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Synagogue Sermon

February 28, 1953

Purim's Third Moral (1953)

Parshat Zachor & Purim
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An eminent professor of the Hebrew University, who is an observant Jew, has developed a very quaint custom. It is based on the halakhah that Purim is observed throughout the world on the 14th day of Adar, but in those towns or cities which were walled since the days of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, Purim is observed on the 15th day of Adar. Hence, in Israel, while most of the country observes Purim tonight, 14 Adar, Jerusalem will begin its observance Sunday night, a day later, 15 Adar.Now, our professor manages every year to spend the 14th of Adar in Jerusalem, and then towards evening he takes the trip to Tel Aviv to spend the 15th there. In that manner, he manages to avoid the observance of Purim without violating the Halakhah!Why does he do this? Not because he is a fun-hating man of dour and cantankerous mien. Rather, on principle he objects to the hatred – against Haman and all anti-Semites – which we express on this festival.The wielding of the “groggers” and the stamping, underneath all the obvious fun, are expressions of vindictiveness. Thus, this morning we read the פרשת עמלק, in which we proclaim anew the commandment to obliterate and erase the memory of Amalek from the world.If this is so, is the professor right? Does Purim evoke hatred and aggressiveness against our enemies? And if so, doesn’t this open the floodgates to hatred against real people, here and now? And is not hatred unreservedly evil and morally corrupting? And if so, should we not cancel our festivities scheduled for this evening?No, I have no intention of calling off the reading of the Megillah tonight! On the contrary, our tradition teaches us that even if all the holidays will some day be nullified, Purim will always remain. The Megillah teaches:וימי הפורים האלה לא יעברו מתוך היהודים וזכרם לא יסוף מזרעם“These days of Purim will never depart from amongst the Jews and their memory will never cease from their descendants.”It is not at all true that it is absolutely wrong to hate. I am sor…
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Hands Off (1955)

One of the most interesting phenomena in antiquity appears to us moderns as ludicrous, almost comical, and yet it is one of the great truths of all time – one which affects us as much as it did them. This is the custom of worshipping the gods of your enemies. Often, a victorious nation would urge the vanquished to worship its gods, since they were presumably stronger. But more often in history, the victor would end up worshipping the gods of the defeated. Thus, the legions of Israel under Joshua defeated the nations of Canaan, yet later worshipped Baal. The Philistines, too, worshipped the gods of their conquered foes. In other words, there is a tendency to fight so hard with the enemy that you adopt his techniques and his way of life. Tomorrow’s sidra tells of the war between Israel and the pagan, idol-worshipping Amalek. Amalek’s main quality was achzarius – mercilessness, cruelty, sadism – attacking a tired, weary, unoffensive Israel. We are commanded to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek” (timcheh et zecher Amalek) precisely because its zecher is mercilessness. We must eradicate it so that, in fighting it, we do not contract it. That is, we must not worship the “god” of Amalek – mercilessness itself. In fact, almost all pagans of old shared this quality as part of their idolatrous culture. Therefore, as the Maggid of Dubno explained, when we are commanded to destroy cities that persist in idol-worship, we are told: “Let your hand touch nothing of theirs” – hands off. It is a dread disease; don’t contract this contagion while trying to cure it. That cry of “hands off,” of eradicating every vestige of the Amalekian quality, was a warning to Israel for all time: not to worship the gods of enemies. Anatole France, in Thaïs, tells of a monk who goes to convert the infamous courtesan Thaïs; she becomes pure and devout, while he becomes a rascal. This is not just fiction or ancient history. Dr. Landau, a researcher and scion of a distinguished family who survived th…
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Providing an Excuse for Haman (1975)

Anti-Semitism is never justified, no matter what the provocation, any more than it is right to be generally anti-Black because many muggers are Black or anti-Italian because the Mafia is all Italian. Yet unquestionably, it sometimes happens that the victim of bigotry invites the venom of the bigot, and evokes and stimulates enmity. When R. Simeon bar Yohai’s students, according to the Talmud (Meg. 12a), asked him, מפני מה נתחיבהו כל שוניהם של ישראל כוליה באותו דור, “Why were the Jews of the generation (of the Purim incident) found worthy of destruction,” he challenged them to offer a reason. They responded, מפהי שנהנו מסעודה של אותו רשע, “Because they consented to join in the great feast tendered by the evil Ahaseurus,” about which we read at the beginning of the Megillah. Indeed, Mordecai, according to the Midrash, warned them not to participate, so as not to give any excuse for Satan to accuse Israel of wrongdoing. The general idea of this passage is that man sometimes invites retribution and hatred. He too often “gives an opening to the mouth of Satan.”Of course, there is no excuse for Haman. Morally, we can never forgive a criminal of this sort. But if the victim incites him, dares him, seduces him, and then leaves himself defenseless before him, we can understand the criminal psychologically if not morally. In a word, Haman is always inexcusable, but we must never give an excuse to the Hamans of the world!That means that we Jews must follow a two-pronged attack against anti-Semitism: First, we must battle it on moral and all other grounds—political, economic, and social. And second, we must seek to prevent its application by avoiding any unnecessary provocations.Let us look at several interpretations by the Rabbis of the Purim incident, and see how we too may err by providing excuses for our contemporary Hamans.We mentioned the Talmudic passage about the whole near-tragedy being caused by the willingness of the Jews to join in the banquet of Ahaseurus. But why…
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