ותמאן המלכה ושתי לבא בדבר המלך אשר ביד הסריסים ויקצף המלך מאד וחמתו בערה בו
“But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command conveyed by the chamberlains. The king was greatly incensed, and his fury burned within him.” (Esther 1:12)
Achashveirosh threw a grand party. When he was good and “happy,” he commanded his wife Queen Vashti to appear before those assembled to show off her beauty. Vashti refused to come. According to the Gemara in Megillah (12b), her refusal to come was not based on any sudden sense of modesty on her part, rather the malach Gavriel came and put a tail on her.
Often, when the Gemara relates an incident of aggadic nature such as this, the Gemara is not to be taken literally. The Gemara is teaching a message with this story. We do not need to assume that Vashti literally grew a tail. The Chofetz Chaim suggests that the Gemara means something else:
The Gemara says in Sanhedrin (96a) that Nevuchadnetzar, King of Bavel, was not born into royalty. How did he become King? The Gemara relates that Chizkiyahu, King of Yehudah, became very sick and he was miraculously saved. Hashem wanted to publicize the fact that the King of Yehudah was miraculously healed so he made a second miracle – namely, the day that King Chizkiyahu was cured lasted 18 hours! That got people’s attention! The whole world realized that it was a miraculous day.
The King of Bavel at that time was a person named Biladan. Biladan said, I need to send congratulatory remarks to the King of Yehudah. “He is so righteous that Hashem changed nature for him, I must send him a letter of congratulations and admiration.” He ordered his scribe (who at the time was Nevuchadnetzar) to draft the letter for him. However, that day, for whatever reason, Nevuchadnetzar was not there. So, the other scribes went ahead and drafted a letter without the input of the chief scribe, Nevuchadnetzar.
The letter salutation was as follows: שלמא למלכא חזקיה שלם לקרתא דירושלם שלם לאלהא רבא - “Peace to you King Chizkiyahu; peace to Yerusholayim; and peace to the Mighty G-d.” Nevuchadnetzar returned from wherever he was and asked to review a copy of the letter. When he saw the salutation, he objected that the honor of the Mighty G-d should have been placed first not third in the letter. However, the other scribes told him that the original had already been sent off. Nevuchadnetzar ran after the messengers to try to stop them so as not to send the letter with such a “blasphemous” salutation. The Gemara says that he ran four steps in the direction of the courier. He wanted to stop him and reverse the salutation by rewriting it according to proper protocol: שלם לאלהא רבא שלם לקרתא דירושלם שלם למלכא חזקיה - “Peace to the Almighty G-d; peace to the city of Yerusholayim; and peace to King Chizkiyah.”
However, the Gemara in Sanhedrin teaches that after he ran those four steps (according to an alternate version in the Yalkut he ran only 3 steps) to stop the letter, Gavriel came and stopped him in his tracks so that he would not be able to run any further. The Gemara comments that had Gavriel not come and limited the merit Nevuchadnetzar was gaining for himself by showing Hashem this honor: לא היה תקנה לשונאיהם של ישראל - “There would not have been left a remnant of the enemies of the Jewish people” (a euphemistic way of saying the Jewish people would have been totally wiped out). The Gemara asks, “So what did Nevuchadnetzar get as reward for his walking the four steps?” The Gemara answers that he saw himself and three generations after him become royalty. The four generations were Nevuchadnetzar, Evil Merodach, BalShezzar, and Vashti. Vashti was a great-granddaughter of Nevuchadnetzar.
The Chofetz Chaim explains that there is actually no dispute between the version that says Nevuchadnetzar ran four steps and the version that says he ran three steps. He actually ran three full steps. In the middle of the fourth step Gavriel came and stopped him before he had a chance to complete the fourth step. It was cut off in the middle. That is why the Gemara testifies that if he would have taken four whole steps the Jewish people would have been wiped out! The Chofetz Chaim interprets: Since he did not take a complete fourth step, the reign of his fourth descendant (Vashti) was terminated prematurely. Had Vashti remained on the throne, Esther would never have been in a position to save the Jewish people and they would have been wiped out in the time of Haman.
The Chofetz Chaim explains further that this is what it means that Gavriel (the same malach who stopped Nevuchadnetzar from taking that fourth step) came and placed a tail upon Vashti. The term “zanav” [tail] alludes to the fact that it was the tail end of the dynasty of Nevuchadnetzar.
The lesson of this story is that this is how the Ribbono Shel Olam runs this world. The incident with Gavriel happened in the time of Chizkiyahu King of Yehudah – many years before the era of Haman and Achashveirosh. Because of what took place then, Klal Yisroel were saved many years later in the time of Purim.
Events happen or do not happen for countless different reasons, but behind the supposed motivations of people, the Ribbono Shel Olam is manipulating history to carry out His will. Behind the curtains, the Ribbono Shel Olam is pulling the strings.
R’ Frand relates the following: When I was in Mexico City, I heard a true story (which appears in the historical archives of the Knesset) from Rabbi David Ordman. Rav Shlomah Lorenz (a former Knesset member of Agudas Yisroel) once met Harry S. Truman, President of the United States. President Truman told Rabbi Lorenz, “You should know that when I agreed to recognize the State of Israel, it went against the advice of my advisors, and it was against every political instinct that I have. But I will tell you why I did it...”
The conventional wisdom is that Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel in 1948 because he had a Jewish partner in the haberdashery business in Independence Missouri many decades earlier who came to him in the White House and asked him for this favor. This is conventional wisdom. Now you will hear the rest of the story from Harry Truman himself.
President Truman told Rabbi Lorenz “I was a little boy growing up in the United States and every little boy growing up in the United States dreams of becoming president. That was my dream. I’ll tell you something else. I was a good Christian boy, and I learned my Bible. My hero in the Bible was Cyrus (Koresh, who was a descendant of none other than Queen Esther). This Koresh is the one who let the Jewish people go back to their homeland and build their Temple (Beis HaMikdash). I said, if I ever become President of the United States, I want to imitate my hero and if I ever get the opportunity to let the Jewish people go back to their country and rebuild their Temple that is what I am going to do.” “And that”, he concluded, “Is why I recognized the State of Israel.”
This is the same story: The Yad Hashem [Hand of G-d] at work. Just like with Vashti – we do not know what on earth possessed her to disobey her husband and not come as he ordered. Somehow the Ribbono Shel Olam “sent an malach” and made it happen, so that Klal Yisroel should be saved. So too, Harry Truman had this ‘mishugaas’ – he wanted to emulate Koresh. There is probably not another person in the world whose main Biblical hero was Koresh, but that was the idiosyncrasy of Harry Truman. Because of that, the rest is history.
