Why Will They Never Defeat Us? The Secret of the Eternal Strength of the Jewish People

00:00 These days we are celebrating Purim. This year, we are celebrating Purim twice over: we are also celebrating Purim in the reality of our own times. In fact, that is true every year, because Purim is not just a story from the past. Purim is an eternal story. “Those days are remembered and observed,” as the Megillah says. And there is the Chassidic interpretation that by remembering those days, we bring them about—we actually experience them anew. There is also the well-known teaching of the Baal Shem Tov about the law that the Megillah may not be read backward. In its plain sense, that means you may not read it in reverse order. But the Baal Shem Tov says that “backward” means reading it as a story that happened in the past, something from long ago. “One who reads the Megillah backward has not fulfilled his obligation.” If a person reads the Megillah as a story that happened in Persia 2,500 years ago, he has not fulfilled the mitzvah of reading the Megillah. Because today, in our own times, in every generation, there is a Haman and an Achashverosh, and there are Mordechai and Esther. The story of Purim is the story of the Jewish people throughout the generations. This year, it stands vividly before our eyes. We see the downfall of the enemy, the Haman the Agagite of our generation, in such a powerful way. We see the miracles and wonders. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help us continue to see this through to the end, and may we reach the long-awaited conclusion we are all waiting for: “It was reversed, so that the Jews ruled over those who hated them,” completely and absolutely, with the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu. So today, today we are going to talk about an extremely important point we can learn from the stories, from what Tanach tells us—both from the story of the Megillah and from the weekly parsha, Parshas Ki Sisa—and it also connects with

02:10 Parshas Parah Adumah, which we will read this Shabbos. It is a very interesting connection that the Rebbe spoke about at a Purim farbrengen, also discussing Parshas Ki Sisa and Parshas Parah, sixty years ago. Today we will go over it and see how wonderfully relevant these ideas are to our times. Let us begin with the words of the Midrash, a wonderful Midrash on Megillas Esther. The Megillah says, “It was contemptible in his eyes to lay hands on Mordechai alone.” The verse tells us that when Haman saw Mordechai’s behavior—that he would not kneel or bow down—“Haman was filled with rage against Mordechai.” He was angry with Mordechai. How could Mordechai fail to give Haman the honor he deserved? He was angry with him, and so on, until he realized that this was not just about Mordechai. Mordechai symbolized, and in fact represented, an entire people, “for they had told him Mordechai’s people.” This behavior was not peculiar to one individual Mordechai; it expressed the outlook of the Jewish people. A Jew will not kneel or bow down. In his very essence, a Jew acknowledges Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “Modeh ani lefanecha”—“I give thanks before You”—is the essence of a Jew. He believes in and acknowledges Hashem, and rejects idolatry. Mordechai simply was not afraid to show this openly, to reveal it and live that way visibly in everyday life. But when Haman grasped the secret—that this was true of all of Mordechai’s people—he wanted to destroy all the Jews. So the Midrash gives a parable about Haman the wicked, to help us understand what exactly was going through his mind and understand the story. What is happening here? The Midrash gives a parable of a bird standing at the edge of a river. It builds its nest on the riverbank, by the water, and then the waves come. One day,

04:21 the waves wash away the bird’s nest. It gets angry: “They washed away my nest!” So it decides to turn the water into dry land. It is going to dry up that sea, that river. It stands there and begins using its beak to take drops out of the water and carry them onto dry land. It has decided to turn the sea into dry land. Another bird passes by, the Midrash says, stops beside this bird and says to it, “You fool. I tried to do that too. It did not happen, and it never will. You cannot dry it up. In the end, you will be gone and the sea will remain.” The Midrash says that Hakadosh Boruch Hu says the same thing to Haman the wicked. Haman the wicked wanted to dry up the Jewish people—to “destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to him, “You want to dry them up? You want to ruin, G-d forbid, and destroy the Jewish people? You fool. I, so to speak—Hakadosh Boruch Hu—also said I would destroy them, G-d forbid.” And then the Midrash cites the verse about the sin of the Golden Calf. Here is the wonderful connection between the weekly parsha and Purim. We know it is no coincidence when the weekly parsha coincides with a festival. It is well known, and already written in the early sources, that there is an inner connection between the weekly parsha and the festivals and special days. The Midrash says something remarkable: Hakadosh Boruch Hu said to Haman the wicked, “I, too, tried to destroy the Jewish people.” In Parshas Ki Sisa, when the Jewish people sinned with the Golden Calf, committing the terrible sin of idolatry, Hakadosh Boruch Hu told Moshe Rabbeinu that He was going to destroy them: “Leave Me be, and I will destroy them.” It is a verse in the parsha. “And yet I could not, because Moshe Rabbeinu stood in the breach, prayed for them, and succeeded in turning the attribute of judgment into the attribute of mercy.” The Midrash cites the

06:31 verse in Tehillim: “He said He would destroy them, had Moshe not stood in the breach.” Moshe Rabbeinu stood in the breach and prayed for the Jewish people, and he succeeded in changing the situation to one of mercy. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu said, “I have forgiven, as you have said.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to Haman, “Fool, if I could not bring that about, do you think you will succeed? By your life, I swear,” says Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “that in the end your head will be raised for the gallows, while their heads will be destined for life—true life, eternal life.” And that is the story of Megillas Esther. Ah, what a wonderful Midrash! Of course, in our own times, when we look around and see the story of the nations of the world—how in every generation they rise against us to destroy us, talking and talking, saying and declaring that they are going, G-d forbid, to destroy the Jews—Hakadosh Boruch Hu shows them time and again how, in the end, the thief ends up on the gallows, their heads raised for hanging. “For the Jews there was light and joy, gladness and honor”—so may it be for us. But let us try to understand. That is the Midrash. A beautiful Midrash, a wonderful Midrash. The question is: What is the deeper meaning of the Midrash’s story? What is it coming to tell us? What is the explanation here? What is the argument between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Haman the wicked? What does it mean that a friend comes along and says to him, “Don’t do it. Don’t be a fool”? Who is whose friend here? In the parable, there are two birds. There is the bird that wants to dry up the sea, and there is the bird that tells it, “Don’t try to dry it up. Don’t be a fool, because I was left with no food.” But who is the friend here? In the parable, we are talking about Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Haman the wicked. So how can we describe Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Haman the wicked with an example about a friend? What is the connection between the story of the sin of the Golden Calf and the story of Haman the wicked? What does it mean that he wanted to dry up the river, and he

08:46 He told him: That won’t help you. And here we come to the deeper point. When we understand what is happening here, it will open our eyes to understand the situation today as well—to see the virtues of the Jewish people, how precious they are, and how no one can, G-d forbid, do anything bad to a Jew. What is the special strength of the Jewish people? This brings us back to the Purim story and its deeper meaning. What happened in the Purim story? That, in turn, will take us back to the story of the sin of the Golden Calf, where something similar happened. Then we’ll understand the connection between the two stories in a wonderful way. So let’s begin with the first story. The Jewish people received the Torah at Matan Torah. It was a historic moment. The Jewish people had left Egypt. Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose the Jewish people. “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”; “You shall be My treasured people among all the nations,” Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells the Jewish people at the beginning of the month of Sivan. A few weeks after they left Egypt, they are the chosen people, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu comes to give them the Torah, with the wondrous Divine revelation of Matan Torah. The Jewish people say, “We will do and we will hear,” and become Hashem’s people, the chosen people. Wonderful. Then, forty days later, this same people fails in the gravest sin—going from one extreme to the other. “These are your gods, O Israel”: they find themselves a calf and turn it into an idol. The most serious thing imaginable, a betrayal of their loyalty in the most terrible way. Just now, forty days earlier, you received the Torah. You saw the only historic Divine revelation the world had ever known, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself was revealed and all the people saw the sounds, the flames, and heard the sound of the shofar. It was a face-to-face Divine revelation. And just forty days later, the people fail in a most

10:54 serious sin. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: I don’t need a people like this. I want to wipe them off the face of the earth, rachmana litzlan. Moshe Rabbeinu succeeds in turning the situation around. What is Moshe Rabbeinu’s secret? Moshe Rabbeinu stands and prays, and says, “This people of Yours.” He reveals to Hakadosh Boruch Hu that, deep down, a Jew does not want to be separated from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Moshe Rabbeinu reveals the depths of the Jewish people and, through his words, succeeds in bringing out a Jew’s inner essence, turning darkness into light and bitterness into sweetness. The Midrash says: This is precisely what Moshe Rabbeinu does throughout the exchange between him and Hakadosh Boruch Hu in Parshas Ki Sisa. Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Moshe Rabbeinu, “Go down, for your people have become corrupt.” Go down quickly, because your people have become corrupt. Moshe Rabbeinu says: Hakadosh Boruch Hu, they’re Your people, not Your people? They’re my people, not Yours? They belong to me and not to You? Surely they are Yours—“this people of Yours.” They are Yours just as I am. This is not merely wordplay about “Your people” or “my people.” There is something much deeper here. Moshe Rabbeinu knew that such foolishness does not truly belong to a Jew. Moshe Rabbeinu understood the depths of the Jewish people. A Jew has no real connection to any of this. It came from pressure from their surroundings, from society, from the mixed multitude who came and persuaded them. Rashi gives the example of the maidservants’ children who misbehaved, leading people to think the queen had committed those wrongs too, when in fact they had nothing to do with her. They confused her and swept her into the turmoil, but she herself remained pure and clean. At the sin of the Golden Calf, Moshe Rabbeinu’s prayer did more than simply ask for forgiveness. He stirred the depths of the Jew, turning bitterness into sweetness. The Midrash says: “Moshe entreated Hashem his G-d.” The verse speaking of

13:17 Moshe’s prayer says, “Moshe entreated.” How do we translate the word “entreated”? There are several interpretations. One of them, says the Midrash, relates it to sweetness. It cites the Aramaic word chilui, which means to sweeten. “Moshe entreated”: Moshe Rabbeinu sweetened the bitterness. Here, too, the Midrash says something wonderful. It describes another exchange between Hakadosh Boruch Hu and Moshe, one not stated explicitly in the Torah. It goes like this: When the Jewish people left Egypt and crossed the Sea, the story of the bitter waters followed. We all remember it. In Parshas Beshalach, there was the story of the waters of Marah, the bitter waters. Moshe Rabbeinu sees a stream, a well, or a river of bitter water that cannot be drunk, and the people cannot drink from it. The Midrash says that Moshe Rabbeinu was thinking: Why is there a river that no one can benefit from? What is its purpose? What good is it? What is it doing here? Why is it needed? Hakadosh Boruch Hu said to Moshe: Don’t say that. Don’t think that way. You are not thinking correctly. After all, I am the Creator. Do you doubt that nothing in the world exists for no purpose? Do you doubt that these waters are here for a reason? No. You are mistaken. Of course they have meaning. Don’t ask why. Just pray and ask that the bitter waters become sweet. And that is what the verse relates in the story of Marah: “Hashem showed him a tree.” The Midrash says that “showed him” means He taught him. Hakadosh Boruch Hu taught Moshe and told him: Moshe, remember, when you face bitterness, don’t start asking why. Ask that the bitterness be turned to sweetness. “Hashem showed him a tree, and the waters became sweet.” The word for “tree” also suggests the word for “advice”: He gave Moshe Rabbeinu advice to pray that bitterness become sweetness.

15:27 The Midrash says that Moshe Rabbeinu listened, learned, and took it to heart. This happened right after the splitting of the Sea, about a week or ten days after the Exodus from Egypt. A few weeks later, when the sin of the Golden Calf occurred and Hakadosh Boruch Hu told Moshe, “Your people have become corrupt, and I am going to wipe them off the face of the earth,” rachmana litzlan—Hakadosh Boruch Hu was angry with the Jewish people and wanted to destroy them—Moshe Rabbeinu responded with “Moshe entreated,” understood as an expression of sweetness, of honey, of chilui. He said to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: Remember when we faced the bitter waters, and You told me to turn bitterness into sweetness? Now is the time. I ask You to turn the bitterness of the Jewish people into sweetness. Reveal their beauty; reveal the glory, the sweetness, the honey within all this. And that is how the story continued: it was revealed that these things did not truly belong to the Jews. Then came atonement and forgiveness, and Yom Kippur. That, in essence, is the whole story of the sin of the Golden Calf. It revealed that a Jew is not defined by his sin, his wrongdoing, his transgression. Those are external things—the yetzer hara, a bad environment, things around him that can assail him. But he himself—a Jew is always a Jew. A Jew always wants to be connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A Jew is a human being. And that is essentially the story of the Megillah. The story of the Megillah is exactly the same story, the same thing with Mordechai. The Jewish people have been in the Babylonian exile for seventy years. By their reckoning, it was seventy years, as the Midrashim describe how they counted those seventy years. They are living through very difficult times, with much physical and spiritual suffering, and little by little they begin to mix in, to become part of the lives of the non-Jews. They enjoy the feast of that wicked man, even though the Midrash says it was a kosher feast and there were no problems

17:43 of kashrus in the food, according to each person’s wishes, but they enjoy it. They begin to enjoy the non-Jew, to enjoy the exile, to enjoy the fact that the non-Jew gives them a place and regards them as important. They begin to attach importance to the world, to nature, to the non-Jew, to the nations of the world. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to them: Fine, if that’s what you want, enjoy it. Rely on the non-Jew. And then the whole upheaval of Haman’s decree begins: he comes to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews. But what happens? Precisely there, the beauty of the Jewish people is revealed. “There is one people.” Even Haman knew the truth. The Jewish people don’t belong to any of that rubbish. The Jewish people don’t belong to any of that negative behavior. In their essence, the Jewish people are one people. Even now, they are one people, though scattered and dispersed among the nations. The behavior of the nations influences them, but that isn’t who they are; it isn’t their essence. And look: as soon as the decree came, as soon as something frightened the Jewish people and put them under pressure, at that very moment it was, “Go, gather all the Jews.” Suddenly it became clear that a Jew is a Jew. And as the Alter Rebbe repeatedly says in his maamarim, throughout that entire year it never even entered their minds to entertain a thought of turning away, G-d forbid. Not a single Jew thought for a moment of leaving their Judaism, of leaving their faith, even though they faced the hardest trial in history. They were under the rule of the nations, who at that time controlled the entire Jewish people, with no way to escape. Achashverosh ruled the whole region, 127 provinces, and all the Jews were there. There was nowhere to run. The decree seemed like the worst thing imaginable, and yet not a single Jew entertained such a thought. That was when a Jew’s inner essence was revealed. So it turns out that Purim

19:50 and Parshas Ki Sisa have a very deep connection. It is precisely here that the depth of a Jew is revealed, and that is the meaning of the analogy the Midrash gives. Haman the wicked sees the Jewish people; he sees a sea. The sea symbolizes Divine light—the sea of wisdom, the sea of the waters of knowledge. A Jew is enveloped in the wisdom of the Torah. A Jew is enveloped in Divine wisdom. Jews with the Torah are like fish in the sea. As in the well-known story of Rabbi Akiva, who said that a Jew cannot separate himself from the Torah, because the Torah is our life, just as water is life for fish. The sea symbolizes a Jew’s inner bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, like fish within the sea. Haman the wicked says: I’m going to dry up the sea. He wants to distance the Jewish people from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He wants to take away that vitality, that holiness, that attachment to Divine light. He wants to turn them into dry land. So Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to Haman: The sin of the golden calf already made this clear. At the time, I too thought the Jewish people had sunk so low in their behavior that I wanted to destroy them. But then it became clear that the Jewish people live on. The truth became clear. Moshe Rabbeinu was able to turn bitterness into sweetness, to reveal that a Jew never truly wants to be far from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is what Moshe Rabbeinu accomplished then, and what Mordechai the Jew—who was a spark of Moshe Rabbeinu—accomplished as well. The Midrash says, “Mordechai in his generation was like Moshe in his generation.” It says in the sefarim that “ish Yehudi” has the same gematria as Mordechai, and that “ish Yehudi” has the same gematria as Moshe. In other words, there is a connection between Mordechai and Moshe Rabbeinu. Just as Moshe Rabbeinu succeeds in awakening the Jewish spark within the Jewish people, revealing who and what a Jew is, and through this brings about Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s forgiveness of the Jewish people for that first sin,

22:00 the same thing happens now. It becomes clear that a Jew never truly wants to be far away. A Jew never really relies on Achashverosh. That was a moment of weakness. “They only acted so outwardly,” the Gemara says. All that behavior of the Jewish people was only external. Deep down, a Jew always wants to be attached to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And the moment that inner self is revealed, it becomes clear that a Jew cannot be touched. That is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to Haman. And that is why, in this passage, the Midrash calls him “his friend.” There is a very, very deep secret here. We won’t go into it now, but Chassidus explains that it has to do with his source, the lofty source he has. Chassidus speaks of the world of Tohu, which is the source of the entire existence of the sitra achra and kelipah. This is described as a kind of “friend”: as it were, he wants to connect to holiness. And He says to him: Yes. So this is the story of Hakadosh Boruch Hu speaking to Haman the wicked. Haman has a very lofty source, a source in the world of Tohu, and from there he can see things differently and thinks he can overpower the Jewish people. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to him: Just as I could not overpower the Jewish people at the time of the sin of the golden calf, because it was revealed that a Jew is always sweet—his sweetness comes to light—so you will be hanged on the tree, and they will go on to life. Here, too, there will be the great miracle of “it was reversed, so that the Jews themselves ruled over those who hated them.” And this is the eternal message we take both from the weekly parsha, Parshas Ki Sisa, and from the story of Purim: the enduring strength of the Jewish people, their beauty, their sweetness, their essence. And we see it when a Jew is stirred to teshuvah, when the entire Jewish people awaken, and when the

23:59 eternal bond of a Jew’s faith in Hakadosh Boruch Hu comes to light. This is what brings Hakadosh Boruch Hu to turn darkness into light and bitterness into sweetness, so that “the Jews had light and joy and gladness and honor.” May it be so for us. And that is the story of these days we are passing through on Purim as we prepare for Pesach. May we merit that Divine light shine upon each and every Jew, and may we merit to pass from the Geulah of Purim to the Geulah of Pesach, to the eternal, complete Geulah of the entire Jewish people and the whole world. And may we soon merit that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.”