811 Write Your Own Megilah
A thought came to me this past Sunday morning, when a dear friend of mine turned 70 years old. While it is not well known, Rav Chaim Pilaggi brings down that there is a special reading be said when one turns 70 and 80 (on the Hebrew birthdate), from the same Zohar books that we read for a Brit Milah and Hanukat HaBayit.
So he gathered his friends and did it this past Sunday at the Torah Center. I told them that there was a Chatam Sofer that I recalled, about what one should do when he reaches 70 and 80. As it turns out, when I looked it up, I discovered that the full piece is actually on Megilat Esther, so I am sharing it with you.
In it he says that there’s a concept that people do not realize the miracles that happen to them. An open miracle like the splitting of the sea, we know. But, he says, Purim is the perfect example of a miracle that you only understand at the end of the story. He goes through it beautifully:
-First, Vashti was killed. After the fact, everyone knows that it was a set up for what would happen three years later when Esther was taken as Queen.
-Then, no one realized why Esther was taken.
- Bigtan and Teresh got upset, and Esther told it over in the name of Mordechai
-Then Haman became great…
Who knew that that would bring about all the miracles?
In his words, no one understood that the killing of Vashti was the same as Keriat Yam Suf.
That’s why we say, God does wonders alone. Only God knows about them. But, he says, it’s a Mitzvah for all people, when you get your 60s and 70s, to search from the beginning of your growth until the end, and study how things went. And then, tell your children so they will realize that acts of Hashem that are happening in their lives as well.
He says that that is what it means when David HaMelech says in Tehilim 71,16-18
אָבוֹא בִּגְבֻרוֹת אֲדֹנ-ָי ה׳ אַזְכִּיר צִדְקָתְךָ לְבַדֶּךָ׃
I will come I strength- referring to when a person is older
I will mention your wonders , alone ( when no one else knows what’s going on),
אֱלֹקים לִמַּדְתַּנִי מִנְּעוּרָי וְעַד־הֵנָּה אַגִּיד נִפְלְאוֹתֶיךָ
You taught me from my youth, and until this moment I will tell over your wonders.
וְגַם עַד־זִקְנָה ׀ וְשֵׂיבָה אֱלֹקים אַל־תַּעַזְבֵנִי עַד־אַגִּיד זְרוֹעֲךָ לְדוֹר לְכׇל־יָבוֹא גְּבוּרָתֶךָ
And when I become 70 and 80, don’t leave me, until I proclaim your strength to the generations (my children) for all of those people should know about Your greatness.
The Chatam Sofer says that this is the source for the concept that when a person reaches 70 and 80 years old, he should gather his children around his table and tell them the things that happened to him, that he didn’t realize were miracles at the time. At the time, it was only You God, that remembered them. צִדְקָתְךָ לְבַדֶּךָ
“But now, when I look back, I can tell my children all that happened until now.”
We had such a party for my father (may he live to be 120), when he turned 70, at which time he told us the following story, that we had not known. He graduated Yeshiva of Flatbush and had a scholarship to both Columbia University and Bar Elan University in Israel. He decided to go to Bar Ilan (My parents were in the same class and my mother went to Bar Ilan for a year. She has some wonderful stories about great rabbis that she met). But my father did not go, because there was a little Arab skirmish at the time, and his father was too nervous to send him. So, not knowing what to do, my father went to Chacham Baruch, and asked what he should do with for the year, now that he had deferred Columbia University for a year, thinking he was going to Israel.
Chacham Baruch advised him to go to Yeshiva University, which, at the time, had many Elder Mirrers on the faculty, from the old Mir Yeshiva in Europe. My father got close to some of them, and they taught him how to learn Gemara in depth, and that changed his life. He became a great Gemara learner. To this day, he still learns Gemara. And all of this is because of that little skirmish that happened in Israel. It changed the course of his life. Instead of going, right out of high school, to Columbia, he went to Yeshiva.
These are the type of things that you look back on life and see how they impacted you.
He was able to go to Yeshiva and then went on to Albert Einstein Medical School. He remained in a religious atmosphere the whole time.
Everyone should do this, when they turn 70 and 80, and until 120. They should look back on life and tell their children what happened to them.
And this is all connected to our story of Megilat Esther.
This is the Chatam Sofer’s point and Rav Wolbe says the same thing.
He says that everybody should write their own Megilat Esther. Esther wrote hers in order to teach us what it is supposed to look like. It is our responsibility, from Purim to write our own Megilat Esther. Have a wonderful day and Purim Sameach.