Musar zu Esther 6:78

But as for the wicked, if he attains a great state, riches, and honor, he says in his heart, “Whom does the king⁶⁰A paraphase of Esther 6:7. delight in honoring more than me? God has seen that I am worthy of all this honor. Through my devices and through my wise counsel have I gathered this wealth, but if I were like this one, or that one, who are lazy, I would be as destitute and poor as they.”

In Megillah 19 we find an argument as to how much of the Megillah has to be read. Four views are mentioned as we have already stated earlier. The views are based on whether תקפו של אחשורוש, or תקפו של מרדכי, or תקפו של המן, or תקפו של נס i.e. the power of Ahasverus, Haman, Mordechai or the extent of the miracle, determines from which point the story has to be read in order to fulfil the commandment. The view mentioned last, that of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, states that the extent of the miracle is what determines from which part of the Megillah one has to start reading. Why would his colleagues of the Mishnah disagree with such a viewpoint?

Having said all this, we can better understand the disagreement between the first three sages in the Mishnah Megillah 19 dealing with which parts of the Megillah a person must have heard or read in order to have discharged his minimal duty to hear the Purim story. All three sages are agreed that the part in which G–d's goodness is displayed after the Jews had embraced the Torah voluntarily is an essential part of such a reading. This is why none of these three sages accepts the view of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai that it suffices to read from the point where the king could not sleep (Esther 6,1), an event which took place after the first feast Esther gave for the King and Haman, i.e. after the Jews did תשובה. The view that the Megillah has to be read from the very beginning, i.e. describing the power of Ahasverus, is easy to understand. It points out that the treatment of the Jews by Ahasverus at that meal contrasted sharply with his treatment of his queen whom he had tried to force to display herself in front of his ministers. The king displayed self-control in his dealings with the Jews at the time, i.e. his תקף, consisted of what our sages have described in Avot 4,1: "Who is a hero? He who can control his passions." Since the king had displayed the ability to conquer his natural urges, the Jews likewise could do no less but overcome their reluctance to accept the yoke of the Torah and embrace the Torah voluntarily, joyfully. The sage who believes that it suffices to read the Megillah from the point where the outstanding personality of Mordechai is described, i.e. from where the text introduces Mordechai in Esther 2,5, appears to hold that the reason the Jews accepted the Torah voluntarily at that time is similar to the second reason I have listed, the revolutionary change that occurred in the political constellation and which brought Mordechai the Torah-true Jew, member of an exiled nation, to a position of such great power. We are to appreciate that the half-shekel contribution which is described in the Torah in connection with the allusion to the name Mordechai was the key to Haman's failure and Israel's survival. Once they realised this, the Jews naturally embraced Torah enthusiastically. The third view, which holds that it is sufficient to read from the part in which Haman's rise to power, i.e. the troubles he caused the Jews, is described (Esther 3,1), considers the failure of the Jews to offer to change their religion as tantamount to accepting the Torah voluntarily. Rabbi Yossi, the sage who held this view, assumed that wholesale conversion by the Jews would have saved them from Haman's decree.

When at the beginning of פרשת וישב, we are told that Jacob made an attempt to settle in the land of Canaan to live a quiet undisturbed life, G–d objected to Jacob at that stage wanting to enjoy both the present world and the Hereafter. This world is not slated to recover from the original sin, the time when the serpent polluted Adam and Eve, until the arrival of the Messiah. Ever since that sin our world operates on the principle that the קליפה, peel, precedes the פרי, fruit. It is this principle which forms the background of Bereshit Rabbah 2,4. We are told there by Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish that the reason that the Torah begins the story of Creation with the statement that there was Tohu Vavohu, in other words imperfection similar to the imperfection of the world experienced by the Jewish people in exile, was that imperfection has to precede perfection. The Midrash describes several such exiles as being alluded to in that verse. The word Tohu refers to the exile in Babylon; the prophet Jeremiah (4,23) describes the country thus. The word Bohu supposedly refers to the exile under the Medes, since we have a verse in Esther 6,14 where the king's messengers are described as ויבהלו להביא את המן, the word ויבהלו containing the letters of the word ובהו. The word חשך, which follows in Genesis 1,2, refers to the exile under the Greeks who blackened the eyes of Israel by demanding that the Israelites inscribe on the horns of their oxen that they had no further share in the G–d of Israel. Finally, the words על פני תהום, refer to the exile under the Romans, Edom, which seems bottomless like the תהום, Deep. When the Torah continues ורוח אלוקים מרחפת על פני המים, "The spirit of the Lord hovered over the expanse of the water," Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish views this statement as an allusion to the spirit of the Messiah of whom it was said in Isaiah 11,2 that: "the spirit of the Lord rested on him." How does one merit that the spirit of the Lord comes to rest on one? By the merit of repentance which is compared to water, as we know from Lamentations 2,18: "Fair Zion, shed tears like water day and night!"