof: the Persian Empire. They were scattered throughout the empire and were very successful in international trade. But now, all the Jews of the empire had been sentenced to death, and the world would be Judenrein, “free of Jews.” This was Haman’s “final solution,” and it was the goal of the Nazis during World War II. Haman’s method of killing Jews was much more effective than the Nazis. Haman did not have to recruit any army or spend a bullet from the empire. His malevolent method was summarized in two words included in the edict: USHLALAM LA-BOZ, which means “on the 13th of Adar, every citizen of the Persian Empire can kill a Jew and keep all their possessions: their properties, their money, their businesses.” Thus, Haman encouraged neighbors to kill their Jewish acquaintances by offering them the guarantee that everything would be legal and the executioners would not suffer any consequences for their crimes. On the contrary, they could keep the belongings of the Jews they killed. The imperial army, it seems, would be on the side of the oppressors, preventing the Jews from defending themselves. All of this is expressed directly or indirectly in the edict Haman signed and sent in the name of King Ahasuerus. The decree established that the genocide of the Jews, the mega-execution of hundreds of thousands of Jews, including the approximately 50,000 Jews living in Israel – which also belonged to the Persian Empire – would take place on the 13th of Adar that year. The letters containing the royal edict were sent 11 months earlier, on the 13th of Nisan. After Esther and Mordecai thwarted Haman’s sinister plan and the evil Persian minister was executed, new official letters were sent announcing that the Jews could defend themselves against their enemies and the law would be on their side. These letters were dispatched on the 23rd of Sivan, 70 days after the first letters were sent.

COULD THE JEWS ESCAPE?

One of the themes that is most difficult to visualize in the history of Purim is what the Jews must have gone through once they heard the death sentence and during the next 70 days until the new decision of the king arrived. Midrashim tells that many gentile neighbors delighted in showing their sharp knives to poor Jewish mothers, warning them that they would use those weapons to kill their little children. The Midrash also explains that the oppressors celebrated the massacre in advance and distributed the property and possessions of the Jews in advance. Rabbi Yom Tob Tsahalon (1559-1619) in his book Leqaj Tob says – when referring to Mordecai’s urgency to cancel Haman’s decree, even though there were 9 months left for its implementation – that the Jews had been “detained” or “enslaved” with the collaboration of the imperial army to prevent them from escaping the empire or liquidating their property, or saving their lives before the 13th of Adar. Thinking about Europe from 1940-1945, it is not difficult to imagine the “concentration camps” where thousands of Jews were concentrated, waiting for the day of their execution. The Yehudim could do nothing more than pray and wait for a miracle, which in the end, B”H happened. Rabbi Tsahalon also mentions an opinion that the enemies of the Jews had begun to kill the Jews as soon as they received the decree, interpreting the words “velo ya’abor” as authorizing them to kill Jews “until” the 13th of Adar. Hence the urgency of Mordecai and Esther.

HAMAN’S WILLING EXECUTIONERS

Who were the enemies of the Jews? Rabbi Abraham Saba (1440-1508) in his book Eshkol HaKofer suggests another theory: to kill the Jews, Haman recruited his own people, the Agagites, who were ethnic descendants of Amalek. These ancient “anti-Semites” believed, like the Nazis, that their existential mission was to destroy the Jewish people. The Agagites thus became the executing arm, like the SS, of their maximum representative: Haman. Rabbi Saba explains that once Haman was executed for treason, for hiding the details of his diabolical plan from the king, all those who collaborated with Haman would suffer the same fate as Haman: execution by order of the king, as they were considered accomplices in the crime of “treason against the state” committed by Haman. It is possible that the enemies of the Jews were “opportunists,” ordinary people who responded to Haman’s irresistible invitation to “kill a Jew and take his possessions.” During World War II, thousands of ordinary citizens of Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, etc. betrayed their Jewish neighbors to the Nazis to seize their homes and possessions. Once again, what happened in the Holocaust allows us to imagine with more realism what probably happened in Persia 2,500 years ago (for more information, read Daniel J Goldhagen: Hitler’s Willing Executioners).

On Purim, we celebrate that in the end, everything “turned upside down.” That is, not only were we miraculously saved from certain death, but we were also able to liberate ourselves from those who sought our destruction. The high number of oppressors who died – 75,800 – offers us an approximate idea of the magnitude of the Jewish genocide that, thanks to God, was avoided.

ESTHER 9:31. Shushan Purim, Jerusalem and Yom haAtzmaut

In the times of Esther and Mordekhai the Jews of Shushan asked King Ahashverosh (Xerxes, 486-465 sec) for an extra day to fight against their enemies. The King granted their request and the Jews of Shushan fought on the 13th of Adar and on the 14th of Adar and celebrated their victory on the 15th of Adar. In chapter 9 of Megillat Esther it is told that Mordechai wanted the Jews to celebrate 2 days in a row, as if it were a Yom Tob, on the 14th and 15th of Adar. This new “festival” was not easily accepted. As is the case today with the celebration of Yom haAtzmaut or Yom Yerushalayim or the commemoration of Yom haShoa, some Jews argued that we should only celebrate the festivities mentioned in the Tora.

For this reason, some resisted that Purim was declared a day of celebration and others, who accepted to celebrate Purim, refused to celebrate for two days in a row (verse 27). Why? Although the text of the Megillah does not make any direct reference to it, there are indications that there was some tension between the Jews of Shushan and the Yehudim who lived in the land of Israel. Where was the center of the Jews? Shushan or Yerushalayim? On the one hand, Shushan was the Empire’s Capital and everything that happened in the Empire was decided there and influenced all the Jews of the world. What happened in Purim was the best example! Jerusalem, on the other hand, was only a “small” province of the Persian Empire, and although the Second Bet haMiqdash was already functioning, the city was in ruins. But it is still the heart and soul of our nation.

To avoid these tensions and finding a consensus among all Jews, the Megillah tells (v. 29) that Queen Ester and Mordekhai send a second royal edict (et kol hatoqef), mentioning, very succinctly, an apparent agreement between the Jews of Shushan and the Jews of the rest of the empire, dibre shalom ve-emet, words of peace and truth. What was this agreement about?

Part of this agreement is mentioned in the text of the Megillah, the other part, in the Mishna.

DIBRE HATSOMOT

Verse 31 of chapter 9 says: “[And Esther wrote and sent the second royal edicts] to establish these days of Purim in their appointed times, as they had established for them Mordekhai the Yehudi and Queen Esther, as they had set for them and his descendants the times of fasting and lamentations. “

According to Rabbi Abraham Eben Ezra, “the fasts” mentioned in this verse do not refer to the fast of Esther. What it actually means is that finally all the Jews of the empire, including the Jews of Israel, agreed to celebrate Purim in the same way that they had already agreed to observe the fasts decreed a few years earlier, mentioned by the prophet Zechariah (8: 19): “Thus haShem said, God of hosts: The fast of the fourth month, the fast of the fifth, the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth month, will be converted for the house of Yehudah into joy and joy …”. These fasts, like Purim, had not been mentioned in the Torah but had been universally accepted. The Megillah says that ALL Jews finally accepted to celebrate Purim, and compared the accepting of observing this new Holiday with the observance of the public fasts.

SHUSHAN PURIM

The Megillah also mentions the celebration of the second day of Purim. But, as an alternative day, not as an additional day of celebration. The Jews who live in towns and villages, the vast majority of Jews, would celebrate Purim on the 14th of Adar. While Jews who live in “walled” cities, these are fortified cities (usually, capital cities) would celebrate Purim on the 15th of Adar

Now, the second Beth haMiqdash had already been built, albeit precariously, by Zerubabel, but the city of Jerusalem was still in ruins. Jerusalem, then, did not have a wall! This situation only changed about 25 or 30 years later, with the arrival Nehemia to Yerushalayim, who built the wall to protect the city. In order to keep the dignity and honor of Yerushalayim, and consider it a walled city, the Rabbis established that cities that were walled since in the days of Yehousha bin Nun would receive the status of “walled cities” and that would include, therefore, Jerusalem.

Since then, in Jerusalem, Purim is observed on the 15th of Adar. According to some opinions, the city of Tiberia in northern Israel is also considered a walled city. Tiberias has walls in some parts of the city and the Lake Kineret, a natural fortification of the city, is also considered part of the city “walls”.

ESTHER 3:8. The story of two edicts

Cyrus’ Edict (538 BCE)

The last book of or Tanakh (=the Hebrew Bible) is the book of Dibre haYamim, or chronicles. It ends with a very special declaration. The announcement of Cyrus, the first Persian emperor. It says in Dibre haYamim II, 36:22-23, the verses which close the Tanakh. “In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia… HaShem moved the spirit of King Cyrus to issue a proclamation throughout all his realm by word of mount and in writing. “Thus said King Cyrus of Persia: HaShem, God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and has charged me with building for Him a Sanctuary in Jerusalem, which is in Judea (=Israel). Any one of you, of all His people, may HaShem God be with him and let him ascend [to Israel. In the original Hebrew, veya’al, “he should make Aliya”]” .

During the wars and invasions of the Assyrians and Babylonians hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed . Finally, in 586 BCE Nebukhadnezzar, the Babylonian emperor, destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem and 70,000 Jewish captives (the survivors) were exiled to Babylonia.
In 538 BCE the Persians conquered Babylon and, in what is nothing short of a nes galui, a a public open miracle, HaShem moved the spirit of Cyrus, and he decides to invite the Jewish people to come to Israel and rebuild the city!
More than 42,000 Jews went back to Israel and began the construction of the second Bet haMiqdash.

Haman’s edict (ca. 474 BCE)

Haman was the Primer Minister and most trusted man of the fourth Persian emperor, Ahashverosh (Xerxes 486- 465 BCE). He planned to kill the Jews and to that effect he said to King Ahashverosh, ‘There is a certain people, dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom, who keep themselves separate. Their customs are different from those of all other people, and they do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will confiscate ten thousand talents of silver for the king’s royal treasury [the King agreed and]…on the thirteenth day of the first month of, on the 12th year of Ahashverosh, the royal scribes were summoned. They wrote out in the script of each province and in the language of each people all Haman’s orders…these documents were written in the name of King Ahashverosh himself and sealed with his own ring. Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with the order to exterminate, kill and destroy all the Jews, young and old, women and children, on a single day… a copy of the text of the edict was to be issued as law in every province, and made known to the people of every nationality, so they would be ready for that day.”. (Esther, Chapter 3). It is important to remember that the Persian Empire at the time of Ahashverosh was the largest Empire in human history. And all the Jews in the world, including those who came to Israel 64 years ago invited by Cyrus, lived in it. The decree of Haman would not have affected just the Jews of Shushan, the Persian empire’s capital, but the entire Jewish people. As we all know, Haman’s decree was reversed and the Jews were saved by HaShem, through Mordekhay and Queen Esther.

PURIM: The Holocaust Averted

WHAT HAPPENED ON PURIM?

Tomorrow is Rosh Chodesh — the beginning of the month of Adar. In a few more days we will celebrate the holiday of Purim, remembering once again that some 2500 years ago HaShem saved us from total extermination. Many times we Jews were threatened by a people or a nation; at one time or another, as if threats or persecutions of Jews were something to be expected, common and that does not deserve to be questioned. In any case, what characterizes “Purim” is that at that time, ALL THE JEWS OF THE WORLD lived under “the same roof”: the Persian empire. In 475 BCE, Haman, the prime minister of the Persian Empire and the right-hand man of the Persian Emperor Achashverosh (Xerxes), issued a royal decree ordering the murder of all Jews in the Empire, promising those who participate in the massacres, that they could keep all the properties and money of the Jews. It would have been, God forbid, the first Holocaust. I clarify that I never use the word “Holocaust” lightly: and I reiterate that unlike 1940, in the times of Achashverosh, ALL the Jews of the world lived in the same Empire! Purim, then, could have been חס ושלום the “final solution” every anti-Semite dreamed of. And as it can be seen on the map, the Persian empire (in green) included, among other countries, Egypt, Turkey and also Judea or Yerushalayim where some 50,000 Jews lived at that time. In fact, there were no Jews outside the Persian empire. In that sense, the Jewish people never were so close to being completely erased from the face of the planet.

It is important to realize this historical fact to understand and appreciate the magnitude of the miracle of Purim (פרסום הנס) .

WHEN ALL JEWS WERE PERSIAN

But when and how did we become citizens of the Persian empire?

After leaving Egypt, our ancestors lived for approximately 800 years as a sovereign people in the land of Israel. In the year 586 B.C.E the Babylonian emperor Nebukhadnetsar conquered Yerushalayim. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered or died of starvation or disease. The Bet haMiqdash –or Great Temple of Jerusalem– was destroyed and more than 50,000 Jews were taken as captives and taken to Babylon.

In the year 539 BCE, Cyrus (called Koresh in Hebrew) defeated and conquered the Babylonian empire and proclaimed himself the first emperor of the Persian empire.

In the year 538 B.C. An enormous miracle occurred: the Persian Emperor — inspired by God, as he himself admitted (see below)– invited the Jewish people to return to Yerushalayim and rebuild the Bet haMiqdash. This great event is recorded in the last words of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible (see below). Thousands of Jews arrived in Israel led by Zerubabel and in the year 516 BCE, after 70 years of exile, as Yirmiyahu had prophesied, the reconstruction of the second Bet haMiqdash began. Over time the Jewish population of Israel continued to grow and at the time of Purim, in the first half of the 5th century B.C.E. no fewer than 50,000 Jews lived in Israel.

A VOLUNTARY EXILE

But not all Jews resided then in Israel. As it is unfortunately the case today, although everyone “could” live in Israel, the majority of Jews continued to live outside of Israel. Why? Because the Persian empire –the largest empire that existed in the history of mankind– gave the Jews the extraordinary opportunity to establish an international trade network that was very successful. Jews spread to all corners of the Persian Empire, reaching what is now the area of India and China. Taking advantage of the fact that the trade routes were protected by the Persian imperial guard, they set up an international trade network dedicated to export and import between Indochina and the West. Through the famous “silk road”, also protected by imperial guards, they imported silk and gold from China and exported spices, dyes, jade, lapis lazuli, and glass.

THE FIRST BANKERS WERE JEWS

The fact that the Jews were, as Haman confirmed (M. Esther 3:8), “scattered among all the peoples of the Persian empire” facilitated this type of international trade, and allowed the Yehudim to establish a new industry, in which also excelled: credit. A document written (in Hebrew) by a Jew in today’s Turkey could be cashed in India, when presented to another Jew living there. And in this way, those who traded with the Jews, avoided the enormous risk of transporting money, silver or gold over hundreds or thousands of kilometers. There is also a fascinating archaeological evidence about a Jewish family of “bankers” of that time, the Murashu (for more information, see this article ).

All these data is important to understand

1. That Jews lived voluntarily scattered throughout all the confines of the Persian empire.

2. That as a result of the success of their trades, Jews did not intend to return to Israel for the time being. Although it should be noted that they supported Israel financially by permanently sending generous donations to the Bet haMiqdash and to the Yehudim who resided there.

3. That Haman’s edict was not going to affect only the Jews of one city or one province. On Purim, we celebrate that the elimination of ALL JEWS ALL THE WORLD was miraculously averted.

Rabbi Yosef Bitton

THE PROCLAMATION OF KORESH (CYRUS) FIRST PERSIAN EMPEROR

These are the last words of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible

DIBRE HAYAMIM 36: 22-23

22 “In the first year of the reign of Cyrus, king of Persia, HaShem inspired the heart of the king so that he promulgated a decree throughout his kingdom and thus the word of the Lord that had been announced by the prophet Jeremiah would be fulfilled. Both orally and in writing, the king decreed the following:

23 “This is what Cyrus king of Persia commands:

HaShem, the God of heaven, who has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and has commissioned me to build him a temple in the city of Jerusalem, which is in Yehudah. Therefore, whoever belongs to Yehudah, let him go [to Yerushalayim to build the Bet haMiqdash], and may [HaShem] his God be with him.”

–

Cross-dressing in Purim

לא יהיה כלי גבר על האשה ולא ילבש גבר שמלת אשה כי תועבת ה ‘ כל עושה אלה

Nowadays, many people tend to dress up on Purim. Obviously, there is no Mitsva or even Minhag to do so. It is just a popular practice that was accepted in many Jewish communities (although many Hakhamim like the Shela haQadosh rejected it completely!), especially with children. However, we must know, and inform others who do not know, about the prohibition of cross-dressing, or the use of clothing or items designed for the opposite sex, which is an explicit prohibition of Tora, (Deuteronomy 22: 5): “A woman should not wear men’s clothing, nor should a man wear women’s clothes …”. When a man dresses (or disguises) “to look like a woman”, wearing a skirt or a wig, or wearing makeup, etc., or when a woman is dressed in men’s clothes to look like a man, they are transgressing this Biblical commandment. This prohibition also applies during Purim. Rabbi Obadia Yosef z “l was very strict on this point and clarified that cross-dressing is forbidden even when one disguises as the other gender “just for fun”.

ESTHER 3:8. When All Jews Were Persian

The book of Esther (Megillat Esther) records one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the Jewish people. When Haman, the powerful prime minister of the Persian Empire of Ahashverosh (ca. 485 BCE), issued a royal decree to murder all the Jews of the Empire.

These events –what led Haman to plan the elimination of the Jewish people, the Providential way in which Queen Esther foiled his plans, and the happy ending of this story– are registered in Megillat Esther. Besides being a very accurate historical document, the Book of Esther could also be classified as a book of “musar” (= Jewish behavioral psychology) since it generously describes the mental and psychological profiles of its main characters, particularly the dysfunctional personality of the main villain of the Megilla, Haman.

But before discussing all these fascinating aspects of the Megilla we should have some idea of the historical background of the events of Purim.

After leaving Egypt, the Yehudim lived for about 800 years as a sovereign people in the land of Israel. In the year 586 BCE Nebukhadnezzar, the emperor of Babylon, conquered Jerusalem. Hundreds of thousands of Jews died of starvation, or diseases, or were killed. The Bet haMiqdash was destroyed and about 70,000 Jews were taken captives to Babylon.

In 539 BCE, Cyrus (in Hebrew “Koresh”) defeated and conquered the Babylonian Empire and proclaimed himself as the first emperor of the Persian empire.

In 538 BCE, a great miracle happened: the Persian Emperor invited the Jewish people to return to Israel and rebuild the Bet haMiqdash. This great event is recorded in the last words of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. (See below)

Thousands of Jews returned to Jerusalem led by Zerubabel and in 516 BCE, 70 years after the exile, as Yirmiyahu had prophesied, the construction of the second Bet haMiqdash began.

Over time the Jewish population of Israel continued to grow, and in the days of Purim, about the first half of the V century BCE no less than 50,000 Jews lived in Israel.

But not all Jews resided in Israel. As unfortunately happens today, although all Jews were able to live in Israel, most Jews still lived outside Israel.

We will try to understand now how and why so many Yehudim lived in that voluntary exile.

The Persian Empire was the largest empire that existed in the history of mankind (some say that the Mongol empire, in the 25 years of Genghis Khan ruling, surpassed in extension the Persian) and that gave the Jews the opportunity to establish an international trade network which proved to be very successful.

There are documents and evidences that Jews were scattered in all corners of the Persian Empire, which reached what today is the border between India and China. In Persia, they were legal citizens, free to trade. They took advantage of the fact that the terrestrial trade routes were protected by order of the Persian emperor and set up a network dedicated to the exchange trade between Indochina and the West. Jews traded spices and also used the incipient “Silk Road”, also protected by imperial guards. They imported silk and gold from China and exported to China spices, dyes, jade, lapis-lazuli, and glass. There is a book, unfortunately unknown but fascinating, which describes in detail all the commercial enterprises Jews were engaged at the time of the Persian empire. It’s called “The Eighth Day”, by Samuel Kurinsky.

The fact that Jews were, as confirmed by Haman (M. Esther 3:8) “scattered among all the nations of the Persian empire” greatly facilitated this type of international trade. And it also allowed the Yehudim to establish a new industry, in which they also excelled: the credit industry. A promissory note (probably written in Hebrew) by a Jew from Turkey, could be cashed in India, when presented to another Jew living there. There are important archaeological evidences about this, among them, the records of a Jewish family of “bankers” of that time, Murashu family (see here ).

All this data is important to understand two things:

1. That the Jews lived scattered throughout the Persian Empire. And that actually ALL the Yehudim of the world, including those in Israel, lived within the Persian Empire.

2. Given the success of their businesses, the Yehudim did not think at that moment to return to Israel. Although it is important to clarify that Jews permanently supported financially the Jews in Israel, sending generous donations to the Bet haMiqdash and to the Yehudim who resided there.

ESTHER 2:7 Mordekhai’s Moral Character

“אַשְׁרֵי שֹׁמְרֵי מִשְׁפָּט זה מרדכי

עֹשֵׂה צְדָקָה בְכָל עֵת שגדל יתומה בתוך ביתו

In one of his best books, “Intellectuals”, the famous historian Paul Johnson describes the ideas of great thinkers and philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau or Carl Marx. Johnson also writes about the private lives of these intellectuals and demonstrates their selfishness and cynicism. These great ideologues did not live according to the altruism they preached. Those values were for their writings, their readers and the masses. All these thinkers claimed that they sought the good of humanity, but in their private lives proved the opposite.

Mordekhai, one of the main protagonists of Megilat Ester, is one of the national heroes of Am Israel. He was a great political and religious leader in the city of Shushan, where the Jews had begun to assimilate. But what do we know about Mordekhai’s personal life?

On the one hand we know the prestigious ancestry of Mordechai. According to the text (peshat) of the Megilla, Mordechai was a descendant of the captives from Yerushalayim around 600 BCE in the time of King Yoyakhin. In this first exile, 15 years before the destruction of the Bet haMiqdash, the Babylonian King Nebukhadnetsar captured the aristocracy and the nobility of Yerushalayim, among them the great-grandfather of Mordekhai, Quish, of the tribe of Binyamin.

In his book Leqah Tob, Rabbi Yom Tob Tsahalon opens our eyes to a very important detail that teaches us something about the private life of Mordechai and his moral character. The Megilla tells us that Mordekhai adopted her niece Esther, an orphan from father and mother, and raised and cared for her as her own daughter.

Rabbi Tsahalon quotes the Midrash that describes the enormous merit of adopting a child. The Sages analyze a verse from Tehilim that says: אשרי שמרי משפט עשה צדקה בכל עת, “Blessed are those who … practice Tsedaqa every moment.” The Sages took this verse seriously and asked themselves: Is it possible to practice Tsedaqa literally “at all times”? And the answer is: YES. When a family adopts a child the adoptive parents do Tsedaqa (especially in the sense of Hesed) literally 24/7. In other words, adopting a child is the highest and “insurmountable” exercise of Hesed.

It is interesting that the Tora hints something similar in reference to Abraham Abinu. The text describing the early private life of Abraham Abinu is very poor in details. Except for one circumstantial but revealing point: Haran, the brother of Abram, dies leaving his son Lot orphaned. But then we see that וילך אתו לוט, Lot became part of Abraham’s family: Abraham adopted Lot as his own son!

Following this idea, it is as if all we need to know to find out the kind and altruistic character of Mordekhai is that he adopted Esther. And the same could be said of Abraham and Lot.

It is true that we human beings are complex creatures, and that it is not easy to know a person’s character for one of his or her acts. But there are exceptions. And I believe that for the Sages adopting a child is one of these exceptions.

I remember that several years ago (20?) we spent Pesah in a hotel located in Gush Qatif, which today unfortunately is part of Gaza …. The last day of the Hag, we sat next to a large family, with a particularity that could not go unnoticed. They had three children with Down syndrome. My wife and I were astonished at the extraordinary warmth these children enjoyed. First, they were the focus of attention of the whole family, parents, grandparents and older siblings. Everyone smiled at them and gave them lots of affection. In addition, each of these children was being attended by a personal assistant -one assistant per child! – who worked for this family. And then we found out the most extraordinary thing about this incredible family: these 3 children were adopted! Adopted by a family that already had its own children, some of them already married. This was a family that evidently had enough means, and they decided to “invest” their money, their time and their love not in ONE but in THREE children with special needs, and give them the best possible life. We never saw these family again, nor did we found out their names or where they lived. But what else do you need to find out to know that they were “human angels”?

Dedicated to the memory

of Selli bat Lulu ז”ל

ESTHER 2:5 The Last Jew of Shushan

איש יהודי היה בשושן הבירה

We are approaching Purim, the day we celebrate the miraculous salvation of our people in the days of the Persian Empire. We will celebrate Purim, BH, on Saturday, March 11th at night, and on Sunday the 12th.

The story of Purim is narrated in detail in a wonderful book called “Megilat Esther” which we read twice during Purim.

Each year I try to read a new book that explains the Megilla. Last year I studied, and shared with the readers, the book of Rabbi Moshe Almosnino, “Yede Moshe”. This year one of my students, R. Nathan Zabulani, brought me from Israel the new edition of the book “Leqah Tob”, written by Rabbi Yom Tob Tsahalon (see here). One of the two special features of this book is that it was published by its author when he was only 17 years old (sic!). Which means that he wrote this book as a prodigious young teenager.

Rabbi Tsahalon gives us a very generous account of Mordekhai’s personality when he explains the pasuq איש יהודי היה בשושן הבירה “There was a Jewish man in the capital city of Shushan” (pages 27-30 of the new edition).

In the following lines I will explain, in my own words, what the Rabbi says about Mordekhai.

1. Political leader. Firstly, Mordekhai was the representative of the Jewish people before King Ahashverosh, an extremely delicate position. Let me explain: the empire of Ahashverosh (486-465, before the common era) was the greatest in the history of mankind. It stretched from India to Greece, and from what is now southern Russia to Ethiopia. There were hundreds of nations in this gigantic empire. And every nation had its representative in the Kings Court . Mordechai represented all the Jews of the empire: hundreds of thousands (or more!). The Jews, as we shall see later, were not concentrated in one or two cities, but because they were involved in international trade, they were scattered throughout the Persian empire. Representing the Jewish people probably involved dealing with taxes, religious affairs and security issues, which could surely make the difference between life and death for the Jews. This is also the time when tens of thousands of Jews were returning to Israel to build the second Bet-haMiqdash. They suffered the harassment and the permanent political boycott of multiple enemies. “Representing the Jews” included the representation no less than 50,000 Jews who lived in the Holy Land, and were in the midst of rebuilding Yerushalayim and the Temple.

2. Religious leader. Mordekhai was also the religious leader of the Jews of Shushan, which was the capital of the Persian empire, as if it were today Washington D.C. Mordekhai had an official position in Sha’ar HaMelekh, the KIng’s Court, where all matters of state, political, financial, judicial, military, etc. were handled. (And where the constant conspiracies against the King were orchestrated). Mordechai “mingled” with the King’s advisers and with the entire political elite of Shushan. And all this while living a strict life of Jewish observance. Mordekhai was also the “darshan” “speaker” (we would say “Rabbi” today) of the Jewish community of Shushan (דורש טוב לעמו). He taught them Tora, try to keep them away from assimilation and bring them closer to HaShem.

3. The last Jew of Shushan. Rab Tsahalon suggests that unlike the Jews who lived in other cities of the Empire that were observant, those who lived in the capital were very assimilated. The Rabbi mentions the Midrash that says that the Jews who attended Ahashverosh’s banquet, to which all the citizens of Shushan were invited, did not observe Kashrut. And while they were not idolaters, that is, they did not formally convert to another religion, they were not opposed to the practice of it either. For example, if there was a procession of aboda zara (idolatry) and all the inhabitants of Shushan kneel in honor of an idol, the Jews of Shushan had no problem to participate actively of that event. Rabbi Tsahalon explains that the expression “איש יהודי היה “should be understood not as “There was a Jewish man … ” but as” There was only one Jewish man left, i.e., who had not assimilated, in the city of Shushan.” Had it not been for Mordekhai, assimilation would have ended with the cosmopolitan Jewish community of the capital of the Persian Empire.

(To be continued…)

Dedicated to the memory of

Yaakov Yashar

ben

Chacham Moshe ז”ל

ESTHER 5:13 Haman’s downfall

וכל זה איננו שוה לי

The villain of the Purim story is Haman ben Hamedata, a descendant of Amaleq. King Ahashverosh appointed Haman as his “Grand Vizier” (or prime minister) and, as explained yesterday, issued the order (Esther 3: 2) that all court officials should kneel before Haman. Everyone followed the king’s order, except for one man: Mordekhai. And when Haman learned that Mordekhai did not bow before him, he decided to eliminate all the people of Mordekhai: the Jewish nation.

Haman was evil, but he was not foolish. Actually, it seems that he was an evil genius. Take, for example, the way he managed to carry out his version of “the final solution”. First, he had to persuade Ahashverosh. To do this, he presented his plan as something that benefited the King, and not as his personal vendetta(Ch. 3: 8). Persuading the King was not very difficult. Among other things, because Haman presented a plan with “zero” operating costs. What’s more: in exchange for the executive order of the King, Haman offered a lot of money for the royal treasury (3: 9).

Now, how did Haman plan to recruit tens of thousands of soldiers to find and execute hundreds of thousands of Jews, scattered throughout the Persian Empire, from Turkey to China?

Haman devised an evil plan, which is briefly described in the Megilla with just two words: ושללם לבוז ( “and their belongings will be for plunder”). Haman’s decree said something like this: “On the 13th of Adar, every subject of the Persian empire will be allowed to kill Jews. Police would not oppose, and nobody will be prosecuted for this. And what’s more: whoever kills a Jew , can keep his or her money, property, valuables, etc. ” With his “genius” plan, there was no need to distract the army from its obligations, and there was no need to pay for costly transportation to take the Jews to concentration camps, or operating the gas chambers.

Our Rabbis explain that there was no shortage of volunteers. Many people, especially those who did not like Jews, were fighting against each other so that when the day comes, they would be the first to kill the Jews, and keeping their goods ….

If Haman had succeeded (and he was very close!) It would have been the end of our people ח”ו ….

In the end, as we all know, with the help of HaShem, Queen Esther and Mordekhai were able to disrupt the evil plan of Haman, who ended up paying his evil intentions with his own life.

The Megilla also provides us a glimpse into the psychological profile of Haman. In chapter 5, verse 13, when Hamas is at home with his wife and friends, after attending as a guest of honor at a special dinner with the King and Queen, and without suspecting that Esther is designing a plan to counter his, we witness an unusual dialogue, almost a monologue, in which Haman makes a kind of catharsis of his feelings. First, Haman acknowledged his immense power, his incredible wealth and honor, etc. What follows is really surprising. Haman, amazingly admits that (Esther 5:13): “And all this [my power, my wealth, my family] has no value for me, when I see Mordekhai the Jew,”sitting” on the gate of the royal court [ i.e., and he does not kneel before me].”

Haman, was probably one of the most powerful men in the history of mankind. Even his personal life was very successful. He had a wife who supported him and a lot of children. And yet, it took one person, Mordekhai, who did not bow down in front of him, to make his ego collapse, exposing the emotional fragility of this powerful man.

Haman suffered from a high dose of ga-ava, arrogance, at the level of megalomania: the obsession with the exercise of power, especially for dominance and control over others.

Haman’s endless arrogance led to his own downfall.