Boaz-Bezalel was very agitated when he walked into shul. “Did you hear what happened? This time Mordechai really overdid it! I don’t understand why he had to be so extreme. Fine, he didn’t bow to Haman – that’s forbidden by the halachah, because Haman was wearing an idol. But what Mordechai did today was a completely unnecessary provocation.
“Today,” Boaz-Bezalel went on to explain, “Haman came out of his feast with Esther Hamalkah, and Mordechai didn’t even stand up for him! What is the point of this incitement, when things are so sensitive and dangerous these days?! When Esther Hamalkah finally succeeded in bringing everyone to the table, Mordechai went and annoyed the wicked Haman!”
Boaz-Bezalel’s friends tried to calm him down. “Mordechai Hayehudi does not make mistakes,” they told him. Even if you don’t exactly understand it – you don’t have to understand everything.” They spoke to him about how Mordechai’s calculations are very exalted, and how he bears responsibility for all Am Yisrael, but Boaz-Bezalel was angry and worried. He blamed Mordechai for all the misfortunes.
The next day, though, everyone saw that it was actually Mordechai Hayehudi’s emunah that was saving all the Jews.
These are the words of the holy Alshich (Esther 5:9): Mordechai did not bow to the wicked Haman; every time Haman passed near him, Mordechai would rise to his full height. He was doing this until the feast of Esther Hamalkah. After he saw that Hakadosh Baruch Hu was with Am Yisrael, because Achashveirosh extended the golden scepter to Esther and was receptive to her requests, Mordechai decided that from then on he would no longer look toward Haman at all, as though Haman did not exist. He did not even stand up or change his position for him.
And exactly as Boaz-Bezalel surmised, Haman could not forgive this, and he could not bring himself to wait even one more day. He could no longer bide his time, waiting for his original plan of killing Mordechai along with the rest of the Jews on the th of Adar. His wrath rose to the Heavens, and he planned, along with his wife and loved ones, to get rid of Mordechai immediately. And it was precisely in this way that his downfall came about; he was hung on the tree that he had prepared for Mordechai.
Mordechai’s pure emunah was what saved all of Klal Yisrael. Sometimes Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants a person to go with emunah to the very end, without taking anything else into consideration. There is no Haman here, no Achashveirosh, nothing – only Hakadosh Baruch Hu, Who controls everything that has ever happened and that ever will happen. Only He leads the world, and there is nothing other than Him; and it is specifically under such circumstances that the yeshuah comes.
Gut Shabbat
Pinchas Shefer
