Zachor: From Beit HaLevi, a prelude to Purim
This Shabbat, we read the weekly portion known as Tetzaveh — but since it is the Shabbat before Purim, we add a supplemental reading known as Parshat Zachor, describing the hostile attack against the people of Israel, then wandering in the wilderness, by Amalek. Haman, the villain of Purim story, was a descendant of Amalek.
In dedicating this week’s column to the upcoming festival, I will primarily draw from one teaching of the 19th century sage, Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, author of the multi-volume masterpiece, Beit HaLevi.
This teaching, as far as I can tell, is not to be found in the standard publication of Beit HaLevi but in a recently published collection that includes precious material which does not appear in Beit Halevi.
The editor of this collection is an eminent scholar in his own right — Rabbi Yosef Shimon Presser.
The verse in question is to be found in Megillat Esther 2:5. It is at this point that we first encounter the hero. It reads, “Ish Yehudi haya B’Shushan HaBira (There was a Jewish man in the Great City of Shushan).” That’s pretty much all we are told about him. We are not told that he was a “prominent Jew,” “a master of Torah,” “a pious man,” “a leader of his people.” He is, simply, “a Jewish man.”
Yes, we learn that he was a refugee exiled from Jerusalem and that he generously raised his orphaned cousin Hadassa, better known as Esther. But was it unusually praiseworthy for a displaced person in an alien land to adopt a homeless waif, and a close relative to boot?
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In dealing with this question the Beit HaLevi asks us to consider the following verse in Isaiah 44:5: “This one says, ‘I am the L-rd’s’; another will call himself by the name of Jacob; still another will write on his hand ‘the L-rd’s’; but they all bear the name ‘Israel’!”
The Beit HaLevi says this, in my own rough translation:
“In the future, all will come to realize that most worldly matters are trivial, ‘vanity of vanities.’ Only Torah and mitzvot have significant value. Then, in that distant future, many types of Jews will be present.
“One will say, ‘I am the L-rd’s,’ having always kept Torah and mitzvot and having been a devout, G-d-fearing person.
“Others, having spent their lifetimes in pursuit of what they now recognize as insignificant, begin to introspect and dredge up memories of mitzvot that they did perform, long ago and perhaps only once in a lifetime. An example would be a son who one day remembers to recite Kaddish on the yahrzeit of his long-deceased father, Jacob. That’s the second category who ‘call themselves by the name of Jacob.’
“And then there is a third category: those who never recited Kaddish. They too will call upon a long-forgotten mitzvah. One may recall his bar mitzvah day, when he wound tefillin round his hand for the first, and last, time. Or another will remember how he once reached out with his hand to extend charity to a poor fellow. That category is described by Isaiah as ‘they who will inscribe upon their hand that they are the L-rd’s.’
“There is yet another category,” suggests the Beit HaLevi, “Jews who lived their entire lives as gentiles. They never recited Kaddish, never donned tefillin, and never even knew of Jewish charity. But they too can point to the fact that they never agreed to baptize themselves. They defined themselves as totally secular atheists, but they — to resort to popular jargon — identified as Jews and would never convert to another religion.
“The concluding words of Isaiah’s verse sums it up: ‘They ALL will take the name Israel.’ Every category is numbered as a Yehudi, a Jew.
“Therefore,” concludes the Beit HaLevi, “the verse the Book of Esther need not describe Mordechai with any of his deserved titles or allude to his degree of religiosity. It need only say, Ish Yehudi, he was a Jew. That is all that matters.”
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Rabbi Presser footnotes the above analysis of the Beit HaLevi by sharing a similar approach given about a century earlier by the Gaon of Vilna, the Gra, to be found in Sefer Aderet Eliyahu in Parshat VeZot HaBeracha.
There the Gaon writes: “Even if a person has no claim other than that he calls himself a Jew, the name of Israel is upon him, and he is grasped by and connected to Klal Yisroel.”
I close with a humorous but penetrating anecdote told by Rabbi Yechiel Yakov Weinberg, author of Seridei Aish. He was once present at a conference discussing the age-old question, “Who is a Jew?”
Various professors, sociologists, and Jewish political figures each delivered long-winded speeches declaring who was, and who wasn’t, Jewish.
In the audience was a member of Rabbi Weinberg’s synagogue, who was a devout but unsophisticated Yiddish speaking individual. He asked for the floor and, after dismissing all the various discourses given by the “experts,” exclaimed, “Ah Yid iz ah Yid (A Jew is A Jew)!”
May every Jew have a joyous and inspirational Purim festival, and may all the Yehudim know only orah v’simcha, sasson v’Yekar (light and joy, happiness and honor) — and I would add shalom, peace!
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
