I really envy the sweet Jewish couple who married last week in a surreptitious ceremony on the Temple Mount. I hear the cries of all the Temple ‘Mountaphobes’ sitting behind the public broadcast microphones and in the name of the public rob my tax money in order to control the public’s consciousness.
I hear their genuine fear of the Temple Mount. And despite the fact that in just a few days we will be celebrating the Exodus from Egypt, the festival of our liberty, they are still stuck deep inside Purim. Not the end of the story of Purim, but its beginning.
Why was a total holocaust decreed upon Israel in the Purim story? Because when redemption didn’t seem to be coming following 70 years of exile after the destruction of the First Temple, ( according to Ahashverosh’s calculations),the enlightened king celebrated the ‘New World Order’; he celebrated the Pax Ahashveroshana. With no redemption for the Jews in the offing, all the nations celebrated, drank and generally gave free rein to their animalistic urges at Ahashverosh’s feast; at the capital of the pseudo-kind kingdom that ruled from India to Africa.
The king also invited the Jewish sages to his feast. Complete equality for all. All the chief rabbis attended: the Ashkenazic, Sephardic, ultra-orthodox and modern orthodox. They all came to drink at the feast. Not before they made sure that all the food would be strictly kosher, under the supervision of the most trusted kosher certification (I am not making this up. All of what I have written is taken from the sources on the Scroll of Esther) including a partition to separate between men and women according to the most strict stringencies of Jewish law…
After all, it is unthinkable to insult the king. We are responsible leaders. And then, Ahashverosh serves them the wine…in vessels stolen from the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem. And they drink…
At least if they had shed some tears into the wine served to them in the Temple vessels…But Rabbi Shimon Bar Yocahi explains that this holocaust was decreed upon Israel because not only did the newscasters of the time reject the whole Temple Mount idea, Israel’s message of human liberty under the wings of the One G-d – and exchanged it for the message of the liberty to enjoy lavish feasts under the servitude to man – but Israel’s leaders of the time also found their place in the New Order. They had funds for their yeshivot and Torah institutions. So everything was under control. They felt that they had overcome the extremists and that now, politics were in the hands of level-headed people. So they drank a little bit of wine, so what?
Enter Haman – the Amalekite. Amalek always shows up just before the redemption, when Israel gives up on its destiny and its message, preferring sweet servitude. That is what happened just before the Jews were supposed to enter the Land of Israel. All of them sobbed, just like the afraid-of-the-redemption newscasters.
Ultimately, they entered the Land. But not before the entire sobbing generation died in the desert.
The same thing happened throughout history, until the Balfour Declaration in the 1920s, when the British called upon our Nation to return to its Homeland (and even provided us with a foundation for a modern state). But the Nation of Israel did not show up. And once again, destruction was decreed upon that generation.
Yes, it is always the flight from our message that precipitates the next holocaust. Not a lack of ascent to the Mount, but estrangement from it.
And who saves the day?
Mordechai.
“Have we gone mad?” cried the Shushan broadcasters. This crazy man is throwing a match into a barrel of dynamite. What was so bad about bowing before Haman? Let him keep his vision to himself and stop endangering all of us!!! Now we will all die because of one old man who insists on sticking himself right in front of the eyes of the world. And he angered Haman, who is always on the lookout for a way to bring us trouble…
And then, it really happens! The intifada breaks out because of Mordechai! Haman decides to annihilate all the Jews! And the broadcasters are proven right. Those whose world is narrow like the world of an ant, who are completely detached from the message of the Nation of Israel, those whose only concern is survival – to reach 12 o’ clock at night and to worry about tomorrow when the sun rises – cannot understand the situation differently.
For the covenant that safeguards our nation’s wondrous eternity has a terrible price. The Creator, Who made an eternal covenant with us, is willing to put up with our temporary weaknesses in fulfilling the commandments. But the King is not willing to give up on the vision and on Israel’s destiny.
If an elite force errs in navigation and misses the mark, it is generally hit hard by the enemy and lessons are learned. But when the elite force decides not to carry out the mission, it makes its existence superfluous. That is the time to bring in a new elite force.
Mordechai understands that in order to save Israel, they must cling to their purpose, cling to their destiny and not fall into servitude to Haman. They must refuse to become servants to the Pax Ahashveroshana. They must choose liberty.
Mordechai would not kneel or bow to Haman, the Third Intifada brokr out and the Nation of Israel was redeemed.
Ben Gurion also understood this principle. The ‘mad old man’ (as he was called at the time) insisted on declaring statehood, ‘provoking’ the Arab armies to finish Hitler’s work and annihilate the small and hopeless Jewish community in Israel.
And how much death ensued! 6,000 fatalities, fully 1% of the Jewish population in Israel, were killed in the War of Independence. And all of our newscasters and talk show hosts today praise this extremist, who understood – from a completely secular perspective – that flight from our destiny makes Jewish existence in the Land of Israel superfluous. It leaves us in the Pax Brittania and sends us back to the desert for another 2000 years.
I really love you, dear couple. You are so beautiful, so simple and dignified. Continue to safeguard your anonymity. It is good that you are not being interviewed. You entered the covenant of marriage in the place of the covenant of the Jewish People with our Father in Heaven. You safeguarded that covenant for us all.
The frightened leaders have forgotten that covenant. But you are the Nation.
You are the Nation, you are its soul – its lofty spirit.
In your modesty, you brought us out of the servitude of Shushan to the Festival of Liberty.
And who knows how many people you saved.