Flipping Fear
Purim celebrations in our SCJ branch in Windsor Terrace
Dear friends,
HAPPY PURIM!
In case you’re considering skipping being happy today due to the state of the world or the state of your soul, Purim is here to tell us that things flip. Actually, we are in a perpetual state of flipped reality even though it appears otherwise.
There are many flips the Megillah offers, but I happened on a new one this year, studying 19th century Rabbi Meir Leibush Weisser, known as the Malbim’s interpretation of the story. It has to do with the pivotal moment in the story, when Esther decides to risk her neck and try and save the Jews.
Mordechai has just learned about Haman’s decree to destroy the Jews. He’s yelling and screaming in torn clothes in front of the palace. Esther sees him from the window and is horrified. She sends a messenger to him asking “what the hell is wrong with you?” It is in this exchange that the entire story pivots.
“Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and all about the money that Haman had offered to pay into the royal treasury for the destruction of the Jews. He also gave him the written text of the law that had been proclaimed in Shushan for their destruction. ‘Show it to Esther and inform her, and charge her to go to the king and to appeal to him and to plead with him for her people!’”
Esther sends back this reply:
“All the king’s courtiers and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any person, man or woman, enters the king’s presence in the inner court without having been summoned, there is but one law for him—that he be put to death. Only if the king extends the golden scepter to him may he live. Now I have not been summoned to visit the king for the last thirty days.”
Esther may be thinking practically here. You have to find the right moment and the right way to speak to a capricious person like the king, she offers. But she is also clearly driven by fear as well. Scared to lose her life along with the lives of her people, she suggests waiting.
But Mordechai won’t have it.
“Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace. On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Of the three reasons Mordechai puts forward – 1. If we all perish so will you. 2. If you don’t save us someone else will. 3. You were made queen for this moment. - it’s the second one that convinces Esther to act. The faith that Mordechai reminds Esther of, that deliverance will appear, if not from her than from elsewhere, is what transforms the weight on Esther’s shoulders into an opportunity. No longer is saving her people a responsibility, it is suddenly a privilege. She could become the savior of her people!
Malbim writes: “It could be that God only invited you to save your people in this exact moment, but if you wait until tomorrow your time will have passed, because for tomorrow God has invited others.”
Now that fear has been transformed into opportunity, Esther is on board:
“Go, assemble all the Jews who live in Shushan, and fast in my behalf; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens will observe the same fast. Then I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I perish!”
The Malbim explains her thinking: Now I know that even if I perish, my people will not.
May all of our fears be flipped in our minds into opportunities. May the weight of our responsibilities toward the universe be inverted into a sense of privilege that we are invited take part in good work. May our faith we reawakened so we can see the flipside of reality.
Chag sameach and Shabbat shalom,
(and please come protest cuts to Medicaid and other life-saving government programs this Saturday 11-2 at Foley Square)
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha