805 Megilat Esther 6.1
We are now in chapter six of Megilat Esther, where it tells us that Ahashverosh loses his sleep. He has nothing to do, so he calls in his scribe to read from his history book, and finds that Mordechai once saved his life but was never rewarded. So he decides to reward him now. It’s the middle of the night, and Haman is waiting outside, to get permission to kill Mordechai. It’s the beginning of the turnaround, where Ahashverosh tells Haman himself to parade Mordechai through the streets.
The Gemarah in Masechet Megilah (16,a) says that Haman then went to find Mordechai, who was sitting and learning with his students. They were learning the laws of Kemitsah, a flour offering, in which flour has to be scooped out. They were learning this law because it was the 16th night of Nisan (Although we celebrate in Adar, because that is when the lottery came out, and that is when everything turned around , the events actually occurred in Nisan). Haman asked what they were doing. When Mordechai told him what they were learning,
Haman responded, “Your one scoop has pushed off the 10,000 silver coins that I gave.”
What’s the message here?
Why was Mordechai learning this topic? If anything, one could say that they should be learning the laws of Kiddush Hashem.
The rabbis teach us two very important lessons from this Gemarah.
The first is a tremendous lesson in Emuna and Bitachon. Mordechai was learning the laws of the Bet HaMikdash because he believed they’d be back in the Bet HaMikdash. He had no fears.
Secondly, Our rabbis teach us that Mordechai was teaching the Jewish people a secret for what to do in times of trouble: Sit down and toil in Torah. That is the biggest zechut that we can have. This is something that the Jewish people have been doing throughout history when in trouble. In the concentration camps, they had underground Batei Midrash.
Our rabbis ask a famous question:
The Jewish people said Na’Aseh V’Nishmah, we will do and we will listen, we accept without asking. Yet when the time came for them to accept the Torah, God had to, so to say, hold a mountain over them, because they didn’t want to do it. So what was going on?
Why didn’t they want it?
The Midrash answers that they accepted the written law, But the Oral Law, the Gemarah, which takes a lot of toil and hard work, and breaking your head over it, was too much work. It was too hard, so God had to force them to take it.
Then, in the times of the Megilat Esther it says that they re-accepted and reaffirmed the Oral Low, because they saw Mordechai and his guidance, they saw their rabbi leading them. First he told them not to go to the party, and they didn’t listen to him. And then they saw how he didn’t bow down, and they thought he was a threat to them. But really, he saved the Jewish people They did not realize the power of Mordechai until the final climax, where he told them to go and learn. When they questioned him, because of the trouble that they were in, they saw that he was not flinching.
In the end, Mordechai was paraded around on the horse and everything turned around.
And on the night before, he had faith in Hashem. He took the boys, and learned with them. That is our lesson.
In troubling times, like we are in today, that is what we have to do.
We have to strengthen ourselves in learning, strengthen ourselves in prayer, strengthen ourselves in Emuna, and B’ezrat Hashem, that will bring our Yeshua.
Amen.