Purim: Divine Providence - Haman, Ferdinand, & Stalin {Manhattan High School For Girls}

this torah class is brought to you by torahanytime.com one of their very favorite speakers in honor okay thank you so much for the very warm introduction so uh whenever a speaker comes to school and they hear that they're the students and teachers favorite speaker that's always uh very exciting and then somebody came over to me robert gladstein i'm so excited that you're here i'm pumped so that really got me energized to share with you a few words about uh the umpif of purim haba elenola i want to share with you an original insight into the magilla and i believe that this insight will give us a passage will give us an opening into understanding not only the events of the purim story because i believe that after uncovering this nugget this is literally the central theme of the purim story even though at first glance you may not notice it this will be a central theme in jewish history in world history and i think an important vantage point to understand current events and the events that are unfolding before our eyes on a daily basis so mcgillis esther concludes in the final chapter in the 10th chapter mcgillis esther perekyod teach you a little english so that you have the last pasuk and the second to last plastic what do you call the second to last the pen ultimate and the third to last is called what the anti-penultimate so the anti-penultimate puzzle mcgill assessor the third to last possible says taxed the people so that is the summit the crescendo the grand finale of the purim story is not only were the jewish people saved not only did we turn around and attack our enemies but taxed the people i mean is that really very exciting is that really of note why is that even recorded in miguel's esther you know the next passage in the megillah is a very important fundamental pasta in the magilla the pasta says you want to know the historical context of the purim story you want to know about the palace intrigue you want to know about the politics of the times you got the wrong book it's not going to be found in miguila's esther this book is not a history book this book is not about persian politics palace intrigue this book it was written for one reason and one reason only pursue me nissa to magnify the miracle of akash baracho why then does miguel assassin conclude that akhashverosh taxed the people is that really central information for the purim story so i'm going to share with you now one pasek in the magilla three words of the gemara and with these three words of gemara it will revolutionize our understanding literally of every event that occurred in the purim story and we'll see in history as well so akhice could not sleep at night does anybody know why could an akashira sleep at night who was waking him up the matter says gabriel came he took achasha's head he banged his head against the floor 366 times and by the way that could be very disturbing i personally find that if an angel comes and bangs your head against the floor it could be very disturbing during the course of sleep and uh gabriel said wake up wake up maybe there's somebody you need to reward and all of a sudden she is rattling in the courtyard midah the king says who's in the courtyard was coming to tell the king to hang mordechai aloha on the tree you ready for the next three words that he prepared for him literally that haman prepared for mordechai and the gemara asks the word is extra obviously haman prepared the tree for mordechai just say alha ates on the tree asher that he prepared what does it have to say that he prepared for mordechai says the gemara tana interpreted as follows he prepared it for himself haman thought he was preparing the gallows for mordechai but in in actuality haman was preparing the gallows for himself because it would be haman that would soon be hanging on these very gallows now at first glance this is not a major revelation everybody knows haman made the gallows for mordechai and ultimately haman was hanging on those very gallows but actually this is the major breakthrough in understanding miguel as esther we're going to say in one week from tonight we're going to add to shmona esri the may murder esther and we're going to say that hashem did two things he foiled the plot of the enemy hashem nullified the plot but then we add the kalkalta he corrupted the scheme what does that mean that god corrupted the scheme we don't give hakulesh broco enough credit for what he's able to do god says i'm not worried about the enemy i don't need to kill the enemy i don't need to knock off the enemy you give me the biggest anti-semite sinai israel enemy you give me his plans his machinations his scheme and i will co-opt and hijack his plans and use his plans to bring about salvation to the jewish people and this is the most common theme in jewish history let's start so there's there's this adorable baby he's just delicious and guess what his mother threw him in the most dangerous spot on earth the nile river in the nile river if a baby gets within i was once in phoenix arizona they had these crocodiles behind a glass and a guy walks in there with a slab of meat 10 feet away from the crocodile he puts the meat down and faster than you could see the meat has disappeared because the crocodile has jumped eaten the meat and gone back to his spot before your eye could even take it in when babies float across the nile they don't usually make it and the pharaoh made a decree pyro made a decree that he got word to his astrologers that the jewish savior is going to be born on a specific day and therefore all the baby boys need to be thrown into the river why did power make that decree because he wanted he needed to exterminate the future savior of the jewish people and the rebounder shalom is sitting in shamayim henry bonshom is watching and he's laughing at paro he's saying paro you think this decree will will eradicate the jewish savior watch this pharaoh this decree is going to groom the jewish savior so there's going to be this daughter of yours basia she's going to be swimming in the nile and she's going to notice the child and the child is going to be crying and she's going to take the child in and she's going to bring the child into the palace and then 2 a.m she's going to be rocking the child to sleep and pharaoh in the other room is going to be hey basia what's all that noise in the other room ambassador you wouldn't believe it that i i just adopted this really adorable child and he's really just keeping me up at night dad would you mind just rocking the child to sleep i'm i need to get some sleep tonight so that night the pharaoh is rocking the future savior the jewish people to sleep and then at 2 30 power's like ibasia the kid's starving i don't think we have any formula in the house he's like dad you mind go to cvs get some formula for the kid so um paris i don't have any money now use your american express card so pharaoh is rocking my to sleep he's feeding mashrabeno mush grows up in the palace mashabenu literally was the stepson of the pharaoh the ibanezer writes why did god orchestrate that moshe should grow up in paro's palace why can't he grow up with the rest of the jewish people it says he been ezra if monster would have grown up with the rest of the jewish people then he would have grown up with a low morale with a slave mentality and he never would have had the persona and the personality to be the leader of the jewish people so therefore god orchestrated that he grew up in the palace he's groomed for royalty by the king so mushroom comes in one day and maybe his tie isn't straight and the pharaoh says hey moses you're going to be a leader one day straighten out your tie stand tall maisha rabbenu was created by parai you know the mishnah pirkei yavros paraiki beltar rami sinai you ever hear that mishnah not moishakibal tyra without paroy there want the bina maishrabeen so we think parallel thought he was going to he's going to exterminate the jewish savior para created the jewish savior para groomed mush i want to give you a few examples from the magilla where this method of hashgach is very evident and then we'll we'll try to analyze a few historical episodes where this type of hashikaka pratas is extremely noticeable so haman has this great decree on the 13th of adar he's going to annihilate the jewish people and if you look in the sukkah in the megillah the two sukkah that discuss and describe the decree of haman they seem to contradict each other if you look in paragumo of the megillah paragumo gimmel the passage says [Music] and what's going to happen on that day that the jewish people will be annihilated and exterminated but then we have another pasak the passage says the script of the text medina to give law in every community goloil that was open and revealed to all the nations was just to be ready for that day what does this mean the village explains that the decree of haman had two aspects to it there were the letters that he sent out to the government to the officials to the royalty and those letters said explicitly on the 13th of adar the amalekim the persians are going to come and annihilate the jewish people however that decree and that text was not known to the common folk the regular guy in the street did not know what was going to happen on the 13th of adar in other words the pashka villain the signs that were plastered all over the walls of persia all it said was on the 13th of adar be ready be ready be prepared beware of the ides of march leos aside development explains that haman calculated this this method very precisely knew that if the jews ever got wind of what was going to happen to them on the 13th day of adar then we would have done what we do best we would have gone to the government would have gone to the mayor we would have gone to the governor and we would have bribed them and we would have got our way out of trouble so therefore haman said i can't let the jewish people know what's going to happen on the 13th day of adar so i'm just going to tell the government about it and the mayor and the governor but the public letters that are going to go out that the regular people are going to read all it's going to say is leos aside be ready for this day and then when the tables are turned and esther tells akheros you know who's trying to kill my people this haman and i sure said i didn't realize you were a jew and akshay walks out of the palace and he tries to cool off and he comes back and haman took a misstep and he hangs hamon and at that point in time what was going to happen to the jewish people we were still going to be annihilated and esther said i don't understand you just hanged haman why are we going to be annihilated annihilated says i'll tell you why because i already sealed haman's decree of what's going to happen on the 13th of day so esther said no you didn't haman's decree never said what was going to happen on the 13th day of adar it just said be ready for the 13th day of adar so now let's turn the tables and let's interpret that then instead of them killing us we're going to kill them said that's a great idea that fool haman he never wrote in the document what's actually going to take place all he wrote was leois aside be ready for that day so haman's whole plan backfired on him you know haman thought why did he make this ridiculous tree 50 almost tall i mean you don't need a tree 50 almost tall to hang somebody you know how tall 50 almost is that's like a hundred feet tall you can't even see it so so high up why did he make this eyesore this monstrosity of a gallows so the villain explains because this akashvirus guy is the most fickle wishy-washy guy in the world one day he's a democrat the next day he's a republican tomorrow he's a russian the day after his ukrainian he can't make up his mind he's constantly back and forth so we need to basically strike while the iron is hot i'm going to get him angry at mordechai and there's going to be this eyesore of a gallow staring him in the face and in a moment of rage he's just going to say tulu olaf hang him and that's exactly what happened to haman haman took one little misstep with esther akashers got angry if he would have waited a day he probably would have calmed down but he's standing there he's angry at haman there's this eyesore of the gallows steering him in the face kharona says tulu i love so after this is fine great idea the next day he said you know bad move why did i do that but his whole plan backfired on him and this is my second to favorite example in the megillah sachas has a problem with his wife now back in the day if you're the king and you have a problem with your wife then tomorrow there's a new another hasanah that's usually what happened kings had many many many wives and yet he has a problem with his wife so just kill her no he has to ask the advice of the yoyday he has to ask the advice of the assembly the the assemblage of sages why is he asking anybody's advice so the vilna going says that the passage says interprets these were words that was illegally required to ask the advice of his assembly of his congress the law in persia was that any time a situation affected the king himself he could not make a unilateral decision he cannot make an independent decision yes he's a tyrant he's a dictator that's when it comes to anybody else but if it was relevant to him himself the king had to ask the advice of his assembly so therefore he asked him let's fast forward toward the end of the story so haman took a misstep with esther and all of a sudden akhashverosh is fuming at haman and he doesn't know what to do so what does carbona say he says there's a tree why don't you hang on and what does azeroth say great idea to luhu a love hang him i don't understand what happened to the law in persia that whenever something affects the king himself you need to ask the advice of the assembly so why didn't ah church convene his congress and say i don't know what to do with haman it's a big question ask the villain says the villain you know why akka sharks didn't have to ask anyone else's advice because there's this great guy by the name of me much is insanity you're the king of the world you have to ask the advice of your sages of what to do with your wife from now on pass the law that you make unilateral decision always and thank you very much from now on i will make decisions all by myself i'm not going to ask anyone else's advice and who's on so who passed the law in persia then when he's angry at haman he could kill haman so haman set his own table haman prepared the way for his own demise he built the gallows to hang himself he passed the law to destroy himself that is the main theme of miguel assassin says you give me the biggest russia you give me the biggest dictator you give me the biggest tyrant you give me his diabolical plans and i will use them to bring about salvation for the jewish people why does the color sparkle operate that way why does hashem manipulate events with such precision that hashem says you know what instead of knocking off the russia i'll use the russia for my own purposes so the students of the village explain because in the goalless today there ain't no open miracles we cannot expect hakadosh baruch to split the sea for us we cannot expect hakadosh baruch to make open miracles for us we live in a era of hester panem so then how do we know how kalash broke who is there what manner who show us that it's him pulling the strings that it's absolutely clear that is behind everything whose clearest manifestation of his presence is what we call alha aids ash where hakulas who takes the enemy and he takes his plan and he co-opts it and he hijacks it and he uses it to bring salvation to the jewish people so let's fast forward to the very end of mcgill assassin taxing the people so i was learning say for ezra and then say for ezra we read about how after the 70 years of golis bavel the jewish people want to return back to arts israel and rebuild the base hamikdash and the problem was we had no money we couldn't afford it and so can tell us in ezra park zion that the jewish people turned to the king of persia anybody know who was the king of persia very good darius and they say darius we would love to build the temple we don't have any money so he said why don't you make a charity campaign have a chinese auction they said that hasn't been invented yet we have no options so darius said no problem and the positive says darius opened up the treasury of taxes and he funded the building of the second pesambitas and i ask you one simple question where did darius get all this tax money from to build the second islamic dash and the answer is that's why the megillah ends that akhashverosh taxed the people because now the purim story has come full circle the story began akashers was having a party and he was celebrating that the seventy years were up and the basement dish would never be rebuilt and by the end of the purim story akhashverosh is fundraising to build the second base hamikdash but look at the irony the story begins as having a party he's having the biggest party in history and what's he celebrating he's celebrating what he thought was the eternal destruction of the second base hamikdash and the emotions laughing at him he says you think this party is celebrating the eternal destruction of the segment watch this you're going to ask vashti to display herself she's going to refuse you're going to kill her esther will become the new queen you're going to marry her you're going to have a kid darius you're going to raise the taxes you're going to collect the taxes you're going to die he's going to get all the money and he's going to build the second base hamikdash you think this party is celebrating corbin this is the party to enjoy and celebrate the future building of the second day so you know if you went to the second base of mikdash there should be a big plaque it says this temple was proudly dedicated by in collecting the tax money from all over the world so we hear about this and now our eyes are opened a little bit to another level of recognition of the hand of hashem in history but right now this is relegated to mcgillis esther and i just want to bring to your attention two incredible illustrations of how hakulas baraku continues to work this way throughout history and in our own time you ever hear of lakewood yeshiva no i don't think so you know who built lakewood yeshiva yeah rebecca no king ferdinand and queen isabella you know about the story in 1492 august 2nd on a thursday was the spanish inquisition and king fernan and queen isabella for many many years were dedicating their lives to their so-called imposter god they were on a mission which is called reconquesta to conquer the entire iberian commun uh peninsula and finally on august 2 in tishab 1492 they rid the entire iberon peninsula of any muslim influence and every jew was expelled from spain 300 000 jews in because they said there will never be a homeland for the jewish people the jewish people will not find solace and comfort anywhere in the world they're not welcome anywhere and this went into force august 2nd 1492. but we actually have a record from a cabin boy in the archives of seville who is heading out on a boat on that fateful tishaba 1492 and as he's coming out of the port he passes by three ships three massive ships fully loaded fully financed by ferdinand and isabella and this boy writes he passed by christopher columbus and the nina the pinta and the santa maria that they were docked on that tish above and they were going to set sail the next day friday august 3rd 1492 to discover the new world because rebecca is laughing ferdinand isabella you think you're going to destroy the greatest haven that the jewish people ever enjoyed no no no no you're going to pay somebody to discover a place where we could build the lakewood yeshiva and the mir yeshiva and we could build the greatest haven the jewish people ever enjoyed in our history you think you're destroying jewish homeland you think you're destroying a haven for the jewish people you're paying to discover a much greater one isn't it incredible that the ones who expelled us were the ones who discovered the country that we've been able to enjoy peace and protection for over 200 years but let's bring it a little bit closer to our own times this is something that i've given this before i've spoken about this before i love this idea miguel's esther friday night i was flipping through a few books and hashem gave me a matana in the last 200 years who do you think has been the greatest enemy of the jewish people which country most people would say germany because germany after all they invented not only not only did they kill jews they invented systematic extermination of the jewish people that's what many people think but they really didn't we're not the ones to invent systematic extermination on jewish people you know who invented that the russians had a plan in the 19th century to murder millions and millions of jews in a three-step process they would kill a third of the russian jews they would convert a third and they would expel a third that's why by 1920 [Music] that i take that have another half hour after that sound yeah okay so i'm almost done so the russians uh had expelled over two million jews had already left russia in 1920. they came to america they came all over the world and they the russians were one who invented systematic extermination but they just weren't good at it you know the russians it takes them a long time to get something done in russia if you want a new car you put down thirty thousand dollars and they tell you okay on march 13th 2032 the car will come you get it about 10 years later you know the story goes the guy paid money for the car they said okay the car's coming in 10 years so the person said really in 10 years morning or afternoon so he said what did it's 10 years from now what difference did he say i can't in the morning the plumber's coming huh that's how things work at work in russia so all right now we're getting going okay so so in russia they invented systematic extermination the germans copied it and they perfected it and they were much better at it in the last 50 to 60 years who has sponsored nearly all the arab aggression against the jewish people the russians in 1953 stalin said you know the holocaust didn't do a good job he's going to eradicate between two and four million jews in russia and come back to that in a minute so it's interesting the russians have been for two last 200 years perhaps our greatest enemy and in 1948 when we're fighting for our homeland fighting for some haven that the jewish people could build torah to come back to eretz israel come back to mikhail sakadaishim we were losing the war in 1948 because we had no ammunition and then stalin yamashima visit who made hitler look like a good guy he killed more than 20 million people stalin got on in his head that the state of israel which is going to be socialist will probably be communist and he doesn't like the brits in the middle east so let's get britain out of the middle east and stalin funded the war of independence and if not for him we would have lost the war so who allowed us to return to eretz israel the biggest russia in the last 200 years but then in 1953 stalin realized they they may be socialists they were they're not going to be communist so he decided he's going to exterminate between two and four million jews in russia and here's the plan plan is he's going to create trumped-up charges against seven doctors for some kind of malpractice he's going to try them he's going to convict them and then he's going to ship all the jews in russia to the deep areas of siberia where it's between negative 75 and negative 95 degrees below freezing and they would all die within days and weeks and the doctors were already on trial and the trial was set i believe for march 5th 1953. it was february 28th 1953 rebecca zilber if you read his biography he was in a forced labor camp and it was shabbos and that night was going to be purim and he's trying to strengthen his fellow workers he says you know god saved us 2 500 years ago and here's the story of the magilla and the story of purim and one guy just lost it he said rabbi what are you telling me nonsense that god saved us 2 500 years ago but stalin today he's strong like an ox he built the railroad system he built the concentration camps and in a few weeks he's going to do what hitler didn't do yet and rabbits look silver said stalin he's only boss of adam he's only flesh and blood no human being knows what could happen to them in a half hour rabbits like silver said this the night of purim before mcgill assessed there 7 p.m later that night they heard on the radio that at 8 23 33 minutes later this ox stalin stroked out lael purim 1953. rebecca zilber said that you know i didn't have a tehillim on me but all of a sudden i thought if he's in a street if he had a stroke i'm going to dive in that he should die and somehow out of the deep recesses of his heart he recited the entire to him by heart three times he said if i know to heal him by heart today is thanks to joseph stalin and the day before the trial stalin died and at his levaya many of their shum in the world were invited including the president of czechoslovakia who had just also killed many jews in the czech republic and at stalin's leviah he also dropped it and it all started on purim think about how color sparkle pulls the strings you know we live we walk we learn and we're in such darkness but the light of hashem is so incontrovertible so obvious is so powerful it's so penetrating and that's what we're mispal miguel as esther hashem through this document please open up for us the concealment of the golis the the cloud of the galas you know we we hear the news and we think where's baruch who is pulling every string colors baruch who says you think i need your guy in the white house and your guy at the helm in israel you give me the biggest enemy in every department and in every capacity and in every venue and in every office give me more credit than needing a friend of the jewish people to bring salvation for kali israel so as we learn the great beer russia went down in 1953 on purim and there's more to say about this but let me just leave you with the message that if you see akhashvirosh taxing the people and you see the economy in flux and you see challenges for the jewish people we believe that that every small world happening is for us it's to bring us to salvation and hashem just like in the time of the megillah or omaha the salsa in bikar kane tialana thank you so much just experienced another torah class brought to you by torahanytime.com