Where Was G-d During the Purim Story? - Rabbi Yitzchak Botton

[Music] let us discuss an idea about the porm story um you know the the gamar talks about an interesting Hal which is brought in the we're taught that a person is obligated to read the Milla at night and to R the Milla in the morning and this is a bit um odd let's say because the Milla is not a short prayer for example like we do on khaka or even on pum in the Bening or in the when we say Al we have a short prayer that commemorates and discusses the miracle the Milla is a 10 chapter you know scroll and it's lengthy with much detail now if we've read the entire Milla the night before why are we reading the same story again the next morning now imagine if you met someone that you haven't seen for years and and you told him all of the things that happened to you while you were gone now if in the morning you got together again and started to tell him the same story he would look at you like you were nuts you know why would you tell the story again in detail as if the person doesn't know what you're talking about he knows everything from the night before here too we read the entire story of purum and we know everything that happened from beginning to end so why we repeating the exact same story again the next morning to make this even more difficult you know let's appreciate why do we even read the Milla what is the purpose that we read the Milla year after year so the gar explains that it's in order to to to publicize the miracle that God saved us during the Persian Exile so think about it if we get together man woman child everybody gets together that night and schulen hears the story hears that we were saved so what could we possibly be adding in publicizing the Miracle by saying the same thing again we' already know and and we already talked about the fact that we were saved it would seem like it would be much better investment of our time to spend the day you know having a celebration drink getting drunk having a party giving out the gifts to the poor and food gifts to our friends there's so much to do the next day why do we have to spend additional time with this obligation to hear the entire Milla twice so these are the questions that one can ask on this so let us look at the idea of miracles in depth in order to appreciate because if we if our goal in the in porm is to publicize the the miracle of porm so let us appreciate what exactly the miracle of porm is and in order to do that we'll of course discuss all different Miracles so in general Miracles are divided into two categories we call them hidden Miracles and open Miracles an open Miracles essentially a miracle that is above nature it's a miracle that that Breaks the Rules of Nature similar to The Miracles we experienced when we left Egypt when God split the sea he caused hail to descend and turn into fire man you know this heavenly food to descend from heaven that open Miracle is such that a person that was there at the time could not say there was no Miracle it's impossible to deny a a hidden Miracle is not quite the same a hidden miracle though one can experience some type of Divine Providence one can feel the hand of God behind what's going on and feel that God saved them or helped them but it's not the type of miracle that you can't deny it's a miracle that happens within the the way nature runs there's nothing Supernatural about a hidden Miracle a hidden Miracle could be for example I'll actually a story with myself and my family we were saved from a almost lethal car accident my wife and I were driving with our newborn baby to um actually to pay a Shiva call and on the highway so I was sitting in the back with the baby and I just fell asleep the baby fell asleep that's that that's fine we were you know we were okay but the problem was that the front driver SE my wife she also fell asleep and that was the the big problem so we're all sitting there sleeping going about 70 M an hour until we hear the loud noise that you get when you reach those side the bumps on the side of a road so we all wake up to a speeding car that was a little bit out of control my wife tried to get control of the steering wheel unfortunately though at that speed when you try to turn the wheel it's so abrupt that the car started spinning in different directions and you know things seem to happen so slow so I remember thinking about oh my gosh we're getting into one of those accidents this is this is very serious it's very dangerous and just about the point where we would have started flipping over doing some somersaults the car was close enough to the grass and started sliding and we we did a 180 and then we started driving backwards and things were going okay for a couple of seconds and then we realized wait a minute we can't go backwards forever and someone screamed or ice scream sto hit the brakes and you know because we were approaching an overpass which was also dang we could have hit behind us and but at the end we stopped the car and everyone was fine nobody was hurt um just for safety we had a tow truck pull the car out in case there was some type of oil or that could start a fire but everything was fine we started the car and continued on our way to the pay a Shiva call and it's funny when we got back to the road and I looked where our car went off the road it was amazing to see because it almost looked like we did a field goal you know when you kick a field goal there were two metal beams sticking up and our car went right through the two metal beams one or two feet to either W side we would have been forget who knows what would have happened we would have hit these metal beams at such a speed and we would have certainly caused aot damage perhaps even danger so when I look back on that story although you know if I tell it to people that don't believe in God don't believe in Divine Providence they might tell me listen you were lucky but I understand and believe that Hashem protected me and my family on that day and I have to give thanks to Hashem for that anyhow getting back to the porm story so these are two kinds of Miracles one is called a hidden miracle and one is called an open Miracle but what I'd like to suggest is a third type of miracle in order to appreciate really the type of miracle that we're celebrating in the porm story because the hidden miracle that we spoke about was though it's hidden still one can notice that God comes and saved you and did some type of Miracle but there's a deeper more hidden type of Providence from God which is a really a extremely hidden Miracle the talmud mentions the idea of God making Miracles that even the person who does the miracle for has no idea a miracle was done for him now this is the deepest most hidden kind of Miracle because there's nothing that happens that indicates to any type of Miracle or or savings and that is the third level miracle that we don't even realize a miracle happened and this is hinted to an a verse that says that God does wonders God does wonders all unto himself meaning he's the only one that knows that a miracle occurred this is the type of miracle that we are actually celebrating on porum on porum the story that we talk about began and lasted about almost 10 years 9 to 10 years is really the storyline of the poor mcgilla now each of the events that occurred from the from the feast to each of the events on the way Esther being taken um hamon rising to power and so on and so on each event by itself just looked like random events we did not see anything special in each of the individual events as a matter of fact the opposite each event that occurred looked bad for the Jewish people you know Esther was taken when when hamon Rose to power and wanted to kill Mori this all bad but at the moment that that things turned around and hamon was hung on the Gallow that he built for morai at that moment we saw the hand of Hashem save morai and kill ham and at that moment looking back in retrospect we were able to see how each event that preceded that salvation was connected in a miraculous unique way event after event we saw The Hidden Hand of God laying the foundation laying the pieces in the right places in order to save us that type of Miracle this hidden miracle that can only exper be experienced after it happens is what we call a hidden miracle and in order to commemorate this type of miracle that you can only experience by looking back we could say that the rabbis tell us to read the Miga twice what's so unique about reading the Miga twice well imagine if you go to a movie or hear a story so the first time you hear it you don't know where the story is taking you you don't know what's going to happen so you're on the edge of your seat you know is she going to make it is is he going to make it who's the bad guy who's the good guy we have no idea what's going to happen and everything we look at we look at at face value the way it seems at that moment but once you see the end of the movie and you you know how everything works out so the second time you watch the movie you look at every little detail from a different perspective and that's the idea of reading the Milla twice by reading the in the morning again we're almost looking back on the story because once we know the end so we see each event in relation to the end and hashem's hand God's hand almost pops out the first time we read it God's hand wasn't seen God's we thought God was nowhere the second time we read it all of a sudden God shows himself in between the lines we see oh Hashem is setting this up Hashem is setting that up each thing we realize is really being set up by Hashem in order to bring the Salvation at the end and this is can be connected to an interesting custom there's a custom to write the word h on top of each row in the Milla now means according to the simple meaning but the rabbis tell us in a deeper sense when it says just H it's a reference to Hashem now I like to say that this fits with the whole approach we're discussing meaning the idea of the two readings fit nicely with this we could say that the first reading the rabis didn't didn't really mean that H is God the first time we read the story because the first time we read the story everything looks dark and things look desperate for the Jewish people so that is the simple meaning but at the end when we we when we're saved and we relook at everything again a second time the mafa in retrospect which corresponds to the morning reading it's almost like hearing the story a second time then we see each event how it's coming from Hashem and so the on top of each row of the Milla in the morning reading becomes Hashem and we see that Hashem is on every single page of the Milla this is the the idea of how we publicize the miracle of PM why is PM and the Milla unique that we have to read it twice because the only way to publicize a hidden Miracle of this type is to experience it a second time and with this we could appreciate why the rabbis went so far to obligate Us in this double reading because without the double reading we wouldn't really be publicizing the miracle properly because the uniqueness of the poor Miracle isn't that we were saved it's exactly how we were saved it's exactly how each event was connected one to the other connecting this entire N9 and a half 10 year story as one Miracle normally each event is called Providence it's not called Miracle but when each event links up to the eventual saving when ham was hung so the entire year sequence of events become one big miracle of Po and that's what we celebrate and that's why we read an entire Milla twice [Music] [Applause]