Lately my dad has been pretty interested in these new articles on Aish. They're all by Rabbi Ken Spiro (I know, he's cheating on Charlie..) and they all have a lot to do with Jewish history. This last weekend, my dad gave me one to read on Purim and it relates so much to what we're talking about in class!
In class, we talked a bit about when the Purim story took place. We said that Chazal says that the Purim story occured after the reign of Coresh (when we were allowed to come back to Israel), but before the reugn of Daryavash (when we completed the building of the second Beit Hamikdash). In secular history, the Purim story took place when Xerxes was king, after the reign of Daryavash (meaning the Beit Hamikdash was already built when the story took place). This Rabbi Spiro gets a little more specific.
First he talks about Coresh's declaration and how the Jews were given permission to return home. Only 42,000 Jews actually go back, though--only 5%. Once those Jews get back to Jerusalem, they start rebuilding the Beit Hamikdash. Then the Sumaritans get in the way, and the Jews are forced to stop building and end up waiting 18 years before they continue the rebuilding process. These 18 years are when the Purim story took place.
The Jews who have stayed in exile have gotten pretty comfortable. During Aicha, we saw that they were miserable. They mourned and wept and they needed to know that they would return one day. Now they are so comfortable in Persian society that they are attending parties where the king is using vessels from the Beit Hamikdash and they have opted to remain in Persia instead of returning to Jerusalem.
Rabbi Sprio then goes on to talk about Haman and the lottery, which we haven't gotten to yet, so I'm warning you now--spoiler alert. So, there's this Haman guy. He's a descendent of Amalek--so hating the Jews is basically in his blood. Apparently, it is also a part of the Amalekite philosophy that everything happens according to chance. This is their way of showing everyone that G-d plays no role in the world. Everything is random. What's interesting is that the entire Purim story proves this to be complete nonsense.
This whole holiday is called Purim-chance in order to teach us that nothing actually happens by chance. From the moment Haman "randomly" chooses the day the Jews will be killed, everything is twisted. Haman expects honors from the king, but instead he is forced to give those honors to Mordechai, his enemy. He gets excited about being invited to Esther's party, only to be accused of killing her people in front of the King. When he tries to beg for mercy, he is caught by Achashveirosh in a position that looks like he is trying to rape her. And then, he is hanged on the gallows he initially build for Mordechai. After all of this, it should be clear when we/the Jews then look back, G-d had a hand in all of it. Even though His name was never mentioned because He was still in a state of Hester Panim, he was still looking out for the Jews and giving us many hidden miracles to ensure that we would survive. This shows us that even without a Beit Hamikdash, and even when G-d is hiding His face, He will never truly stop protecting us. He will always be in control of our destiny. There are no accidents or random occurrences. He always has a plan for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment