Anyone who has ever tried to cross Ocean Parkway in the middle of a weekday has probably seen a very strange phenomenon.
When the traffic light turns red for the cars driving on Ocean Parkway, the “walk” signal does not immediately come for the pedestrians wishing to cross. There is a delay for a number of seconds, in order to give cars in the turning lane a chance to finish turning before the pedestrians start crossing. This is very important because the pedestrians very often are unable to see the turning lane, and so they won’t see cars that are still turning after the light turned red.
The strange phenomenon is the sight of people who don’t wait for the signal to turn, who insist on crossing right when the light turns red. I imagine everyone living in our neighborhood sees this on a regular basis. Rather than wait ten seconds for the walk signal, people rush, putting themselves in danger.
Why do they do this? What is it that leads them to do something so insensible? Can those ten seconds possibly make any difference to them? Is there any possible explanation for not waiting an extra ten seconds to avoid even a small risk to life?
כל זה איננו שווה לי
We can gain some insight into this common tendency from an incident in Megillat Ester – one which actually forms the basis of the entire story.
Haman was furious because Mordechai would not bow to him. The king ordered the people to bow to him, and Haman expected everybody to obey, but there was one person who refused, and this got him agitated.
At one point in the story, Haman leaves the palace in a happy, jovial mood until he passes by Mordechai and notices that he wasn’t bowing. His mood changes, and he is enraged. He comes home and tells his family that although he is blessed with a large family and all the wealth and prestige he could ever want, כל זה איננו שווה לי – “all of this is worth nothing to me,” because Mordechai refuses to bow to him.
As we know, this frustration directly led to Haman’s downfall. He decided to have Mordechai hung and then to have all the Jews killed, as a result of which Ahashverosh became angry at him and ordered his execution, whereupon his position of second-in-command was assumed by none other than Mordechai.
Haman was, literally, the most powerful man in the world. He was the second-in-command to the king of the mightiest empire on Earth, and, as the story in the Megillah proves, until his plan was foiled he had Ahashverosh wrapped around his finger. He exerted full influence and control over Ahashverosh. Haman had more money, fame and power than anybody could ever wish for. And yet, amazingly, he was capable of uttering the words, כל זה איננו שווה לי – “all this is worth nothing to me.”
How is this possible? How can a man as rich, famous and powerful as Haman say that all his wealth and prestige are “worth nothing” because of one person who refused to bow to him? How can that one person’s defiance make everything he had worthless?
The answer is that we human beings have a natural tendency to be short-sighted, to see only the immediate here-and-now without seeing the larger picture. When Haman saw somebody refusing to bow to him, he saw nothing else. He did not look upon the thousands of other people who obediently bowed to him. He saw just one person – Mordechai. He saw not his fortune and his power, but that one Jew who stubbornly refused to respect him.
Haman & Human Nature
Haman is an extreme case, but he’s not the only case. We all do this. When something goes wrong, we get stuck in the moment. All we see is the problem, the inconvenience, the annoyance, the thing we don’t like right there and then, and we don’t see everything else – all our blessings and gifts, everything that is good with our lives.
This message is taught to us by the Gemara, which raises the question of where we can find an allusion to Haman in the Humash. Of course, the story of Purim happened a millennium or so after the end of the Humash, but the Gemara nevertheless assumed that there must be some hint to Haman already in the text of the Humash. The Gemara answers by citing Hashem’s question to Adam after he ate the forbidden fruit: המן העץ אשר ציוויתיך לבלתי אכול ממנו אכלת – “Did you eat from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?” (Bereshit 3:11). The word “ha’min” in this pasuk is spelled המן – just like the name Haman, and this is the allusion to Haman in the Humash.
What is the connection between Haman and the story of Adam partaking of the forbidden fruit?
Adam’s sin was, in a sense, the same as Haman’s foolish mistake. Like Haman, Adam had everything. He was placed in Gan Eden, where he had everything he could desire. Midrashim speak of angels serving Adam all the delicious foods a person could ever want. There was just one tree that was off-limits. Adam had everything at his immediate disposal – except that one tree. And he couldn’t handle it. He needed the fruit of that tree, too. Just like Haman, who brought about his own downfall because of that one person who refused to bow, Adam brought about his own downfall because of that one tree he could not have. And so the allusion to Haman in the Torah is Adam’s sin – the inability to see past what one is lacking and appreciate all that one has.
Which brings us back to Ocean Parkway. Why do people refuse to wait the extra ten seconds to ensure no cars are turning? Because they can’t see past the moment. When we are rushing, we don’t see the larger picture. We see only the thing we need to do, the place we need to get to, and the ticking clock. We fail to see beyond this moment of urgency.
And this is true of all our problems, frustrations and stresses in life. Like Haman, there is always that one “person” who refuses to “bow,” that one thing, or several things, that small handful of problems that we feel we need to have resolved for us to be happy. We all have countless blessings which we can and do enjoy, but like Haman, we get stuck in that small handful of issues. Our spouse has one or two annoying habits that make us dissatisfied in our marriage. Our children have issues in school or with friends that make us too worried or aggravated to enjoy raising them. Our job gets pressured and annoying. And so on and so forth. We all have our issues that we wish would just go away – just like Haman had his Mordechai problem, which he wanted to just go away.
Happy people are the ones who can see the larger picture. They don’t get consumed by the difficulty of the moment, by their rush to cross the street, because they have a healthy, broad perspective. They appreciate and enjoy their blessings, so the problems and issues which invariably come up don’t rattle them.
The contrast to Haman in the Megillah is Mordechai. The Megillah says that when Haman passed by Mordechai, לא קם ולא זע ממנו – Mordechai “did not stand up and was not intimidated by him.” Mordechai was completely unfazed. He was unaffected by Haman. The king ordered the people to bow to Haman, but Mordechai calmly refused. He saw past the royal decree and remained true to his principles. He did not get consumed by the moment, by the sight of all the people bowing. He kept his perspective, and when we look at life with a proper perspective, we are not fazed or rattled. We stay calm and happy.
The Altar’s Tears
Marriage is one of the most important areas of life where keeping perspective is critical. Husbands and wives need to be able to look past the moment, beyond the inevitable mistakes that are made, and see the broader picture.
The Gemara says that when a married couple gets divorced, the mizbe’ah (altar) in the Bet Ha’mikdash sheds tears. Obviously, this cannot be taken literally. An altar does not cry. So what does the Gemara mean when it speaks of the altar shedding tears?
I once heard it explained that the altar “cries” in the sense that divorce often results from the inability to learn from the altar’s example. The sacrifices offered on the altar serve to bring atonement. A person who made a mistake regrets what he did and brings an offering as an expression of his remorse and his desire to improve. The altar accepts the sacrifice, so-to-speak, looking past the individual’s mistake and seeing the broader picture. The failure to do this is, very often, the reason why marriages break down. Certainly, there are times when divorce is necessary and the best course of action, but in many instances, marriages fall apart because the husband and wife cannot see past trivial – or even perhaps not-so-trivial – issues. One bad habit, an occasional bad mood, an insensitive remark – blows the door open to resentment and hostility. The altar, the concept of forgiveness, is supposed to teach us to look past our spouse’s mistakes, to look past the current moment of tension, the hard feelings experienced on any given occasion – and put it into perspective. If husbands and wives can see the larger picture, appreciating all the good instead of focusing on the one “tree,” the one issue that disturbs them, they can enjoy a happy, fulfilling marriage.
One Friday night before Purim, as I was walking to shul with my two young boys, I suddenly noticed a tear in my pants. It was strange, because I didn’t remember doing anything that would rip the pants. It wasn’t a very large rip, and I knew that it would probably go unnoticed, so I just continued to shul.
When I returned home, my wife turned to the children and asked, “So, should we tell Daddy what happened to his parents?”
I looked at them in disbelief. “You know about my pants?!”
My wife explained that during the previous week, she and the kids were preparing to decorate the house for Purim, and they wanted to check how stilts would work inside a pair of pants. They took a pair of pants from my closet – which just happened to be from my best suit – and tried it out. As they were pulling out the stilts, they made a small rip in the pants.
At that moment, I did one of the most impressive things I had done that whole year: I laughed.
In all honesty, I am not the kind of person who always stays calm and never gets upset. This is something that I continue to work towards improving. But on that Friday night, I got it. I did it just right. The best thing to do in that situation is to appreciate the humor rather than be bothered by the rip in the pants. In the grand scheme of things, a small tear in my best suit pants is not going to affect my life much – unless, like Adam and Haman, I allow that one little issue to consume me. The right thing to do was to see the larger picture, to appreciate the humor of a family trying out stilts in suit pants in preparation for Purim, rather than get worked up about pants with a rip.
This is one of the most important keys to happiness. ולא זע ממנו – seeing the broader picture so that one “tree,” that one problem, or that one person, does not rattle us.
Defining Our Lives
I once read about a scientific study that was done on the subject of happiness. The researchers assembled two groups of people – one group of people whom they could formally describe as “happy,” and another whose members were determined to be “unhappy.” They discovered that both groups of people were equally bothered when bad things happened to them. The difference between the two groups was in their reaction to the good things in their lives. The happy people were the ones who received greater joy and satisfaction from their blessings. The good things they enjoyed defined their lives, not the bad things. And so when they experienced adversity, as much as they were bothered by it, they did not allow it to consume them.
Haman said כל זה איננו שווה לי – he defined his life based on Mordechai, that one person who would not bow, instead of appreciating all the prestige he enjoyed. Happiness is experienced when we define our lives based on its positive elements, not based on our problems.
Happiness does not depend on living a life free of problems and hardships. Everyone has problems and hardships, but we can still be happy. We need to define our lives based on all the blessings we are given, rather than the difficulties we face.
Our natural tendency is to get caught up in the moment. When we feel aggravated, pained or pressured, we end up defining our lives based on that experience. And this is why happiness can be so difficult to experience. If we define our lives based on our problems, then we aren’t happy. We need to see the broader picture, all the “trees” that we have, rather than the “tree” we cannot have, and then we will live with genuine joy.
The Megillah describes Haman’s contempt for Mordechai with the term, ויבז בעיניו. The word ויבז appears also in a different context – in reference to Haman’s ancestor, Esav. When Esav sold his birthright, forfeiting the eternal privileges he would have received through this status, the Torah says, ויבז עשו את הבכורה – “Esav scorned the birthright.” At that moment of hunger and fatigue, Esav saw only the pot of lentils that Yaakov was cooking. He did not look beyond the moment, beyond his current predicament, to take his entire future into account. And this was Haman’s mistake, too. He saw Mordechai refusing to bow, and this frustration blinded him to everything else. Happiness becomes elusive when we focus our attention exclusively on the moment, on what we are experiencing right now, when we see only the difficulties without appreciating the larger picture.
The Special Joy of Purim
This is, to a large extent, what the Purim celebration is about – changing our perspective, directing our attention to all that is good about ourselves and our lives.
Ester did not think she had the capacity to approach the king unannounced and save the Jewish People. She assumed she was powerless. Her perspective changed when Mordechai encouraged her and assured her that she was capable. This encouragement allowed Ester to find the strengths within her that she had never known existed.
This kind of encouragement underlies one of the most important mitzvot of Purim – the obligation of מתנות לאביונים, giving charity to the poor. I collect money for מתנות לאביונים and distribute it to needy families in our community, and it is hard to describe the expressions on the faces of the members of these families when I present them with $1,500 that I raised for them. It lifts their spirits, energizes them, injects them with a dose of happiness that they so desperately need. They are given a new perspective on their lives, that they don’t only struggle and suffer, that they have blessings and reasons for genuine joy.
Nobody is better at this than our community. When I started raising money for מתנות לאביונים, I sent out a few text messages to people inviting them to participate in this important mitzvah. The response was crazy. Within minutes, people sent back messages such as, “Sure, write me down for $180”; “I’ll be happy to donate $500.” This went on and on. Later, when I wrote to these generous donors to thank them for their contributions, most of them wrote back something to the effect of, “Thank you for thinking of me.” They were thanking me – for asking them to donate money. This is what our community does. We know how to help bring people up when they are down, how to bring joy and encouragement to those who so desperately need it.
And this is so much of what Purim is all about. It’s about broadening our perspective to see all that is good within ourselves, all our strengths and accomplishments, and all that is good about our lives and our world. This is the special joy of Purim. We take a step back to appreciate and enjoy all the goodness that abounds so that we can be like Mordechai – לא זע ממנו – and not break down in the face of adversity. This is the message of מתנות לאביונים – showing people in need that there is hope, there are people helping them, they are not alone, their situation is not all that bad. We are all “poor” in one sense or another, in that we have things in our lives that bother us. Purim gives us perspective, calling upon us to see everything that is beautiful about our lives, and this perspective is what makes our lives happy.
The Purim celebration, then, teaches us about how to attain happiness. We live happy lives when we live with the Purim perspective, when we stay focused on the larger picture without getting caught up in the problems and challenges we face. Let us learn from the Mordechai’s example of לא זע ממנו, of not being impacted by the “Hamans” in our lives, by our struggles and headaches. Let us never lose sight of all the beautiful “trees” that we are able to enjoy in our own “Gan Eden,” without getting bogged down by what we cannot have. If we live with this perspective, then our lives will be filled with true happiness, and the special joy of Purim will remain within us throughout the entire year.