Har Sinai, Purim

1
CALEV BEN DOR
Har Sinai, Purim the Nature of Obligation
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And they stood under the mount R. Abdimi b.
Hama b. Hasa said This teaches that the Holy
One, blessed be He, overturned the mountain above
them like an inverted cask, and said to them,
'If you accept the Torah, 'tis well if not,
there shall be your burial.' R. Aha b. Jacob
observed This furnishes a strong protest against
the Torah why is it obligatory?. Said Raba,
Yet even so, they re-accepted it in the days of
Ahasuerus, for it is written, the Jews
confirmed, and took upon themselves etc.
i.e., they confirmed what they had accepted
long before. (Shabbat 88a)
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Since the Holy One held the mountain over them
like a tub when He came to give them the Torah,
they were forced ("anusim") to receive the
Covenant. Now the Torah says with regard to a
case of rape, "She shall be his wife, he may
never send her away" (Devarim 2229). Thus, the
Holy One "raped" them, and thereby they remain
His forever and cannot be sent away. (Maharal
Gur Aryeh, Shemot 1719)
The moral imperative is imposed on me that is,
it originates not with me, but with the claim
that the Other makes on me. I am free either to
accept, to ignore, or even to deny the claim. The
idea of Torah or death means the only
alternative to accepting the Torah, to accepting
the claim the Other makes on me, to looking at
the face of the Other in its infinity, is
ultimately violence. (Lawrence Kaplan, Emmanuel
Levinas on Freedom and Constraint in the
Revelation of the Torah)
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that it Purim will stand forever this is the
greatness of Purim beyond the other festivals of
the Jews, in that they will be nullified and the
festival of Purim will remain forever. (Yalkut
Mishlei 9)
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All of the books of the Nevi'im and all of the
Ketuvim are destined to be nullified in the
messianic era, except for the Scroll of Esther
it exists like the five books of the Torah and
the laws of the Oral Torah, which are never
annulled. (Rambam, Hilkhot Megilla 218)
2
the comparisons between the Torah and Esther can
be explained in a simple way. The former
encapsulates the manner in which history
impressed itself upon the Israelite community,
but the latter accords better with the Jewish
experience of history in the Talmudic period and
afterwardsEsther depicts history as an absurd
drama in which intrigue, manipulation and pure
chance apparently determine whether the Jewish
people will be preserved or destroyed. (David
Hartman, A Living Covenant)
The recognition of the hidden divine hand in all
this is the insight which shows the Jews have
come of age. They have reaccepted the covenant of
Sinai on the 'new' terms, knowing that
destruction can take place, that the sea will not
be split for them, that the Divine has
self-limited and they have additional
responsibilities. (Yitz Greenberg A Voluntary
Covenant)
Israel at the foot of Sinai was engulfed in the
historic theophany they heard the voice of God
directly in the great revelation of Torah. Of
course, under the impress of such revelation,
they accepted the Torah they would have been
insane not to When then do we accept Torah out
of freedom, and when is our loyalty praiseworthy
and our kabbalat ha-torah valid? The answer is
When God is neither present nor absent when He
neither conceals nor reveals Himself And it is
this situation, that of "neither here nor there,"
that prevailed during the Purim episode. (Norman
Lamm)
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17 On the thirteenth day of the month Adar, and
on the fourteenth day they rested, and made it a
day of feasting and gladness. 18 But the Jews
that were in Shushan assembled together on the
thirteenth day, and on the fourteenth and on the
fifteenth day they rested, and made it a day of
feasting and gladness. 19 Therefore the Jews of
the villages, that dwell in the unwalled towns,
make the fourteenth day of Adar a day of gladness
and feasting, and a good day, and of sending
portions one to another. 20 And Mordecai wrote
these things, and sent letters to all the Jews
that were in all the provinces of the king
Ahasuerus, both near and far, 21 to enjoin them
that they should keep the fourteenth day of Adar,
and the fifteenth day, yearly, 22 the days in
which the Jews had rest from their enemies, and
the month which was turned from sorrow to
gladness, and from mourning into a good day that
they should make them days of feasting and
gladness, and of sending portions one to another,
and gifts to the poor. 23 And the Jews took upon
them to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had
written unto them 24 because Haman the son of
Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the
Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy
them, and had cast pur, that is, the lot, to
discomfit them, and to destroy them 25 but when
he came before the king, he commanded by letters
that his wicked device, which he had devised
against the Jews, should return upon his own
head and that he and his sons should be hanged
on the gallows. 26 Wherefore they called these
days Purim, after the name of pur. Therefore
because of all the words of this letter, and of
that which they had seen concerning this matter,
and that which had come to them, 27 the Jews
ordained, and took upon them, and upon their
descendants, and on all such as joined themselves
to them, so as it should not fail, that they
would keep these two days according to this
writing, and according to the appointed time
there, every year 28 and that these days should
be remembered and kept throughout every
generation, every family, every province, and
every city and that these days of Purim should
not fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of
them perish from their seed.
Within Ravas response is the subtle claim that
theological arguments for the authority of the
Halacha do not matter, What matters, he suggests,
is the power of tradition to make Jews
Jewishcould his implication in choosing a text
from Esther where God is absent be that Gods
authority in the creation of the covenant is
secondary to the spiritual needs and desires of
the people? Could it be that Rava was suggesting
in part that the reason for our communal
acceptance of the covenant must not be a
theological argument, but the deep seated sense
that without a unique pattern of Jewish behavior
we will ultimately blend into the larger culture
that surrounds us note that one central theme
of Esther is assimilation (Daniel Gordis)