A Valid Request
ויאמר המלך לאסתר במשתה היין מה שאלתך וינתן לך ומה בקשתך עד חצי המלכות ותעש
“At the wine feast, the king asked Esther, ‘What is your wish? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half the kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.’” (Esther 5:6).
On the above pasuk there is a famous Maharal which explains what the difference between she’eila and a bakosha is. She’eila is when we ask for something as a means to a greater goal, while a bakosha is a request for the end goal itself. To ask for tranquility as a means to serve Hashem better is a great request, and if it’s good for us, Hashem will grant it. But to ask for tranquility just for tranquility’s sake is not a valid request.
Based on the above yesod R’ Avrohom Schlesinger explains a difficult Rashi at the beginning of Parshas Vayeishev. Rashi writes: “Yaakov wanted to live in peace and tranquility. And immediately afterward, his sorrows with Yosef began. Hashem said: ‘It’s not enough that I’m giving the tzaddikim eternal tranquility in the next world? They want it in this world as well?’”. On the surface level, this statement is very hard to comprehend. We know Hashem created us just to give us, and He wants us to be happy in both this world and the next. So, what's wrong with having tranquility in both worlds?
R’ Avrohom Schlesinger explains, here it says: ביקש יעקב – “Yaakov made a bakosha” – and that is why Hashem responded the way He did. Of course, Yaakov wanted tranquility to serve Hashem better, but on his very lofty level, if there was even a 0.0001% of that request to experience peace and tranquility for their own sake, he was held accountable for it.
The lesson is for us on our level. We want tranquility so that we can focus on Hashem more and that’s a good request, but we must make sure we’re sincere with it. How can we tell?
The Medrash on the pasuk in Iyov: מי הקדימני ואשלם, says: Hashem tells us that if we want to do a mitzvah badly enough and we do it before we technically have the means to, He is going to give us the ability and the means to perform it going forward. For example, if somebody really wants to give a lot of tzedokah, he needs to prove it first by giving as much tzedokah as he could before he’s blessed with a lot. The Medrash gives another example, if someone really wants a child in order to raise the child in the ways of Hashem then if they don’t yet have that ability yet, they should help raise someone else’s child in the ways of Hashem by paying for that child’s Torah education. Our actions can prove if we are really sincere with our requests.
R’ Dovid Ashear related the following two stories:
A rabbi who heads a shul as well as a yeshiva day school told me, some years back, one of his congregants came into shul one day looking very depressed. He asked the young man what was wrong, to which he replied that the day before he went with his wife to the doctor, and they were told it would be impossible for her to ever have children. She was just turning twenty and they had been married for less than a year. The rabbi told him he had just learned this Medrash about if a person really wants a child for the right reasons, they could prove it by paying for another child’s education and then Hashem would give them an opportunity to do it with their own child. He then told the young man there was a child in his school whose parents could not afford to pay for tuition, and asked him if he wanted to sponsor that child. The young man happily made a 12 month payment plan and made the first payment on the spot. It was not too long afterward that he discovered his wife was expecting a baby. And boruch Hashem, today they have six children.
On another occasion, a different congregant in this man’s shul came to him saying his wife had five miscarriages in a row after they had one healthy baby. The doctor told them there’s an issue with their genes and the odds of them having a healthy baby with a normal pregnancy were astronomical. The fact that they had one was already a miracle. The rabbi told him of the segulah mentioned in the Medrash and asked him if he wanted to sponsor a child’s Torah education. At first he was skeptical but then he came back and did it. The next time he and his wife went to the doctor, they were told she was expecting, but since there was no chance that a healthy baby would be born, the doctor told them to terminate the pregnancy. The man went to ask one of the gedolei hador what to do and the rabbi told him to move forward and daven that all will be well. Boruch Hashem, against all odds, a healthy baby was born to them. And then, boruch Hashem, they had another one after that.
If we truly want things in this world to serve Hashem better and we are truly sincere about it, then if it's good for us, Hashem will give us that ability and enable us to serve Him the way we hope to.
When We Are at the Wine Party, We Can Ask for Anything
In the Megillah it says:ויאמר המלך לאסתר במשתה היין מה שאלתך וינתן לך ומה בקשתך עד חצי המלכות ותעש - “The king said to Esther at the wine party, ‘What is your request, and it will be yours ... Ask for half the kingdom, and it will be granted to you’”. The Minchas Elazar zt”l says, this pasuk means that on Purim, when we are at the משתה היין, wine party, the King of the world says to the Jewish nation:מה שאלתך וינתן לך - “What is your request. Ask for whatever you want, and I will grant it to you.”
Chazal say:חייב איניש לבסומי בפוריא - “A person is obligated to be happy with drinking on Purim”. לבסומי, isn’t a very common word. It is written only a few times in Shas. Interestingly, the Gemara uses the word,לבסומי , twice on the same page (Megillah 7b), and it is used with two different translations. The Gemara says that on Purim there is a mitzvah לבסומי, to drink wine. A few lines above that, the Gemara says:רווחא לבסומי שכיחי – “A person always has room to eat something sweet" (one of the translations ofלבסומי is sweet). The Gemara relates that one Purim, Abaye came to Mari bar Mar's home to deliver mishloach manos. Abaye said he didn’t feel hungry when he came to Mari bar Mar’s house. Mari bar Mar served him sixty plates with sixty types of cooked dishes, and Abaye ate them all. The final course was pot roast, and Abaye said he had a great appetite; he even wanted to eat the dish. The Gemara says:היינו דאמרי אינשי כפין עניא ולא ידע - “This is as people say, ‘The poor are hungry, and they don’t know it.’ אי נמי רווחא לבסומי שכיחי – “Or it is as people say, ‘One can always find room for sweets.’”
לבסומי has two translations. It means sweets, and it means being happy through wine. The Yeitav Leiv zt”l connects the two Gemara’s and explains, if one is בסומי בפוריא, happy with the wine on Purim, רווחא לבסומי שכיחי, he will have רווח והצלה, salvations, and will have, בסומי, sweetness, in his life.
