לקים את ימי הפרים האלה בזמניהם
“These days of Purim shall be observed at their proper time.” (Esther 9:31)
The Megillah records that Esther and Mordechai instructed the Jews of their generation to establish the observance of the days of Purim in their proper times. The Gemara in Megillah (2a) derives from the plural reference to “times” of celebration that the day on which walled cities observe their Purim festivities (15th of Adar) must differ from the day on which un-walled cities do so (14th of Adar).
Rav Zev Leff notes that Purim is known as the Yom Tov of achdus [unity], as we focus on joining together to hear the Megillah and eat the festive Purim meal, sending packages of food to friends and family, and remembering to help our poor brethren so that they may also enjoy their meals. If so, wouldn’t it have made for more of a sense of community for Chazal to insist that all Jews should specifically observe Purim together at the same time?
Rav Leff answers that if everybody is acting in the exact same manner at precisely the same time in an identical fashion, this can hardly be called true togetherness. The reason they would feel united wouldn’t be because of any genuine, deep-rooted sense of identification with other Jews, but merely because they all happen to be doing the same thing at the moment.
True achdus is when one Jew is able to tolerate and accept that another Jew is conducting himself differently than he is, and to nevertheless recognize that each in his own unique way is equally fulfilling the will of Hashem. Chazal further obligated us to send mishlo’ach manos, which represents the concept that one Jew sends food from his personal kitchen, prepared according to his customs and preferences, to his friend, who in a demonstration of genuine unity happily partakes of it. In order to teach us this lesson about the definition of authentic achdus, Esther and Mordechai specifically mandated that Purim be observed on different days.
A Beautiful Peshat from the Meshech Chochmah
The Megillah records that Mordechai and Esther sent letters to all of the Jews to establish the observance of the days of Purim “on their proper dates.” This expression is difficult to understand; when else should Purim be celebrated if not at the time that the miracle occurred? The Meshech Chochmah explains that non-Jews begin their day in the morning and end it at night, while the Jewish day is the opposite, beginning and ending at sundown. Since the story of the Megillah was based on Haman’s decree, it is reasonable to assume that he, being a non-Jew, issued an order that the Jews should be killed on the day of the 13th of Adar and the following night, what Jews would call the night of the 14th of Adar.
If so, Rav Meir Simcha suggests that the miracle of Purim occurred during the day of the 14th of Adar and the following night, what we call the night of the 15th of Adar, while in Shushan it was on the 15th of Adar and the following night, what we call the night of the 16th of Adar. Nevertheless, Mordechai and Esther emphasized that the Jews should observe Purim “on their proper dates,” based on the Jewish calendar which begins and ends at sundown.
In light of this, he brilliantly explains the mistake of Haman. The Gemara teaches (Megillah 13b) that when Haman cast his lots, he was excited that they fell out in the month of Adar which was the month when Moshe died. The Gemara adds that Haman's mistake was that although Moshe died on the 7th of Adar, he was also born on the 7th of Adar because Hashem completes the years of the righteous, in which case it doesn’t reflect negatively on the mazal of the Jews in the month of Adar. But if Haman knew when Moshe died, why didn’t he also know when he was born?
The Meshech Chochmah explains that Moshe was born on the 7th of Adar, but on which part of the 7th of Adar was he born? Rashi writes (Shemos 2:2) that when Moshe was born he filled up the house with light, so he must have been born at night when it would be noticed that he was filling up a dark house with light. When did he die? The pasuk (Devorim 32:48) says that he died in the middle of the day on the 7th of Adar.
Haman mistakenly thought like a non-Jew that the day starts in the morning and ends at night, in which case Moshe didn’t die on the same day that he was born. Haman thought that Moshe was born on the 6th of Adar and died on the 7th of Adar, in which case the month of Adar had a bad mazal for the Jews. In reality, the Jewish day begins and ends at sunset, in which case Moshe was born and died on the 7th of Adar, and the mazal of Adar was in fact good for the Jews.
