There is a wonderful חיוב coming upon us. The גמרא in megillah tells usמיחייב איניש לבסומי בפוריא עד דלא ידע בין ארור המן לברוך מרדכי. A man must get drunk on פורים to the point that he does not know the difference between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai”. While there are a myriad of opinions, leniencies and stringencies taken to this mitzvah, I think a deeper look will show us something special about פורים.
To begin, תוספות in מסכת מגילה quotes a ירושלמי that says this חיוב is not only to not be able to differentiate between Mordechai and המן, but also to not know the difference between ארורה זרש ברוכה אסתר ארורים כל הרשעים ברוכים כל הצדיקים. The ירושלמי is seemingly requiring not only to become much more intoxicated (perhaps this is the מקור for why extremely diligent bochurim are very מקפיד on 48 hours of פורים in ירושלים? Just saying) but also it broadens the scope of the level of cursed and blessed that we are dealing with and meant to forget about. Almost as if the two concepts should not exist in our jargon for those 24 hours.
What does it mean to not know the difference between cursed and blessed? Almost to not know the difference between good and bad or right and wrong. Was there ever a time in the Torah when people didn’t know the difference between good and bad…? Sounds a lot like the עץ הדעת טוב ורע, the forbidden tree in גן עדן that – at least according to the נחש – those who eat from it will become כאלקים, like God, יודעי טוב ורע. Which means that before one eats from the עץ הדעת, they don’t know the concepts of, or the difference between טוב and רע. This would lead us to the conclusion that on Purim we are meant to enter the space that אדם and חוה occupied in גן עדן before they ate from the tree. That place of connection with Hashem where we are meant to be in His garden, לעבדה ולשמרה, to work and to guard the garden and their connection to Hashem. Sounds nice and fluffy, but how do fermented grapes get us there?
I heard from Rabbi Fohrman in a class on the story of גן עדן, that perhaps the Torah tells us everything we need to know about Hashem to understand what אדם was trying to do. All we know about Hashem by the 3rd chapter of בראשית is that He creates things (7 days of creation), names them (ויקרא אלקים ליבשה ארץ ולמקוה המים קרש ימים, etc.), and decides if they are good or not (וירא אלקים כי טוב and לא טוב היות האדם לבדו). So, when the נחש tells חוה, והייתם כאלקים, he means you will be like God in those three ways, you already have the power of procreation, and אדם already named all the animals and חוה, once you eat from this tree, your eyes will open in a whole new way, and you will be able to decide what is good and what is not good. The problem with this transposition, is that Hashem is Objective Reality, there is no existence other than Him, so when Hashem decides that something is good or bad, that is its function of existence, like the Pasuk in דברים says ראה נתתי לפניך היום את החיים ואת הטוב ואת המות ואת הרע, God’s good is life, and God’s bad is death. When humans decide what is good or bad, what we are really saying is that I like this, or I don’t like this, it is all a subjective judgement.
On Purim we are meant to allow the wine to throw away our שכל, our intellect, the part of ourselves that decides. And what is a decision but a hard look at two options, the discarding of one which is deemed bad, and the choice to proclaim the chosen path as “Right”. And while decisions are necessary for daily life, Hashem tells us to take a day out of the year to discard our decision ability and to allow ourselves to fall into His Arms. For in truth, with all our decisive abilities we are all still subject to Hashem’s Decisions. And there are many times when something looks horrible from our point of view, but in reality, is a great thing, we just can’t see the whole picture. The entire megillah points to this as well, what seemed horrible was good and what seemed great was often terrible. Any Jew watching Haman build the gallows would say this is the worst thing that can happen. The גמרא in megillah says that אחשורוש giving his ring to Haman was better for the Jews that the dozens of נביאים who rebuked them, since that little action caused them to hit rock bottom and turn their eyes upward and daven to Hashem.
It is interesting to note the word that he גמרא chooses to say intoxicated, לבסומי, which is related to the word בשמים, which means something that is smelled. Perhaps the גמרא is giving us another dimension of how to get to this space of trusting Hashem to call the shots on what is good and what is bad. The sense of smell was the only one that was not affected by the sin of the tree. It says, ותרא האשה כי טוב העץ למאכל וכי תאוה הוא לעינים ונחמד העץ להשכיל (there’s that concept of שכל getting in the way again) ותקח מפריו ותאכל. She sees the tree, it looked splendid to the eyes, it was mentally pleasing to contemplate, she touches the fruit and she eats, and she also listened to the נחש. So, we have 4 of the 5 senses tainted in this episode, only smell was left out of the picture. Maybe the גמרא is telling us to “smell” our way back to Hashem, to connect to the ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים, that took place right before this story. That connection to Hashem that we have through the original breath that He gave us and that stays with us with every huff and puff that we take.
Freilechen Purim!!