Before we begin a reminder that we'll hold a Midrash (Bible Study) on Shabbat (27 February) at 10:00AM via ZOOM. We'll cover this week's Torah Portion along with a conversation about the Purim Holiday. To join us simply click this link.
Welcome back to Torah Thoughts from Adas Israel the Jewish Congregation of Northern Iowa and based in Mason City. This week I asked my brother, Yonatan ben Dovid ha-Levi, to author this post. It's a mixture of this week's parsha and Purim. Let's go!
This week, I humbly submit this week’s Torah Thoughts as a ‘BOGO’ (Buy One, Get One). We have the weekly Parsha, Tetsaveh (Exodus 27.20-30.10) and we also have Megilla Esther as we keep the Purim Festival (25-26 February). I dedicate our learning this week to the memory of my late wife, Esther Ruth bat Yisroel (z”l), one of our People’s countless Women of Valor. May her neshama receive an elevation from the merit of our study!
Tetsaveh
Countless boys and girls in Hebrew school anxiously calculate the date of their bar/bat mitzvah to match it with the Parsha they will read.
Tetsaveh is very short…’win’ number one. The theme of Tetsaveh is in its title (see below)…’win’ number two.
It is easy to get lost in the minutiae of Tetsaveh. Like the preceding Terumeh, it contains a lot of detailed instructions, and it is easy to get sidetracked in the details on how to construct the Mishkan or how to sew up priestly garments.
The coincidence of Parsha Tetsaveh with Purim gives us some considerations to explore. This coincidence implores us to spend some time digging deeper into the obvious, rather than fixating on the details within.
Fun Fact… Who’s not mentioned? Well, in Tetsaveh, there is no specific mention of Moses. In Magilla Esther, there is no specific mention of G-d. The absence of specific referral to Moses occurs nowhere else in Torah. (FYI…In Vayikra (Leviticus), Moses speaks in the first person.)
Fun Fact… Moses was cast off into the bulrushes. Esther was an orphan.
Fun Fact… Moses rose from his humble beginnings to become powerful in Pharaoh’s court. Esther similarly rose from her orphan beginnings to become queen of Persia.
Fun Fact… Moses saved the Hebrew people from oppression and death by Pharaoh’s decree. Esther saved the Jewish People from Persian-decreed oppression and extermination.
The Soldier Proposes and the Army Laughs
During my service to T’Zahal (the Israel Defence Forces), I vainly hoped to be assigned to the medical corps. I had done my surgical training with the US Army and I had “good” fluency with Ivrit (modern Hebrew).
The army had other plans.
My commanding segen mishneh (second lieutenant), unapologetically delivered the verdict…I would be assigned to ‘armor maintenance’. I would spend my days in overheated warehouses, or in the desert sun, repairing tanks and such. Oy veh!
The young, female officer looked at me with the feigned sympathy of a busy IDF commander, “Yoni, go to ulpan. Perhaps when you learn technical Ivrit, you will transfer to the medical corps?”
I might also become Chief of Staff! Yeah…right.
By day, I sweated…repairing and refurbishing an endless parade of worn tanks. By night, I attended ulpan, T’Zahal’s crash course in modern Hebrew for non-native Israeli soldiers.
I eventually attained fluency, but I would forever remain a ‘grease monkey’. Turning an army decision is like turning a cruise ship…it takes time and a lot of distance.
I finally stopped asking for a transfer and accepted my fate.
What does this side-story have to do with this week’s learning?
In ulpan, I learned that Hebrew cannot be precisely translated into English…or any other language. Nailing down a Hebrew word’s translation is like trying to describe the taste of a carrot.
So, here we are.
‘Tetsaveh’ is commonly translated as, ‘you shall command’. But, tetsaveh can also be translated as ‘you shall connect (with)’ or ‘you shall bond (with)’.
Our Sages (Peace be upon them!) instruct that every Jew contains a spark from within the soul of Moses. All Jews are, therefore (by order of G-d), connected to…or bonded to…Moses.
That connection is our birthright. We do not need to be a Torah scholar to qualify. Moses lives within every Jew, no matter how humble his/her station, or how scanty his/her Torah learning.
Wow…WOW…WOW! What a gift…and what a responsibility.
I hope you are starting to see the connection Esther had to Moses.
About that Oil?
Fortunately for bokerim (young yeshiva scholars), Tetsaveh gives away its ‘meat’ in the opening: “You shall further instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lamps regularly.” (Exodus 27.20)
We read about the construction of the ner tamid (the eternal light that hangs over the Ark) and the necessity of having pure oil to fill it, and oil for the menorah, and oil to help kindle the sacrificial fires.
Pure oil comes from beaten olives…’traumatized’ olives, if you will…olives that have been crushed.
Ready for a metaphor?
The Hebrews had been crushed by Egypt. Persia crushed its Jews. From within the Egyptian crushing, Moses emerged as the clear oil. From Persia…Esther.
Both were from humble beginnings as ‘olives’…and so are we.
And, each of us…in our own way…is crushed by personal circumstances. The crushing yields pure, clean oil…suitable for a holy purpose.
Party Like a Persian
I need to clean this up to make it appropriate for Shabbat.
The Persians partied…hard. In the opening of Megilla Esther, the story opens with a wild, Persian drinking festival. At the peak of his drunkenness, King Ahasuerus calls for Vashti, his beautiful Persian wife.
By Persian tradition, Vashti is bidden to appear wearing only her royal diadem. Vashti would be expected to display her virtually nude body before an entire court of drunken Persian royalty, satraps, and a gaggle of hangers-on.
She refuses.
Ahasuerus is furious!
What if, following Vashti’s example, all Persian wives refuse to obey their husbands?
As a lesson to other Persian wives, Vashti gets booted from court. Ahasuerus begins hunting for a replacement queen from among young (very young) Persian girls (virgins) who are ordered to make themselves up elaborately and parade naked before the king.
Can you imagine?
Esther, a stunningly beautiful Jewish girl, conceals her Jewish heritage (though not her naked, virgin body) and is selected by Ahasuerus to fill the vacancy created by Vashti’s departure.
Skipping…skipping…skipping…
And then, some other stuff happens.
Okay…it is important stuff. But I promised you meat that would connect Purim to Parsha Tetsaveh.
Esther gains the king’s favor by snitching on two eunuchs plotting to overthrow Ahasuerus. They are hung.
Esther is no longer just the king’s wife…she is now Ahasuerus’ bestie.
About that ‘hanging’…
They misspelled ‘impaled’.
Impalement was a common form of execution in antiquity. Skilled executioners could impale a condemned person on a pole, avoiding major blood vessels and organs. It was a slow, excruciating death…far more terrible than crucifixion (not that crucifixion was a party). Impaled victims took hours, or days, to die.
(In my human gross anatomy courses, I typically take time in the spring, around the time of Purim and Easter, to deliver a lecture on the anatomy and pathophysiology of impalement and crucifixion. It is not for the faint of heart!)
He-e-e-e-r-e’s Haman!
Haman was an arrogant jerk…full stop.
Mordecai, Esther’s uncle and adoptive father, hung out at the city gate. Unlike even the highest courtiers, Mordecai refused to “bow low” to Haman when he passed, as the king had ordered when he elevated Haman.
Haman was so incensed that a ‘mere Jew’ would refuse to bow that he plotted to have all of the Jews of Persia killed. Haman held a lottery (pur) to select the date for the Jewish extermination.
Mordecai gets wind of the plot and asks Esther to intervene. But, appearing before Ahasuerus without a royal summons was to risk death.
Have some meat with your wine.
Esther was not in any hurry to risk death by appearing before the king without a summons. She protested to Mordecai.
Mordecai responded:
“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, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis.”
(Exodus 4.14)
Esther reminds Ahasuerus that her tattling once saved the king’s life. She turns Haman’s plot against the Jews into a plot against the king. The king became incensed against Haman.
(It did not help Haman’s position that Ahasuerus walks in to find Haman ‘reclined’ on the same couch as his nearly naked Queen Esther!)
Bad timing, Haman, old chap.
They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat (and drink).
Haman, and his followers end up skewered like fishing worms on a hook. The Persian Jews rise up. At the end of the hostilities, nearly 80,000 Persians have been killed. Then, the Jews partied heartily.
Final Score: Jews 10 – Persians 0
Have some more meat!
The ‘spark’ of Moses lived in Esther. That spark lives within every Jew. Every Jew can rise to become a ‘Mordecai’ or an ‘Esther’.
Our troubles are the stick that beats us, the olives, so we may give pure and clear oil. If it were not for the oppression of the Hebrews under Pharaoh, the ‘oil of Moses’ would never have been harvested. If not for the evil Haman, Esther would not have yielded her oil.
If not for our own troubles?
A baby, abandoned in the rushes, finds the courage to take on the mightiest of kings in his ‘stammerings’. An orphan girl, likely no more than thirteen years old and paraded naked before drunken men, used her humiliating position to save the Jewish people.
Mordecai told Esther: “And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for such a crisis.”
Mordecai is speaking to us. Parsha Tetsaveh is speaking to us.
The spark of Moses lives in every Jew. We are not pre-destined. But we are, all of us, born for times such as these.
How we respond is up to us. Will we respond? Are we willing to risk everything we have?
The temptation to ‘go along to get along’ is huge.
Mordecai speaks to us: “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.”
Mordecai is a warning against collaboration with evil in an attempt to attain personal salvation or exemption from those who plot evil plots.
May we all rise as boldly as Moses and Esther! No matter the risk to ourselves, may we find the courage to call out injustice and oppression. May the spark within us kindle an aish hatzedek, a righteous fire.
Like Mordecai, we must draw on our spark not to bow low before the Haman’s of our day. Like Esther, we must fan our spark into a flame so to be brave when it is difficult to be brave.
It is a heck of a gift…and a heck of a responsibility.
Again, with the oil…full circle.
G-d instructs Moses to set the Children of Israel to the task of obtaining pure olive oil ‘to kindle a lamp continually’ (an ‘everlasting light’). Exodus 27.20
But the verses continue with a paradox: “Aaron and his sons shall arrange it from evening until morning…”
It is implicit that the intensity of the illumination, though eternal, will wax and wane…waxing as the sun sets and waning as the sun rises. A candle appears bright in the darkness and appears dim in the sunlight.
Jews are eternal. Our brightness of fortune is not.
We live in a cycle.
Moses was born for a time when the light of the Israel was dimmed. Esther was born for a time when the fate of the Jewish people was dim.
Mordecai warned Esther, “…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.”
The Jews are eternal, but if you stay silent and do not act, you may not live to see it.
What a connection!
Chag sameach, Purim. (Now, go look up the ‘Four Obligations’ related to keeping Purim and...do them.)