Parshat Terumah - 5764

“When Adar Arrives, Happiness Increases” -
“May their Plots be Overturned Upon Them”

This past week, we celebrated Rosh Chodesh Adar, the Beginning of the Month of Adar. In the middle of this coldest of recent winters, we remember that CHAZAL announced the principle that when this month begins, happiness should renew itself for the Jewish People. The simple explanation of this happiness is that it stems from the Holiday of Purim, that celebrates the fact that in ancient Persia, the Jewish People was saved from the genocidal plot of an Amaleki descendant, the wicked Haman.

There is a Talmudic principle that before a punishment is administered, the remedy to ward it off is placed by Heaven into the World. Hopefully this is true with regard to the current Rosh Chodesh as well. For this year, we face another such plot, orchestrated by another rich man, Mel Gibson, an “Amaleki descendant,” the son of a “Holocaust Denier,” and in that category himself, who has created out of his own funds, a movie that portrays the last twelve hours of Jesus. And it follows the lines of the Gospel, Matthew, that is harshest against the Jews. The present pope not surprisingly commented after seeing the movie, “It is as it was.” May Gibson’s plot be overturned upon himself, and upon the pope, as was the plot of Haman overturned by HaShem, in ancient days.

The movie, “The Passion of ...,” is to be released on February 25, “Ash Wednesday.” In his great moderation, Gibson is supposed to have edited out a line spoken by a Jewish character, “His blood be upon us and on our children;” (Matthew 27:25), a line that has provoked countless murders over the centuries of innocent Jews.

This movie may break the bonds of “friendship” between the Christian Fundamentalists and the State of Israel. Rabbi Berel Wein, AMUS”H, always cautioned us to be wary of their seeming close attachment, suspecting their ulterior motive, to convert the Jews on the occasion of the supposed “Second Coming.” During production, the character who portrays Jesus was struck twice by lightening. But in the manner of Bilaam ignoring being spoken to by his donkey, he shrugged it off.

Being a natural pessimist myself, I see this as a very dangerous phenomenon for the Jewish people. But a friend has offered the opinion that perhaps it for the best for the Jews that they know where they really stand, even in America, where Jews have experienced greater “success” than at any other time in the last 2,000 years of Exile.

Another event that is currently taking place on the world stage is the opening of the case brought by our “cousins, “ the Palestinians, against the State of Israel, in the World Court at the Hague, for construction of its Security Fence. In these days of modern technology, it is not clear what the value of such a fence would be, but it is not very likely that the justices on the World Court will see Israel’s point of view.

Our weapons against Haman were the great heroes Queen Esther and Mordechai HaYehudi, Mordechai the Jew. But even greater than their heroism as individuals, was the fact that they triggered in the Jewish People a spirit of repentance and renewed acceptance of the Torah, as we read in the Megillah (Esther 9:27), “The Jews fulfilled and undertook upon themselves and upon their descendants and upon all those associated with them, etc .” Where these fulfillments and undertakings are interpreted by CHAZAL as referring not only to the laws of the new holiday, Purim, but also to the entire “Torah She-B’al Peh,” the Oral Tradition of the Talmud, that gives the full explanation and sets the path of development of the “Torah She B’Ketav,” the Written Law, that Moshe received at Sinai.

But there is another Holiday closely identified with happiness, and indeed called the “Time of our Happiness;” that is, of course, Sukkot. The question has arisen as to the nature of this “happiness.” Two approaches have been suggested, and both are true. One is that it refers to the joy of the harvest, as Sukkot is called “The Holiday of the Harvest.” The second is that Sukkot follows hard upon Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement,” the Holiest of Days, on which one’s personal sins, and the sins of the nation are wiped away, if we have repented, and we are given a new beginning in the Eyes of HaShem.

The Parshah read this Shabbat records the explosion of happiness and generosity that caused the People of Israel to donate from their wealth to the Mishkan far beyond the call of duty when they learned that their repentance with regard to the Golden calf had been accepted by HaShem.

Would that we had, or would discover such leadership in our midst as Esther and Mordechai and earlier, as Moshe Rabbeinu himself, to focus our attention properly on repentance, and to maintain our courage in the face of growing world-wide anti-Semitism. Then we would be busy donating with joy and a more legitimate “passion” to the “Mishkan,” strengthening Jewish causes as were our fathers, and building our true “Security Fence,” the Holy Temple, that would not need the approval of the nations.

Rabbi Pinchas Frankel

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