Aanstaande donderdag is een vastendag, de Vastendag van Esther. Vanaf ‘s ochtends vroeg tot aan de nacht eten wij niet en drinken wij ook niet, zelfs geen water.

Waarom wordt deze dag de Vastendag van Esther genoemd.

Omdat in oorlogstijd het een gewoonte is om te vasten om daarmee om G-ds genade te smeken. Soldaten mogen niet vasten. In de tijd dat het Poerimverhaal zich afspeelde moest elke man, vrouw en kind zich verdedigen tegen de moordelijke aanval van elke Perziër. In wezen was elke Jood een soldaat en moest hij zijn eigen leven verdedigen. Derhalve kon niemand vasten. Zodoende was er toen maar één persoon die wel kon vasten en dat was Esther die veilig in het paleis vertoefde. Vandaar dat de Vastendag naar haar is vernoemd

Het is nu ook helaas oorlog. Onze soldaten mogen niet vasten. Zij hebben hun volledige kracht nodig om hun levensgevaarlijke taken uit te voeren. Tegelijkertijd hebben ze ons nodig om het G-ddelijke aspect mee te laten spelen en hen te beschermen zodat zij hun missies met succes kunnen voltooien. Zij rekenen op ons, zodat het hele Joodse volk, waar ook ter wereld, dit jaar een werkelijke Poerim zal mogen meemaken. Wij gaan vasten zodat het kwaad dat zich duizenden jaren geleden in het huidige Iran afspeelde nooit meer de kop zal kunnen opsteken. Elke persoon die vast en daarmee toenadering tot G-d bewerkstelligt, biedt een stukje bescherming en succes aan het IDF. Ik doe mee! Jij ook?

Bracha Heintz

chabadutrecht.nl

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In משפטים כא, ג-ט”ו, we learn about intentional and unintentional murder. The intentional murderer is given the death penalty, whereas the unintentional one needs to flee to one of the ערי מקלט.

Until פרשת משפטים the books of בראשית and שמות are filled with stories. Now all of a sudden, פרשת משפטים shifts the subject to many civil laws. The truth is however that every law evolves from a story. And so, we must wonder where we find an intentional and an unintentional murder in the Torah.

Finding intentional murder is unfortunately not so hard. Right at the beginning of history we find קין killing his brother הבל out of jealousy. The generation of נוח is full of חמס, the Torah tells us and actually uses that word. And then there are wars. שמעון and לוי kill a whole city while their sister Dinah is being held as a hostage. The Egyptians are seasoned killers up until throwing babies in the Nile. The list goes on.

The challenge however is to find a case of unintentional murder. The choice of words that the Torah uses in פרשת משפטים to describe both types of murder will help us uncover the secret: משפטים כא, יג

: וַֽאֲשֶׁר֙ לֹ֣א צָדָ֔ה וְהָֽאֱלֹקים אִנָּ֣ה לְיָד֑וֹ וְשַׂמְתִּ֤י לְךָ֙ מָק֔וֹם אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָנ֖וּס שָֽׁמָּה

When it comes to the unintentional murder, the Torah describes him as having not done it out of malice ַֽאֲשֶׁר֙ לֹ֣א צָדָ֔ה.צָדָ֔ה means malice.

However, when the Torah describes the intentional murderer כא:יד it says

וְכִֽי־יָזִ֥ד אִ֛ישׁ עַל־רֵעֵ֖הוּ לְהָרְג֣וֹ בְעָרְמָ֑ה מֵעִ֣ם מִזְבְּחִ֔י תִּקָּחֶ֖נּוּ לָמֽוּת

יזד is likeבמיזיד = on purpose.

These are unusual words. Words that we rarely encounter in תנ”ך. But we did find them somewhere. And guess what, that somewhere is exactly the story from where the laws are coming from. This all takes us back to פרשת תולדות where the Torah will insinuate perhaps the greatest lesson on חינוך (education) of all times: how you can make a child live and thereby save him and all his descendants or ח”ו the opposite.

All this brings us to עשו and יעקב. It’s a soup story, כה: כט בראשית

ַ וַיָּ֥זֶד יַֽעֲקֹ֖ב נָזִ֑יד וַיָּבֹ֥א עֵשָׂ֛ו מִן־הַשָּׂדֶ֖ה וְה֥וּא עָיֵֽף

and it describes אבינו יעקב as cooking up , ויזד יעקב, a soup, a dish that needs to simmer for a while. עשו is tired and hungry. He wants the soup immediately and carelessly sells his firstborn right. יעקב gave up on עשו. He was the bad guy and יעקב made no attempt to bring him closer, to awaken his G-dly soul.

Instead of awakening עשו to the importance of his firstborn right, he helped his brother despise it by snatching it away from him. יעקב didn’t believe in עשו and most people didn’t. יעקב was destined to marry רחל and עשו was destined to marry לאה, but that too didn’t happen. And a generation later, it was דינה the daughter of לאה that could have married עשו, but that is something that יעקב also didn’t allow to happen. And rightfully so. Who is going to give his daughter in marriage to an evil man in the hope that she will make him do teshuva?

And yet each of these episodes killed עשו a little more. Every time he was told: ”You are doomed” “You are not worthy” Guess how that made him feel. Didn’t that bring him even lower and deeper into his own abyss? עשו died slowly an emotional and spiritual death. You know what happens when nobody believes in you, especially not your dearest family members, your own flesh and blood. Well, what happens is that you are left alone in this big wide world, alone with your struggles and without thinking that a positive future is at all possible for you.

And all of this was of course emphasized with the fact that יעקב took the blessings which were meant for עשו. Also, here we see the words:

וְעַתָּה֙ שָׂא־נָ֣א כֵלֶ֔יךָ תֶּלְיְךָ֖ וְקַשְׁתֶּ֑ךָ וְצֵא֙ הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה וְצ֥וּדָה לִּ֖י צָֽיִד (כתיב צידה)

When יצחק requests עשו to go hunting. Notice that the קריא is צָֽיִד but the כתיב is צידה, just like in משפטים. When the blessings get stolen, עשו feels hopeless and totally rejected and he cries bitterly as his last chances of hope and spiritual bliss are being taken from his life. עשו is hurt, very hurt. His pain soon changes, as is often the case in terrible agony and anger and he vows to kill his brother as soon as his father will have left this world. An intentional murder, that will be cooking וַיָּ֥זֶד and be premeditating for a long time, but in the end will never happen.

רבקה tells her son יעקב to flee in order to escape the danger, Shouldn’t the murderer be sent away instead of the victim? But if you look deeper, you will see that רבקה sensed all too well how badly עשו needed to stay close to his father. But even deeper than this, the Sefas Emes discovers that יעקב needed to flee for himself because he killed his brother mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It was unintentional, and therefore he is the one that needs to flee in order to seek a place of refuge.

And so we see that each journey that we have to go through in life, whether it is a traveling journey or a mental one may be caused by others or by circumstances, but really every step of that journey was sent to us by Hashem so that we would embark on that journey and develop and learn skills that we never would have learned otherwise. יעקב had plenty of difficulties from his exile to לבן, all due seemingly by a brother who wanted to kill him, But in reality every step of that journey was necessary for Yakov’s spiritual development, a תיקון for having killed his big brother unintentionally.

There is one main character in the story that we haven’t discussed yet. He is the champion of חינוך and that is יצחק, the old man who cannot see anything. Well, he may not have seen certain physical things, but how to go about חינוך was crystal clear to him. He is the one that kept עשו close and intended to bless him. He is the one who suffered from the smell of the incense that Esav’s concubines would burn to their idols. But he was a smart man and kept his mouth shut. He tried to be מקרב Esav. He knew what his oldest son was up to, but he also believed that keeping עשו close and blessing him would make him believe in himself and open the way for a better future.

The same idea is brought to us in Megilas esther:

אסתר ב:ז

וַיְהִ֨י אֹמֵ֜ן אֶת־הֲדַסָּ֗ה הִ֤יא אֶסְתֵּר֙ בַּת־דֹּד֔וֹ כִּ֛י אֵ֥ין לָ֖הּ אָ֣ב וָאֵ֑ם וְהַנַּֽעֲרָ֤ה יְפַת־תֹּ֨אַר֙ וְטוֹבַ֣ת מַרְאֶ֔ה וּבְמ֤וֹת אָבִ֨יהָ֙ וְאִמָּ֔הּ לְקָחָ֧הּ מָרְדֳּכַ֛י ל֖וֹ לְבַֽת:

When the Megila describes how Mordechai took in Esther the orphan he did not just feed her and offer her shelter, but he also taught her to have emuna in Hashem וַיְהִ֨י אֹמֵ֜ן אֶת־הֲדַסָּ֗ה. And above all, he taught her to believe in herself. The result is Esther the Queen, a Jewish woman in a key position, who has to struggle in a marriage with a non-Jew and saves her whole nation successfully.

And so, we see that one of Esav’s son, אליפז the father of עמלק was sent by his father to kill Yakov while he is escaping. אליפז encounters his uncle but cannot bring himself to kill him. He steals all of Yakov’s possessions because עני חשוב כמת. It wasn’t easy for עשו to disobey his father as we know thatאב ואם כיבוד was taken very seriously in Esav’s family. So, what gave אליפז the fortitude to restrain himself from murdering יעקב? Again, it was יצחק whom we know kept his grandson אליפז on his lap, so close to him. And this, my friends is what saved the whole Jewish nation. Had אליפז killed יעקב, we wouldn’t be here to tell the story.

We, the seminary girls, are the future מחנחות of עם ישראל. Whether we will be teaching in schools, be counselors in camps, educate our own children or be משפיע on others in any way, the key to the future of עם ישראל is in our hands. We are the ones that will believe in each human being. We believe that a mistake is something a person did, but it is not who he is. We need to give space to each child or adult and let him be where he is at. Understand him, ignore the bad smells and like יצחק, keep him close and especially believe in him so he can believe in himself and rise to his full potential.

This is חינוך (education)!