Chapter 3 of Megilat Esther starts off with the words, “After these things…the king lifted up Haman.”
What does “these things,” refer to?
There is a famous Gemarah that says that after Bigtan and Teresh planned to kill Ahashverosh, and Mordechai heard the discussion, and it was written down in the book, only then did God uplift Haman.
The Gemarah said, “Kadma Refuah L’Makah
First God brought the healing, then he brought the disease.” This is how God deals with the Jewish people. He doesn’t work this way with the goyim. For the goyim, first He brings the disease, and then He creates the antidote.
In Megilat Esther, as we mentioned, Mordechai needed to save the king’s life, in order for the whole story to happen. That was the antidote.
What is the kindness in creating the antidote before the healing?
There are two ways to punish a person.
You can give him a bad tasting food, but know that immediately afterwards there’s a way to offset the bad taste
(like with milk). The bad tasting food was necessary for whatever reason, but the milk was ready to go. The goal is not to make the person suffer but rather, to get the person to drink the milk.. he just had to go through the process.
But if you don’t like someone, you give him something bad, and then only afterwards, try to figure how to get him out of it. The goal wasn’t to get him out of it.
Hashem will never put us in a situation unless the antidote is already prepared.
I remember a story from when I was in Israel, that the Israeli
Mossad poisoned an agent from another country. It was traced back to them, but they were able to give him the antidote, and he was healed. This means that every time these secret agencies poison people, they have the exact recipe to undo it. That is the way it works. It’s not really done for the reasons mentioned above, but the concept is that there is a certain comfort involved when you know that for whatever poison is being taken, the antidote is already available. When we have problems, we don’t always think like this.
We worry about what has to be created in order to get us out of the problem. But nothing has to be created. The antidote has already been prepared.
We just have to be zoche to find it.
This is a little easier to accept. People have diseases, or problems, and then it happens that some drug trial comes up. Wow! The person lives for years and years. I have heard more than ten stories of doctors saying they don’t know what to do. But then somehow some experimental drug or trial comes along and Baruch Hashem, the person is fine.
We have to believe that it’s this way in every case. Whatever the disease or challenge, there are constantly new things coming up.
I recently met with Rabbi Tzvi Goldman of the organization called Taharenu, which deals with medical challenges that interfere with people having children. It’s beyond the basic complexities. They get 4,000 calls a month, from all over the world. He said that every few months there are things that they didn’t know about 10 or 15 years ago, when people couldn’t have children because of certain medical/halachic challenges.
He said that just as iPhones keep getting updated, medicine keeps getting updated. We have to believe that all those things are here already. We don’t have to create them. God knows about them before He gives the problem. This is a tremendous hizuk, which is the hizuk of this pasuk in Megilat Esther.
After these things… only then, when everything is set, to we bring around the problem.
Have a wonderful day.