Tag: Megillas Esther

In this week’s parshah the Torah teaches the halachos of an ir hanidachas – a city where a majority of the inhabitants serve avodah zarah. The halacha is that all of the city’s inhabitants are killed and all of their possessions are burned.

On Purim we read Megillas Esther twice, once by night and once by day. It is uncertain what the nature of the obligation is.

Why is Purim eternal? I would suggest that Purim is the prototype of the End of Exile, and as such will remain forever linked to the Era of Mashiach that will occur after the Final Redemption. Therefore, Purim will be part of that entire period at the culmination of history.

I had planned to respond this week to the letter from the UCLA student (which appeared in the March 11 issue in response to a letter the week before from an elderly Holocaust survivor), but so many e-mails have reached my desk that I decided to devote yet one more column to reader reaction.

Someone asked me what we should have in mind on Purim. I would answer with one word: Amalek. You want simcha? You want geulah? Think Amalek!

Klal Yisrael. All of Israel. One people. One community. One.

Purim is the "topsy-turvy" day of the Jewish calendar - the day of v'nahafoch hu. Boys and girls wear costumes, and we expect children to make noise in shul. It is a festive and happy day. But Purim may also be the day a Jewish boy or girl takes his or her first drink and the first step toward alcohol abuse.

"Mishenichnas Adar marbim b'simcha" - with the coming of Adar simcha increases. What is the biggest simcha? When God saves us.

Remember. The commandment to remember reverberates throughout the Torah, starting with the Exodus from Egypt, continuing to Receiving the Torah and finally climaxing in the weekly remembrance of the Sabbath itself. Embedded in the six remembrances is the commandment to, "remember what Amalek did to you on the way" (Devarim 25:17).