Is Haman the Hero?
Megillas Esther starts with tragedy. Jews are eating and drinking at the King’s party, standing by as the vessels of the mikdash are being desecrated.
The leading figure, Mordechai, is named after a Babylonian deity, “Marduk.” His relative, Esther, is named after a Persian goddess, Ishtar. They go to great lengths to intermarry her to the King!
What would have happened had Haman not appeared? If things had continued as they were going, did not the future hold complete assimilation, the eradication of the Jews through nothing more than entropy?
But Haman steps in to save the day! Because of his implacable and irrational hatred, the Jews rediscover their identity and purpose. We find the will and the means to defend ourselves and even (late in the story) establish the importance of Jewish leadership and guidance.
Is this why we are encouraged to confuse Haman and Mordechai? Are we supposed to understand that anti-semitism plays a critical role in the story of the Jews?
Would we go so far as to apply this same theory to Haman’s modern equivalent, Hamas and their supporters?
In other words, should we, in a dark way, appreciate that sometimes it is our enemies who remind us of who we are supposed to be?
Destiny?
Purim is named after the “lots” used to decide the date when the Jews would be destroyed.
There is certainly a widespread belief in the idea of fate and destiny, sometimes revealable through the use of oracles or divining or – in this case – the drawing of lots. Most of the world, even today, believes in natural forces beyond our control that dictate our lives. It is the dominant belief of every primitive faith, and of most people in Asia and Africa.
Perhaps Judaism is the repudiation of the inevitability of destiny and fate? After all, don’t Esther and Mordechai work to change fate at every level, showing that a determined minority can defend itself even against overwhelming odds? That the inevitable need not happen?
Is this not the story of Jewish survival from our very first expulsion into foreign lands – once Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and now all over the settled globe? It makes no sense that the Jews should both remain distinct and still survive – and even thrive. Yet thrive we do, in the face of unstoppable odds, because we are living proof that we can, with G-d’s help and blessing, create our own future.
Is this a major lesson of Purim?
Is this also not a lesson for all mankind? That if we are conscious of our own potential, the future is not written? It is not pre-ordained. It is not governed by the laws of inevitability. Instead, the future is within our grasp, to shape, change and craft for the benefit of all that we hold dear?
Or do I have it exactly backwards? That the divine deliverance of Purim is proof that since G-d runs the world, nothing we do matters anyway? Can this circle be squared?
Celebrate Our Enemies?
On Purim, we celebrate our enemies.
Really! Who would remember Haman or Nebuchadnezzar or Amalek if they were not something that we Jews insist on commemorating every single year? In the case of Amalek, the Torah commands us to remember them (and not forget them) every single day. Even though Amalek have been gone for thousands of years!
Do we celebrate our enemies because we know that, were they not already dead, the sight of millions of Jews raucously partying at the mere mention of their name, would kill them all over again?
Why Do we Offer a Bird’s Crop?
And the priest shall bring it to the altar, and wring off its head, and burn it on the altar; and its blood shall be wrung out at the side of the altar: and he shall remove its crop (מֻרְאָת֖וֹ) with its feathers…
This is the only incidence of this word, mara, to refer to the part of a bird. Why is it used? What does it mean?
The word מֻרְאָ is found a number of other places in the Torah. Here they are:
Or has any god ventured to go and take for himself one nation from the midst of another by prodigious acts, by signs and portents, by war, by a mighty and an outstretched arm and great mara, as the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? (Deut. 4:34)…No man shall stand up to you: the LORD your God will put the dread and the mara of you over the whole land in which you set foot, as He promised you. (Deut. 11:25) … The LORD freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and great mara, and by signs and portents. (Deut. 26:8) … and for all the great might and great mara that Moses displayed before all Israel.
How can we understand this word? Look at what ties each of their uses together: Do they not all refer to the obligation or debt created by saving a life?
Go back and check: I’ll wait. (When considering
Deut 11:25, ask whether the mara would not be from the inhabitants, but from the land itself – we are bound to the Land of Israel and it to us, saving each other in turn?)
There is another example of this word in the text, the very first example: after the Flood, when Noach has saved all the animals:
And your mara and your chit shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky… they are given into your hand. (Gen. 9:2)
Is this obligation, owed from the animals to people, what makes it OK for us to eat animals?
But what does this have to do with the bird’s crop?
Consider that pigeons and doves secrete a nutrient and fat-rich fluid generated in the crop of the bird, called “crop milk”. These birds, like human parents, do not merely feed their young; they invest of themselves into the next generation. As the only birds that invest intergenerationally in the same way that mammals do, Joseph Cox points out that they are qualified to be offerings. The crop thus represents a permanent investment in the next generation, a life-giving feature that creates a permanent indebtedness. Might that explain why these birds – and only these birds – are acceptable as offerings?
Tie it all together: by saving their lives, didn’t Noach do just as a pigeon does: he invested himself in saving the animals, just as the pigeons invest in saving their young, just as G-d invested in us when he saved us from Egypt, and as Moses gave of himself when he saved the people time and again?
And mara is used to signal to us that with salvation comes a debt, an obligation going forward? A debt to G-d that we carry just as surely as the animals do to mankind?