The Essence of the Megillah - Achashverosh?!

There is an interesting Mishnah that says:

Mishnah Megillah 2:3: …From where does one read the megillah and fulfill the obligation? R’ Meir says, Read all of it. R’ Judah says, from “There was a certain Jew” (2:5). R’ Yossi says, from “After these things” (3:1).

This is rather odd. How could we start reading the megillah from anywhere but the beginning, and understand its plot? What is the meaning of "fulfilling the obligation" from points other than at the beginning?


The gemara adds a fourth position, and an explanation:

B. Talmud Megillah 19a: "R' Simeon bar Yohai says, from “On that night" (6:1). R’Yohanan says, All derive their interpretation from the same verse: “Then Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail and of Mordecai the Jew, wrote down all the acts of power ['kol tokef,' or all the power or essence]" (9:29). For those who say read the entire Megillah, the essence is Ahasuerus. For those who say read from “There was a certain Jew” the essence is Mordecai. For those who say read from "After these things," the essence is Haman. For those who say read from "On that night," the essence is the miracle of Purim.'"

So the question is what the essence of the megillah?
I took a vote amongst a group of Jewish friends, and none of them voted that the essence of the megillah is Achashverosh. And yet that is how we pasken, as Rabbi Meir - that you have to start from the very beginning.

So how is the essence of the megillah Achashverosh? I think this is one of those questions which is stronger than the answers, but here are some possibilities:

My cousin's husband, Rabbi Da'vid Sperling, had the folllowing insight while discussing this question at the Purim seuda, 5780: Those who think the essence of the megillah is Mordechai (or indeed the Purim miracle) see God's hand behind the good things that occur to us. That is one level. A higher level is to see God's hand behind the evil things that happen to us - represented here by Haman. But the highest level of all, the essence of life, is to see God behind events that do not seem to have anything to do with us at all - in this case Achashverosh, his parties and his problems with his queen. At the highest level, God is orchestrating everything, and everything affects everything else. This is why the essence of the megillah is Achashverosh.


Another answer: while doing a bibliodrama on Esther Chapter 1 with the women's shiur of Bet Yosef, Jerusalem. Miriam Pomeranz noted that this king showed much flexibility, throughout the development of events, and managed to hold on to his position till the end. That made me think about the profound truth of this statement: while everyone else is either elevated (Mordechai. Esther, the Jews) or brought low/eliminated (Vashti, Haman, his sons, his wife), Achashverosh remains in the same basic position througout. That is no small thing.

We know that Achashverosh is compared in the megillah symbolically to the King of Kings, God. So a lesson that emerges from this is: when everything in the world is disrupted, and some are brought low while others suddenly find themselves unexpectedly powerful - and this is inevitably the case in the bigger picture, no one remains on top forever - God alone remains on an even keel - always God, always king.

And a final thought, relating to the human Achashverosh, is that unlike Haman who is cold, ruthless, angry to the point of becoming completely unhinged, Achashverosh always remains very human. He is drunk, he is angry and humiliated, but he also has a soft heart when it comes to Esther and wants to give to her and love her. Therefore, though he agrees to Haman's desire to kill the Jews, he is ultimately not our enemy, even if he is a bit morally spineless. Having a soft heart is a praiseworthy thing in Jewish thought (apart from when going to war). So this too might be a reason why we must begin with Achashverosh. And this humanness might be also why God can use him as his emissary שליח for his divine plan - why he merits to have that happen, despite all of his flaws.


Along these lines, this year, I wrote this piece [1]:

Well my name’s Achashverosh, yes you like to put me down

But in Megillat Esther it is I who bestow the crown,

My hands are God’s hands, my eyes God’s eyes,

My self the throne of glory, all thinly disguised.

Can YOU call yourself the vessel of the divine?

Or do you see with small brains, drawing a thick line

between finite and infinite, human and transcendent

never realizing it’s all interdependant

Throughout the megilla, my face is a mask

And G-d looks through it as I do His task,

Fool I might be, but my soft heart’s circumcised,

While Haman, clever, ruthless – is, I believe, demised.

He’s pushing up the daisies, he's completely expired

He’s ceased to be, he’s definitely retired

He's a stiff, kicked the bucket! Admit it, come on!

He’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil!! THIS IS AN EX-HAMAN!


[1] The idea of our eyes being as God's eyes in this world comes from Recanati's interpretation of the verse "an eye for an eye", which I heard quoted by Yitzhak Attias. The final lines of the verse are a reference to the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. I find it amusing to imagine Achashverosh pining for the fjords.

Pointing to the Divine Soulmate

The talmud in Taanit 31a describes an incredible scene:

Ulla Bira'ah said in the name of R. Eleazar: In the days to come the Holy One, blessed be He, will hold a circle/dance for the righteous and He will sit in their midst in the Garden of Eden and every one of them will point with his finger towards Him, as it is said, And it shall be said in that day: Lo, this is our God, for whom we waited, that He might save us; this is the Lord for whom we waited, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation (Isaiah 25:9)

There is something so striking about this image of the righteous dancing in a circle and pointing at God. The word for "this", zeh, in its essence implies pointing, according to the rabbis. In the first commandment of the Torah, החודש הזה לכם = this month shall be for you the head of the months, the word hazeh (this) is taken by Rashi to mean that God is pointing at the moon.

Similarly in the second chapter of Genesis, when Adam, after searching in vain for his helpmate amongst the animals, finally awakes from his slumber and sees Eve, he exclaims (Gen 2:23):

This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

His use of the feminine word for this, zot, implies he is pointing to and identifying the woman, sensing viscerally that she is his true soulmate.

Just as Adam points to and identifies his beloved, so too the righteous dancing in the circle point to and identify God as their true "soulmate" so to speak. (The reference to God sitting in the Garden of Eden also helps us make the connection between the two disparate texts).

For anyone who goes beyond superficial worship, and is truly authentic about it, relationship with God is complex. But this is the work of faith, to come to recognise God as your soulmate with tremendous clarity: as clear as the moon in the sky.

Often it takes many years of wandering, lost, in various wrong directions before such a thing can occur. Just as it was Adam's time spent fruitlessly trying to find a match amongst the animals that led him to his clarity when finally meeting Eve, it is precisely this wandering that leads eventually to finding the path of truth, and feeling the absolute clarity of the discovery.

And if you are looking for an even higher level of spiritual functioning:

Michael Attias has pointed out that in a dance you move into the place occupied by your friend a moment ago. Thus, each of the dancers described in the talmud gets to see what God looks like from his friend's perspective.

So I would add to this: in this dance, we get to understand how God is a soulmate for another person, in a way different from our own. This is challenging. It truly is work on an elevated spiritual level. For this, someone can be called "righteous".

From the Heights to the Depths

If you were Joseph sitting in prison, what would you be thinking? Might it be:
"I don't understand this. My life makes no sense. The dreams I had in childhood felt so real and true - and they are further than ever from being realised. What am I doing here?"

But what if, unbeknowst to him at the time. every element in Joseph's life was being carefully crafted by a Divine hand in order to shape him into becoming the man of God he must become?

It's interesting to note that Joseph was not thrown into just any prison, but specifically into Pharaoh's jail. There he would meet many ministers and offficials who had fallen out of favour. One day they were at the top of the power food chain, the next they had been toppled into the pits of prison. 

Perhaps Joseph was being shown this sight deliberately. He learned repeatedly that a person could, upon the king's whim, go from fame to incaraceration. He himself had gone from the heights of favour twice - the first time, a teen beloved by his father, he ended up in a pit by the hand of his cruel brothers; the second, the trusted manager of all of Potiphar's household, he was falsely accused of rape and thrown into prison. The King of Kings, just like the mortal king, could do precisely that - whiplash you  מאיגרא רמה לבירא עמיקתא. We are not in control.

This lesson was branded upon Joseph's mind. Finally released, he knew to his core that no interpretation can be made without divine aid, and was able to be the איש אלהים that could carry out God's plan properly and without hubris.

p.s. adding something I heard after writing this - that Rebbe Nachman sees precisely this kind of symbolism in the dreidel. Everything turns around, revolving and changing from one thing to the next, from top to bottom and from bottom to top again. Connecting the Joseph story to Chanukah, the time at when it is read every year.

The Jonah Epiphany

While doing a Bibliodrama recently on the book of Jonah, I came to a tremendously important realisation that helped me in my attitudes towards myself, and can also help us have compassion on others:

G-d came to Jonah and said, "Go to Nineveh and tell them to repent." Had Jonah been a good little prophet, he would have said "Ok", gone to Nineveh, said "Repent...", they would have repented - and that would have been the end of the story. Very boring story, and no book of Jonah. It was only because he was a bad prophet, running away from his mission, going down...then down... then down some more... that we even have the marvelous story of Chapter 1  of Jonah, with the amazing sailors and the process that Jonah himself goes through, continuing in Chapter 2.

Those sailors came to know G-d because of Jonah. It is only due to Jonah's "malfunctioning" that they all experienced the crisis of the weird storm and rose to its existential challenge. Jonah himself gets to, in the eye of the storm, stand up and declare "I am a Hebrew", which may represent a very important moment in his life - a moment he would not have had, had he been a good boy.

The lesson is that even when we seem to ourselves to be dysfunctional, to be running away, we are still on a meaningful journey and still impacting the people around us, possibly even in a tremendous way, as Jonah did for those sailors, and as the book of Jonah does for us. We are writing chapters of the book of our life, even if we ourselves do not notice any plot and character development in particular.

G-d will send us opportunities from within that escaping place, to be and to do, and we get to choose there too, just as we always get to choose.

For me, quite frequently feeling like I am running away from who I am "meant" to be, this really helps. Perhaps there are some other people out there who feel similarly.

P.s. Jonah (in Hebrew "Yonah") means dove, and my friend Chaviva Speter also notes similar lessons we can learn from the dove in the flood. The first time that Noah sends the dove, it fails to land. The second time, it does not fly far, returning with an olive branch. Only the third time does it fly free and not return. Just as Jonah failed initially in his mission, so did the dove, and so do we. It's part of life and we must keep trying.

The Bearable Lightness of Being

Midrash Tanhuma on Ki Tisa:

Since he came down and approached the camp and saw the calf, the written letters flew away from them and were found to be heavy on Moshe's hands, immediately (Exodus 32:18) "And Moshe's anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hand"

Interesting. A bunch of letters chiseled into the stone allowed Moshe to be able to carry these huge stone tablets . In their absence, the tablets just became lumps of stone and Moshe dropped them (the Midrash changes our understanding of the verse that Moshe flung them down in anger; but see discussion here)

I see this Midrash as a metaphor for life. The tablets are our lives, with all of their challenges and burdens. The letters, our spiritual life - Torah learning, awareness and mindfulness, prayer and service of G-d. If we invest in keeping those letters nice and sharp, they can carry our lives for us and we can feel light and clear at every moment. If we let them drop and fade, whether out of laziness, anger or pain, we risk life becoming a heavy burden to schlep around. That's been my experience, anyway.


It reminds me of the Hassidic tale of the man who hitched a ride on a wagon. The man sat there with a huge bag on his knees. The driver said: "Why don't you put your bag down on the floor?" The hitchhiker replied: "You've been kind enough to take me, I don't need you to take my bag as well."

I think we can drop our bags - our baggage - and trust that if G-d can carry everything else, G-d can carry our bags for us too. We're not being helpful when we schlep all that stuff around, just foolish.

Thus, too, the ark was said to "carry its bearers" rather than the expected, that the bearers carried it.

So our job is to invest in our spiritual lives, and then they will carry us, G-d will carry us, our baggage, and all those things that currently feel so heavy. We have "wings of spirit", as Rav kook writes, and with them we can soar.