The Secret of the Downfall of Israel's Enemies: The Spiritual Depth of Purim - in Our Reality Today

00:00 Have you noticed something interesting in the Megillah, in the Purim story—something that, at first glance, makes no sense at all? Queen Esther is preparing to approach the king. She tells Mordechai, “I have not been summoned to come to the king for thirty days.” Then she tells him: All right, I’m going to risk my life. “And so I will come to the king, contrary to the law.” To prepare, she asks for various things to be done: “Gather all the Jews.” Finally, after three days, she stands face to face with the king. The Megillah tells us that Achashverosh sees Esther, and she finds favor in his eyes. He extends the scepter to her, she approaches, and King Achashverosh says, “What do you wish, Queen Esther? Even up to half the kingdom, it shall be done.” Everything is ready for you—just ask. And Esther says: Let’s have a wine banquet. “Let the king and Haman come today to the banquet I have prepared for her—prepared for him.” Fine. They arrive at the wine banquet, sit, drink, and talk. Again Esther finds favor in the king’s eyes, and he says, “What is your request, Queen Esther? I’m prepared to give you half the kingdom. Just ask.” And Esther tells him, “If it pleases the king, let the king and Haman come to the banquet I will prepare for them tomorrow, and tomorrow I will do as the king has said.” Another wine banquet, another day. Then, at the second wine banquet, what happens happens: Esther stands up and says what she had wanted to say all along: “An adversary and enemy—this wicked Haman!” “For we have been sold, I and my people,” and so on. The king becomes angry, takes Haman, and sends him to be hanged. And here’s a simple question: Queen Esther knows she has an opportunity, perhaps a one-time opportunity. As she herself told Mordechai, she doesn’t know whether the king will receive her. At long last, after thirty-three days, she has

02:03 the chance, and she is standing face to face with the king. She finds favor in his eyes, and the king tells her, “Ask.” Why doesn’t she immediately tell him, “For we have been sold, I and my people”? Why doesn’t she immediately say what she wanted to tell him—“An adversary and enemy”? No. She still draws him into a meal, a wine banquet. Suppose she wanted Haman to be there at the wine banquet. Well, already at the first wine banquet she finds favor in the king’s eyes, and he says, “Ask.” Why doesn’t she make use of that opportunity at the wine banquet? What was Queen Esther’s purpose in bringing him to a second wine banquet after the first? To understand this, let’s look at the story of the Megillah, and we’ll see that the Purim story is really our story. One of the wonderful things about the story of Megillas Esther is how much it is a living story of the present. Throughout the generations, Purim has been one of the holidays the Jewish people identify with most deeply. After all, Purim took place when the Jewish people were in exile, in the exile of Media and Persia, and the whole story revolves around exile. More than any other, it expresses the story of the Jewish people over two thousand years of exile. In every generation, we know that the Purim story is there—perhaps with different faces and different names. But every year there is a Haman, an Achashverosh, a Mordechai, and a Queen Esther, in different forms and guises, under different names. It is always there, alive and vibrant. Everyone knows the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching on the Mishnah: “Anyone who reads the Mishnah—who reads the Megillah backward has not fulfilled his obligation.” If a person reads the Megillah’s story as a story of the past, that’s not the story. That’s not, that’s not

04:08 Purim. According to halachah, “backward” means reading it out of order. The Megillah has a sequence. But the Baal Shem Tov says that one who reads the Megillah “backward” is someone who tells it as though it belongs to the past. The Megillah’s story is not about the past; it is a story of today. I think that in this recent period, over the past year, amid this latest war we find ourselves in, the Megillah’s story has become so alive, so relevant, so real. We simply feel ourselves inside the story. And if we take the time to reflect on parts of the Megillah and consider them in light of our present reality, we’ll find truly wonderful things in its story: strength, power, messages that are so, so, so important to our lives today. One of them is precisely what we see in this account of Queen Esther’s meeting with the king. One of the things we’ve seen in recent days, in this recent period, is something so difficult, so stark: the evil we’ve spoken about, the face of evil, how far darkness can go. Things that make a person think, “This can’t be possible.” We thought all this was behind us—that in today’s modern world, we couldn’t see such evil. The desire to destroy, to break, to kill; the lust for murder. Things we cannot even imagine. That is what we’ve been seeing lately. And especially that pride, the arrogance we see among the terrorists. It is precisely this that the story of Megillas Esther addresses, giving us a message of good news. In the Megillah, Haman is a symbol of evil. As we said, Haman is a name that keeps coming back with different faces, in different guises—in the Haman of our generation,

06:44 in the Haman, in the evil we see in the world today, directed especially against the Jewish people. So what do we see in Megillas Esther? “King Achashverosh elevated Haman.” From moment to moment, day to day, period to period, Haman’s pride keeps growing. He rises. Haman was a contemptible man. In the language of the Midrash, “contemptible, the son of one contemptible.” On the words “he considered it contemptible,” the Midrash says, “contemptible, the son of one contemptible.” Eisav was the first of whom the Torah says “he despised”—in Parshas Toldos, regarding the birthright—and of Haman it says “he considered it contemptible.” The Midrash calls him “contemptible, the son of one contemptible.” As the Midrashim relate, he was a contemptible man. But he rose, and his arrogance and pride swelled. The closer he came to the king, the more his pride grew—and that itself became the cause of his downfall. When Haman reached the very peak of his pride, that was when he fell. There is a verse in the Prophets: “Though you soar like an eagle.” It is a verse in which Hakadosh Boruch Hu says—through the prophet Ovadiah, who says to Edom—“Thus says Hashem to Edom: Though you soar like an eagle, and though you set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down, declares Hashem.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu allows the kelipah, evil, darkness, the sitra achra, to raise itself up, to soar, to exalt itself: “Though you soar like an eagle,” “set your nest among the stars.” And precisely when it reaches the height of its pride, the height of its arrogance, that is where it falls. And that is really what happened here with Haman. Queen Esther invites King Achashverosh to a meal, a wine banquet. Her purpose is specifically to bring Haman to the height of his arrogance, as we see in the story itself. When Queen Esther invites Haman to the banquet—“Let the king and Haman come today to the banquet I have prepared for them,” “that I have prepared for him”—we see Haman reach the height of his pride. The Megillah tells us what happened after the wine banquet. He returns home happy and in good spirits, and tells his wife and all his advisers

09:29 To Zeresh his wife, all that he had—all the wonderful things he had: how the king had elevated him and made him great, and the extent of his wealth. His pride had reached the skies. And here, when we look closely, we’ll see some remarkable things in this story. You know, Hashem’s Name does not appear openly in the Megillah. There are explanations for that. Throughout the Megillah, His Name does not appear openly, but there are many acrostics. If you read the Megillah carefully, you can find many allusions to Hashem’s holy Names in the first letters and last letters of words. One of them is in this verse, when Esther invites them to the feast: “Let the king and Haman come today.” The first letters spell Hashem’s four-letter Name. Wow. Those words, “Let the king and Haman come today,” contain the first letters of Hashem’s Name. The Midrash says—what was... The Zohar says: What was happening here? What did Queen Esther want to do? She wanted to bring Haman to the height of his pride and arrogance, because precisely there he would reach his lowest point, and from there Hashem would bring him down. The Zohar says that when the lion and lioness are together—the lioness is an analogy—woe to anyone who passes between them. Woe to anyone who tries to come between the king, between the lion and lioness. The analogy refers to Knesses Yisroel, the Jewish people, and Hashem. Hashem is the lion. “The lion has roared; who will not fear?” refers to Hashem. The lioness is Knesses Yisroel, the “woman of valor.” The Jewish people and Hashem are the lion and lioness. When Queen Esther invited Haman and said, “Let the king and Haman come today,” she placed Haman between the lion and lioness. Queen Esther represents all of Knesses Yisroel. According to Kabbalah, according to Chassidus,

11:53 when we look at Queen Esther, she is not simply an individual woman there. Queen Esther represents Knesses Yisroel. The Gemara asks: Why was she called Esther? Where is there an allusion to Esther in the Torah? “And I will surely hide My face on that day.” Esther represents Knesses Yisroel at times when Hashem’s face is hidden. There are times of concealment. Esther is—she is Knesses Yisroel, but Knesses Yisroel in exile. Yet Knesses Yisroel is always the “woman of valor”; she is always Hashem’s wife. Esther comes and says, Let’s bring Haman to the feast. “Let the king and Haman come today.” Haman is in the middle, between “the king” and “today,” between the king and Queen Esther, and she says, Let’s put Haman in the middle. Woe to anyone who comes between the king and queen. When evil, darkness, the enemies of the Jewish people, try to come between the king and queen and separate them, that is where their existence comes to an end. That is what Queen Esther did at the first feast. But when Esther saw how things stood at that feast, she realized Haman had not yet reached the height of his pride, so she added something. Look at the difference between the first feast and the second. At the first feast she places Haman between the king and queen. What happens at the second feast? Something changes. At the first, she says, “Let the king and Haman come today to the feast that I shall prepare for him”—singular, “for him,” for the king. At the second feast she says, “Let the king and Haman come to the feast that I shall prepare for them”—“for them,” for both of them together. What did she add? She put Haman in the same place as the king. Wow. When the king hears that, he cannot bear it anymore. When he hears that Haman has been placed on the same level, in the same position, that

14:21 his arrogant pride has gone so far that Haman and the king are already being treated as though they occupy the same place, the same position—the king takes him and brings him down with full force. That is where Haman meets his end. This is what happened on that first Purim, and it is what we see throughout the history of the Jewish people, in every generation, when the enemies of the Jewish people raise their heads. And this is where the whole matter begins. Hashem created the world, created the Jewish people, and created the nations of the world. As Rashi tells us at the beginning of the Torah, regarding the whole of creation: “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.” Rashi tells us that “Bereishis” means “for the sake of two things called reishis”: for the sake of the Torah and for the sake of the Jewish people. The whole of creation was created so that the Jewish people could observe Torah and mitzvos. The entire purpose of the nations of the world is to help a Jew fulfill his purpose. That is why all the nations, the whole world, and all of creation were brought into being. Everything was created for one purpose alone: for the Torah and for the Jewish people. When the nations know this truth, they too receive all that flows to them, all their abundance. As we know, Hashem provides for the whole world in the merit and through the power of the Jewish people. “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth”; “And these are the names of the children of Israel”; “And these are the ordinances.” The word “these” appears three times. The Midrash asks: In whose merit does each of these stand? The world—“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth”—stands in the merit of “And these are the names of the children of Israel,” in the merit of the Jewish people. And the Jewish people stand in the merit of “And these are the ordinances,” in the merit of the Torah. The Torah, the Jewish people, and the world form one whole. When the world recognizes this, it receives a wonderful flow of blessing; from there all abundance reaches all

16:40 the nations of the world. But when the nations rebel against this and refuse to accept it, and then begin to interfere with the Jewish people, that is where their downfall begins. Then come the stages we spoke about. Queen Esther is Knesses Yisroel. Hashem’s love for Knesses Yisroel remains in full force. Sometimes that love appears to be asleep. “I sleep in exile,” says the Zohar. That was the situation in the Purim story. The Jewish people had fallen asleep with regard to the mitzvos; a state of spiritual sleep had come over them, and that brought about, so to speak, sleep Above. Hashem makes Himself appear asleep when the Jewish people are asleep, says the Midrash—but He only makes Himself appear asleep. Hashem never sleeps. The Midrash says Hashem is like a deer. “My beloved is like a deer or a young stag,” says King Shlomo in Shir Hashirim. Hashem, the husband of Knesses Yisroel, the king, is like a deer. What does that mean? The Midrash says that even when a deer sleeps, it keeps one eye open. In other words, even during exile, when “I will surely hide My face on that day” and His face is concealed, Hashem is with us. One eye remains open: His bond with Knesses Yisroel is always whole. Even when His face seems hidden, one eye is open and one eye is closed. Hashem’s eye is watching over us, protecting us. One sheep among seventy wolves, and it survives. How great is the Shepherd who guards that sheep at all times, at every moment, in every situation. But the moment the Jewish people awaken from sleep—and that is what happened in the Purim story—“Go, gather all the Jews”: Mordechai succeeds in awakening the soul of the Jewish people, awakening their faith, awakening in them the

18:47 The Jew. Anyone who rejects idol worship and acknowledges Hakadosh Boruch Hu is called a Yehudi, a Jew. Mordechai awakens the Jew within the Jewish people, the power of self-sacrifice, and then an awakening takes place Above. Queen Esther is then able to approach the king, and the king is stirred with love for the Jewish people. And when Haman tries to come between the king and queen, woe to him. That is really the story of the Megillah, and it is the story unfolding today. Now, as we witness the situation and see how the pride, wickedness and arrogance of evil are rising, trying to come between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people—to interfere, to speak arrogantly and with contempt—when Haman comes between the king and queen, between the beloved and his beloved, woe to him. That is where his downfall begins. And when they raise him to the very top, when it is as though they want to place the king and Haman, holiness and kelipah, on the same level, that is when “Though you soar high like an eagle, from there I will bring you down, says Hashem.” “Hashem humbles the proud.” That is when his fall comes. So we are confident. What we have been seeing, especially in recent days, what is happening in the world—this itself is a source of encouragement and comfort for our people, for each and every one of us. When we see this, we can be confident that the great salvation we are all hoping and waiting for is on its way. What can we learn from this in our everyday lives? This is the story of Purim, and it is our story, something we can see with our own eyes. With Hashem’s help, we will see it this year, this Purim; we will all merit to rejoice and witness the downfall of the Haman of our generation. But there is also a very important point we need to learn from this in our service of Hashem. The story of Purim also tells us how we should conduct ourselves. Chassidus explains

21:15 that when we speak about Haman, there is also a spiritual Haman within the soul. “Cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai.” The Rebbe explains: Mordechai represents holiness. Mordechai represents the life of holiness within a Jew—the mitzvos, Torah, prayer. That is Mordechai. Haman represents physicality, materialism, the life of this world. A Jew certainly needs to live here in this physical world, but it has to be very, very clear what is holiness and what is kelipah. What are we doing here in this world? What is our purpose? We need to know exactly where everything belongs. Blessed is Haman and—blessed is Mordechai and cursed is Haman. Material things, for their own sake, should be distasteful to us. We should use them only to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The whole purpose of our being here in this world, as we said, is to make the world a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A Jew engages with the material world: he makes money, earns a living, works, eats, sleeps. Everything we do in this physical world is meant to have one purpose alone: to elevate the world and make it a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But anything physical that does not accord with the Shulchan Aruch, with halachah, with the Divine will—non-kosher food, improper conduct, things the Torah tells us not to do—that is “cursed is Haman.” It is completely out of the question. When we begin to bring Haman into our home, to bring in the wrong kind of materialism, to bring these things into our lives—that is where the story of Purim comes in. When Haman is elevated, when he is given a place and brought in, he grows ever prouder and rises higher and higher. That is where the story of Purim comes in. And the moment a Jew awakens, the moment he stirs within himself the power of self-sacrifice and decides to devote himself to Hakadosh Boruch Hu to the point of ad delo yada—beyond knowing. In other words,

23:40 he rises to such a level of connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu that he declares with absolute conviction: it is not only when I understand, when things are good for me and everything is explained and makes sense, that Haman is cursed and Mordechai is blessed. Even beyond knowing, he rises above reason, reaches a place beyond reason and gives himself over completely to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. I am a Jew, and I am connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu in every situation. We see this in the most powerful way. Jews who were distant from Torah and mitzvos, who lived materialistic lives not guided by Torah and mitzvos—their souls have been awakening lately in a way we have never seen before. Today we see an extraordinary awakening among the Jewish people toward Hakadosh Boruch Hu, toward faith, Torah and mitzvos. And then comes the stage where we need to pay attention and know that Mordechai is Mordechai and Haman is Haman. When Haman is brought between the king and queen, that is where his downfall comes. We need to be clear: to know who we are, to know our strength, to know that we are the Jewish people and are connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and that there is no place for anything foreign, for things Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not want. When we do this, the story of Purim unfolds: Haman falls, and we reach the great miracle when “the Jews had light and joy, gladness and honor.” So may it be for us. Let us resolve to awaken ourselves, to awaken another Jew, to awaken within the Jewish people their strength, their resolve, the pride of Yaakov that will neither bow nor prostrate itself. That is a true Jew: a Jew who is not afraid of the world, not afraid of the nations, does not bow to the nations and does not try to lump everyone together. He knows very clearly the purpose of creation and why we are here in this world. And when we rise with

25:55 the pride of Yaakov, which will neither bow nor prostrate itself before Haman, then we, too, witness the great miracle we are all waiting for: the downfall of the Haman of our generation, his total and final downfall. Then we will see the “reversal, so that the Jews gained the upper hand over those who hated them.” This year, on Purim, may we all merit to celebrate the great Purim of the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu, for which we all wait so eagerly. May each and every one of us have a happy Purim and true joy throughout the entire year.