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12 Adar II 5765 - March 23, 2005 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Shema Yisrael Torah Network

Opinion & Comment
Let Us Rededicate Our Lives

One of the main themes of Purim is commitment. Kiyemu vekiblu, the Jews of those days ratified a commitment made many years previously. They accepted of their own free will what their forefathers had accepted out of a less-than-free will: to keep the Torah.

The new commitment was only different in what may be called its quality — it was free as opposed to forced. In quantity, so to speak, they were both the same: complete and total acceptance. Before Purim we were as fully committed to Torah and mitzvos as we were after those inspiring days.

HaRav Moshe Shapiro explains that Klal Yisroel really accepted the Torah fully both times. However the first time, in the desert, they accepted it while their relationship with Hashem was manifest, begilui ponim. They ate mohn, they had the Mishkan and in their entire lives their close relationship with Hashem was evident.

This state persisted up until the destruction of the first Beis Hamikdash. At that point, at the end of prophecy, the world changed drastically. Klal Yisroel no longer enjoyed that same open and evident relationship with Hakodosh Boruch Hu. Things became hidden and dark. The bond persisted but it could no longer be seen.

At that point, the acceptance of the Torah that had been undertaken at the beginning of the period of the manifest bond could be challenged. True, Klal Yisroel had undertaken to keep the Torah. But perhaps that only applied as long as the relationship between us and Hakodosh Boruch Hu, which is part of our relationship to Torah itself, was clear. Perhaps only when there was prophecy and the open miracles that were part of the first Beis Hamikdash were we committed to Torah as well.

In the events of Purim, spread out over a decade and involving nothing more than normal social and political processes, Klal Yisroel saw that they survived, and even flourished, despite the powerful forces that conspired to destroy them.

It is this survival of Klal Yisroel that is the basis of our perception of Hashem's powers in the state of golus- hester ponim. The fact that a lamb (Klal Yisroel) has managed to survive though surrounded by seventy wolves (the nations of the world), is similarly the basis for our saying that Hashem is still Godol, Gibbor, and Noro. And that is what inspired the new commitment, even in the conditions of a hidden relationship.

This too, is a new commitment to do and to hear, to fulfill the mitzvos and to learn Torah.

The experience of prophecy is an expression of the closeness that the prophet has achieved in his relationship with the Ribono Shel Olom. The prophetic message is a direct result of his achievements in coming close. It is not easy for a human being to go so high, and requires the utmost dedication.

Even today, when we cannot achieve prophecy, we know that the more we invest in our relationship with the Ribono Shel Olom, the more we achieve. The more dedicated we are, the more we learn Torah, the better we do mitzvos — both between ourselves and Hashem and between ourselves and our fellows — the higher we can rise.

On Purim, reading the Megilloh and fulfilling the special mitzvos of the day, there is a special inspiration for us to refresh and deepen our commitment, as our forefathers did many years ago.

Let us hope that we will be successful and be zoche to oroh vesimchoh vesosson vikor.


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