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Friday Night
WHEN ADAR COMES in,
increase your joy, or at least that is what the Gemora tells us we should do. But as we
all know, you can’t command an emotion. You can’t tell someone to love
something they don’t, or hate something they don’t hate. The most you can
do is tell a person to do something that will lead to the desired emotion,
such as love, or hate as in the case with Amalek.
It’s Adar, so do
happy things. For example, give terumah.
Everyone knows that when you give tzedakah
it makes you happy, and fortunately for people who want to be happy, there
are literally thousands of worthy causes to which you can give your terumah. Don’t you
feel happier already just knowing that?
So then why is giving
tzedakah so
hard to do? Is it in the giving itself? Is it the people who come
collecting? This is how Rebi Alexandri used to put it upon completing his
prayer:
Master of the
Universe, it is known full well to You that our desire is to perform Your
will. What prevents us? The yeast in the dough and the oppression of
nations. (Brochos
17a)
Perhaps Rebi
Alexandri was a tzaddik
who naively thought that what was true for him was true for everyone else.
More likely is that he was very astute and knew that what applied to him
did apply to everyone else, including those people who had no problem
identifying with their
yetzer haras and therefore, thought the opposite.
There are basically
three types of givers. There are those who give freely and generously,
those who give because they know it is the right thing to do, and those who
do not give and feel justified in not doing so. They might even be able to
cite some halachah
to back up their stinginess, but the bottom line is that they have a
difficult time being generous with their money and possessions.
What makes a person
stingy against their own good? Only one thing, and that is selfishness.
They have a difficult time sharing what they value with others because they
feel they will lose out. They might be happy to give you a cup of water
since it flows quite freely from the tap. But when it comes to things they
value but have to work for, they might find it difficult to give those
things up because they believe their quality of life will go down.
It is not a
coincidence that Purim
is about giving. We give to people in need and we give to people who do not
need. It is a holiday of giving more than any other. A terumah is an elevated
offering, and Purim
teaches us that through giving generously we actually elevate ourselves,
and in doing so we elevate our level of joy and offer that to God, and it
says, “Serve God with
joy” (Tehillim
100:2).
Shabbos Day
THIS IS WHAT Rebi
Alexandri understood and taught us. We are not stingy by nature. Our yetzer hara is. We are
not selfish for our own good. Our yetzer
hara is, for its
good. The yetzer hara
is only concerned about self-preservation, and only agrees to give up
something if it will help with this, like assisting someone else because it
will obligate them to assist us.
What is amazing is
how easy and pleasurable it is to share with others when the yetzer hara has been
neutralized. For example, if someone has a great day, they tend to be more
generous. If someone is spared from a dangerous situation, they usually
have a more generous spirit. And if we see someone else suffering and feel
grateful that it is not us, we will happily help them out. If a person doesn’t,
then they are really under the control of their yetzer hara.
On Purim, we use wine to
make this point. We drink to neutralize our yetzer haras, and give the steering wheel
to our souls. Not an actual steering wheel mind you, since you should not
be driving while under the influence. But if you do it right, turning the
drinking into a holy experience not a social one, then you can reach
spiritual heights like no other time of the year.
The trouble is that
so many get it wrong. They drink to get drunk, not drunk to get spiritually
higher. Because of this, many reject drinking on Purim to such a
degree, and a lot of rabbis support this, pointing out that taking a nap
suffices to fulfill the mitzvah.
Drink a little to make you sleepy, head for the sofa, and get some shuteye,
during which you will certainly not know the difference between blessed
Haman and cursed…ah…I mean blessed Mordechai and cursed Haman.
Personally, that is
not nearly enough. A “successful” Purim for me is if, after all my
drinking, I feel an overwhelming gratefulness to God for everything. If I
don’t reach a point during which I feel “hugged” by God, my Purim has
disappointingly fallen short. This is why I have turned my “drinking
feasts” into extremely contemplative moments. I use my Shabbos Kiddush Kos,
and make a brochah
over the wine like no other time of the year, trying to fill each word with
every last ounce of intention, love for God, and joy I can muster.
The Gemora says, “when
wine goes in secrets come out.” So true. However, some secrets should come
out while others should stay buried. People who don’t do very much
spiritual with their lives tend to have the latter kind of secrets, and
should be careful how and where they drink. Entire reputations and
relationships have been severely damaged by just a few extra glasses of
alcohol. If you spend your year hiding dark secrets, drinking too much can
“enlighten” others about them.
But if your life goal
is to become a spiritually fulfilled individual through Torah and mitzvos, then your inner,
hidden soul is a “secret” to be shared, if not with others, then at least
with you. Because, even Yom
Kippur doesn’t really show us what we’re spiritually made of as
well as Purim
does. On Yom Kippur,
God gives the Sitra
Achra the day off, and we become like angels. On Purim, we have the
opportunity to make ourselves like angels, and give the Sitra Achra the day
off.
Seudas Shlishis
THERE IS A key. The Kli Yakar makes a
major point on this week’s parsha
about how every aspect of the Mishkan,
and all that was built to be used in it, expresses the importance of
humility. The Gemora
calls it the most important trait to master because all other positive
personality traits stem from it.
Nothing neutralizes
the yetzer hara
more than humility. This is why Moshe Rabbeinu,
reportedly the humblest person to have ever lived, was half-angel. Absolute
truth stops evil in its tracks. But add a little suffek—doubt, a little
Amalek (equals suffek
in gematria),
and the yetzer hara
has a field day. Being the greatest prophet to have ever lived, Moshe Rabbeinu knew truth
like no other, and that left him the humblest person ever.
It’s what you’re
after when you start to drink on Purim,
that inner humility. Perhaps you are someone who works on their humility
daily. Perhaps you are someone who has reached a good measure of it already
through life itself. Nevertheless, being humble, you probably also know how
hard it is to hold onto, especially around people who are just the
opposite. The drinking on Purim
can help with that, and boost you in that direction.
In fact, if drinking
on Purim is
not a completely humbling experience, then the rabbis are right, it is not
for you. If in your physically “drunken” state your soul is not completely
sober, go for the nap instead. Better to fulfill the mitzvah somewhat than
to turn it into a sin as, unfortunately, many do. The goal is to become a Mishkan in which the Shechinah can dwell,
not a dirty back-alley way that the Shechinah
avoids.
This is why the four mitzvos of the day
correspond to the four letters of God’s holiest Name, which correspond to
the four areas of the Mishkan.
God told us to bring gifts to build a Mishkan
to bring out our most inner humility so that He could dwell within us, not outside
of us. Shir HaShirim
is the celebration of this holy and elevated relationship between our souls
and God.
Ain Od Milvado,
Part 40
The Gemora says this about
wine:
Anyone who becomes
settled through wine has the da’as
of their Creator…the da’as
of the Seventy Elders. Wine was given with seventy letters, and the sod—mystery [of Torah]
was given with seventy letters. When wine goes in, secrets go out. (Eiruvin 65a)
Obscure is an
understatement. As Rashi
points out, the whole thing has to do with the number 70, which is the gematria of yai’in—wine, and sod—secret. Of course,
the redemption of Purim
was dependent upon the number 70, because that was prophesied as the end of
the first exile. It was the starting point that was mysterious until the
end, which is what threw off all the Persian kings and probably a lot of
Jews.
Furthermore, rabbis
point out that the number Amalek,
spelled Ayin-Mem-Lamed-Kuf,
can be read Ayin-malak—severance
of the eye. Isn’t that what doubt does, intellectually blind a person to
truth…to the existence of God and to His benevolent providence? That’s
certainly what Amalek came to do, back in Moshe Rabbeinu’s time, in Haman’s time, and
most recently, in our time with the Holocaust and all those who use science
and technology to weaken people’s belief in God.
Why 70? For a couple
of reason, but most notably (and kabbalistically)
because that is the number of lights that have to come down from above to
below to allow us to see truth. The Arizal
explains all of this regarding Bris
Milah, which makes possible the descending of these lights from
the upper realm to our benefit in the world below.
These lights are
essential for many things, but in particular, redemption. This is why
Avraham received the call for aliyah
to Eretz Yisroel
in his 70th year. This is also the reason for this:
Rabbi Yochanan said:
All the prophets only prophesied regarding the days of the Moshiach. However,
regarding the World-to-Come, “No
eye has seen it, God, aside from You” (Yeshayahu 64:3)…What
is, “No eye has seen it”? Rebi Yehoshua ben
Levi said: That is the wine that has been preserved in its grapes since the
six days of creation and which no eye has ever seen. (Brochos 34b)
That’s it? Wine? How
much better will the wine be in the World to Come than here, especially
since the Gemora
says elsewhere that we won’t eat or drink there? Rather, wine represents
the ultimate revelation of Divine light that is more pleasurable than
anything we could ever enjoy in this world, waiting for the worthy ever
since Creation. Every time a person reaches the intellectual and emotional
appreciation of ain od
Milvado, like Purim
tries to give us, they become that much more worthy.
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