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Dear Friends,
Purim
is an occasion when nobody will tell you to keep the noise down
in shul; in fact, we are positively encouraged to engage
in chaotic noise-generation. One of the reasons, of
course, is the massive presence and involvement of children in
reading the Scroll (Megillat) of Esther, which tells the story
of our salvation from the hands of Haman the Evildoer during the
reign of the King Ahasuerus of Persia -Achashverosh. The
cheerful noise of our little ones is the triumphant proof of our
victory over those who sought to destroy our People; it is the
happy sound of Jewish survival and continuity. Our joy is
multiplied by the joy of our children in this thunderous
celebration.
There
is another reason for the deliberate noise of a ritual and
symbolic character. We are required to shout very loudly during
the reading of the 10 chapters of the Scroll of Esther; this is
no mere attempt to be noisy, but an intention to totally drown
out of possible hearing the accursed name of the genocidal
conspirator Haman. Our sources teach that we must "smother" the
name of the Evildoer with shouts of
"Arur Haman" *,
(literally,
"Damn Haman!"),
to deny even a single moment of presence in the living world to
one who planned to visit such evil upon of our ancestors.
Through this proscription, Haman, who desired the annihilation
of our People for political ends, becomes the personification
and symbol of evil; irrationality, hatred and extreme cruelty.
"Damn Haman!"
is equivalent to
"Damn Evil!"
or
"Damn hatred, violence, the madness of murdering!"
But,
isn't all this self-evident? Is it not redundant to curse evil,
to repudiate the despicable and reject the unbearable? There is
a beautiful Hasidic parable in order to answer these apparently
simple questions:
In a town where violence and abuse had become
the norms of behavior, one man began to preach
against the daily social degradation he saw, spending
hour upon hour in the park calling the townsfolk to
repent, to change, to return to the path God expects
from us. Most ignored him, some insulted him; others
struck him, but nothing deterred this man from his
struggle against the ruin of his society. Asked why he
persisted when virtually none had heeded him, still less
changed their ways, he answered:
"I do this not for them, but
for myself. My greatest fear is that I should turn out
to be another of the violent ones, the vile ones. I
shout, shout and denounce to avoid becoming like them".
So
too, we loudly "Damn Haman!" for a double reason:
-
to restore our own sensitivity to the suffering of others,
to exalt sanity over wickedness; we "Damn Haman!" to
remind ourselves that evil is
not
a permanent or necessarypresence in the world, but avoidable
in ourselves and in all human coexistence;
-
to remind ourselves of our own responsibility to oppose,
denounce and punish brutality, injustice, abuse, hatred,
wickedness; we are part of this world to complete the Divine
work, to make it more just and merciful, better for
ourselves, our brethren and for all humanity.
The
gematria (the numerical equivalent value of the Hebrew
letters) of "Arur
Haman", "cursed
Haman", and "Baruch
Mordechai", "blessed
Mordechai", is exactly equal: both total precisely
502.
This perhaps points out to the fact that
it takes an equal amount of energy to do evil than the energy
required to prevent it,
bringing then goodness to humankind.
Purim
comes to remind us of the duty to ourselves and others of
preserving truth, goodness, mercy and justice in a world that so
often seems to empty those ideas of actionable meaning. It
comes to remind us that as long as evil is present in the world,
the possibility of murderous catastrophes like that which the
evildoer plotted against our ancestors may be repeated.
In
this Purim may our hearts be filled with joy and happiness as we
listen to the story of our salvation in the old Persian, always
remembering our responsibility to denounce and persecute evil
and to spread justice and loving kindness in the world.
With best wishes,
Chag Purim Sameach!
Chazak ve'ematz!
Rabbi Carlos A. Tapiero
Deputy Director-General & Director of Education
Maccabi World Union
carlos@maccabi.org
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