Dvar Torah Purim 5784
Purim is the most contradictory, the most perplexing, the most bizarre holiday in Judaism. And there are many, many contradictory elements. First, It is a holiday about a near-genocide, and so, of course, we dress up in silly costumes and have a joyous party.
Second, The selection from Torah that we use the Shabbat before Purim, called Shabbat Zachor, perplexingly, really has no actual connection to the holiday. Let us add to that the fact that even the verse that we read from it is contradictory and unclear.
We connect Haman, the antagonist, to the Torah, by his purported bloodline as an Amalekite, although in the book of Esther itself, he’s only identified as an Agagite, and only in Esther Rabbah 7:13, a rabbinic midrash from 4th c CE, do we learn
וּמִזַּרְעוֹ שֶׁל עֲמָלֵק וּמִגְּדוֹלֵי הַדּוֹר הוּא, וְהָמָן שְׁמוֹ
‘And of the seed of Amalek and of the greats of the generation was he, and Haman was his name.’ And so we are told in Torah to remember to blot out the memory of Amalek. Do not forget! Erase the memory completely. Right. Remember everybody, we have to forget about Amalek. Every year, we have to forget. By reading the part of the Torah that we just read, that reminds us to never mention Amalek again. Got it.
Third, Purim is a holiday with drinking! In synagogue! On Purim we wear masks and costumes - sometimes mildly inappropriate costumes - in synagogue. And finally Fourth, On Purim we read a holy text and one of our commandments is to hear every word. And then we hand out noisemakers and make noise to blot out the name of the antagonist Haman! Have you ever been in an orthodox synagogue for Purim? I have - and let me tell you - nothing makes less sense than the frum guy in front of you shushing all the people around him grogging out the name haman because he’s afraid he’ll miss a word and fail to halachically fulfill the obligation of hearing the entirety of the megillah. Purim is an intentional paradox: You have to hear all of the megillah but you cannot hear all of the megillah. It’s a farce. It’s madness. It makes no sense. It is nafochu - turned upside down.
Purim has, as you all know, four commandments: to hear the megillah, to give gifts of food called shlach manot to friends, to have a festive meal called a seudah, and to give money to the poor ostensibly so that they can have a seudah themselves.
The holiday of Purim, though, is halachically challenging for me, though. On some level, it is more challenging than Pesach. Pesach - you clean a lot of things and you boil a lot of things and you clean some more things and then you say some magic words and even if you didn’t get to that spot at the back of the cabinet with the vacuum or swab every shelf in 409, dayeinu. It’s done. So what do I mean when I say Purim is halachically challenging? I don’t mean like the frum guy that shushes everyone because he’s worried he’ll miss a word of the megillah.
I mean this: back when I was in rabbinical school, we had a big silly purim schpiel full of songs and jokes and skits. And during the schpiel we took up a collection for a local charity called PATH, People Assisting The Homeless. And a student a few years above me came and said: are you giving the money today. I said ‘no, I’ll mail in the donation on Monday.’ And she looked annoyed and walked away. Now, the reason she was upset is because the mitzvah of matanot le’evyonim is, in its most ideal form according to halacha, to give cash, to a Jew, on the day of Purim, which they will use for their purim feast.
This mitzvah is fairly unique amongst all the mitzvot in Judaism, for several reasons. For one, it is a time-bound tzedakah based mitzvah. Tzedakah is sometimes translated as charity, but it is better translated as righteous financial giving to another person.
The idea of time-bound tzedakah is strange, because according to the Talmud in Masechet Pe’ah, Tzedakah is one of several mitzvot that the rabbis say is ‘ain lahem shiur’, it has no measure, meaning there is no minimum, and no maximum, and other than not being given on shabbat or yom tov, is not subject to time. If I give a million dollars on Tuesday, I am not absolved from giving $1 million on Wednesday if I happen to be rich enough to do so. So the creation of a special tzedakah that must be given on one day is unique.
Another thing: matanot le’evyonim is a mitzvah in which the intent of the receiver is supposedly part of the mitzvah. This is a form of directed giving, like donating to a charity you like and telling them to use it for a specific program. Except matanot leevyonim is not a donation to registered 501c3 non profit organization with a complex organizational chart and twelve subsidiary social welfare programs. Matanot leevyonim is giving $10 to Gary on the street corner, and then somehow, there is some sort of hypothetical expectation of accountability - like that you can tell Gary how to spend his money. It gets into a complicated question that all of us have had to deal with in regards to giving money to panhandlers - if I saw Gary last week with a bottle of mad dog 20-20 or old english, and I see him Monday asking for change for a meal, should I give Gary my $10, knowing that there is a non-zero chance he’s going to take my money to the liquor store? In the social services and substance abuse world, we might use the language of being an enabler for someone who gives money to a person with a substance use disorder. Or, we might take the position that Aaron Sorkin did when he wrote these lines for his first tv series, called sports night. Two characters are debating the merits of giving to the homeless. Isaac, the boss, played by Robert Guillame says:
Dan Rydell : "You're not afraid they're gonna spend it on booze?"
Isaac Jaffe : "I'm hoping they're going to spend it on booze.
Look, Dan, these people, most of 'em, it's not like they're one hot meal away from turning it around. For most of 'em the clock's pretty much run out. You'll be home soon enough. What's wrong with giving them a little novacaine to get 'em through the night?"
Sorkin has a good point: it’s cold sleeping outside. The ground is hard. And I am not the one that decides who is righteous and who is wicked with my tzedakah. I gave tzedakah. The rest is out of my hands. I had a version of this conversation with Rabbi Elliot Dorff, one of my teachers at the Ziegler School, more than 20 years ago. Rabbi Dorff is one of the foremost scholars on ethics and morality and Jewish law. I asked him what he would do if a panhandler asked for money, even if he suspected that that person might use it on drugs or alcohol. Rabbi Dorff replied, I’d probably give them the money.
Matanot le’evyonim for Purim is specifically made for a person to use on their Purim seudah, and a Purim seudah is specifically a time to eat food and imbibe alcohol, which, again, feels like problematic behavior. And for me, that creates a kind of rare moral paradox: we have a mitzvah, but to fulfill it the most literal way might ultimately be to be titen michshol lifnei iver - to put a stumbling block before the blind. And to do it the other way - to collect money from others and donate it to an organization - may not literally fulfill the mandate that halacha has laid down for us. Once again, Purim presents us with a paradox.
The problem is we have a text that creates a black and white mitzvah for giving, but doesn’t take into account the shades of gray for what might be best for the receiver. And in fact, the Shulchan Aruch, the 16th law code composed by Rav Yosef Karo, recognizes this. In Orech Hayim 694, he says the following
ג- אין מדקדקים במעות פורים אלא כל מי שפושט ידו ליטול נותנים לו; ובמקום שנהגו ליתן אף לא"י, נותנים.
We are not strict with the money for Purim, rather anyone who extends their hand, reach out to give to them. And in places where it is custom to give to non-Jews, we give to them.
To this, the later commentators Rabbi Moshe Isserles and Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, known as the Rema and the Mishnah Berurah, add the following:
The halacha is making a subtle shift from black and white to gray: it is acknowledging that although the original intent of the law was to provide for a Purim seudah, it is impractical and possibly immoral to impose upon poor people rules and restrictions regarding how they must spend their money. If 100 people gave Gary $10 on Purim and he can suddenly afford the security deposit on a studio apartment that gets him out of the cold, it would be profoundly immoral to then say ‘no Gary, you have to spend that money on food or beverage for Purim’.
The Shulchan Aruch then adds this law:
ד- במקום שאין עניים*, יכול לעכב מעות פורים שלו לעצמו ונותנם במקום שירצה.
In a place where there are no poor*, take his money for yourself and give it in a place that you desire.
This is a strange idea for us moderns: a place where there are no poor. I wonder what Rabbi Karo meant. Was this an acknowledgement that some wealthy cities have no poor, and therefore one might need to send the money elsewhere? That seems unlikely but I guess that’s what he probably meant. And still - a place where there are no poor. Is that realistic? Did he believe in a future in which poverty would no longer exist?
That is one of the challenges and paradoxes of matanot leevyonim - that it exists in a framework where this one day of tzedakah acknowledges that the overall structure of tzedakah created by the halachic system, a robust system of tithes of the corners of ones field and of dropped gleanings and of monetary contributions to the public food system and of providing orphans with a dowry and a home and so on … that this entire system still means that people will be too poor to provide a fine meal for themselves on Purim. There is a lot of halacha about tzedakah - and most of you can probably tell me the details of the eight rungs of maimonides ladder of tzedakah - but we haven’t fulfilled the commandment appropriately yet.
Purim is a lighthearted romp of a holiday full of merriment and silliness. And also, at the core of it is a commandment that, when we scratch at it a little, asks whether our society is in the process of housing the homeless and feeding the hungry, or whether is it merely giving someone the money to buy the booze to get through another night on the street.
Perhaps that is just another reason why Purim is a lesser holiday on the way to Pesach, one of the shalosh regalim , the three festival holidays that are the most important of the year. Purim is about merriment - but Pesach is about redemption. Matanyot leevyonim is an important mitzvah, and I encourage you to either give to charity that alleviates poverty locally or nationally, or to give to a person in need on the street, or both. The rabbis teach that Purim’s secret twin holiday is Yom Kippur because it is Yom HaKi-Purim - a day like Purim, and on both holidays, tzedakah is an essential mitzvah leading to redemption. May our tzedakah at this holiday bring about that redemption, so that all who are hungry may come and eat, and that someday, if we create that society of tzedakah and justice and equality, no one will need tzedakah at Purim at all. Shabbat Shalom.
Purim is the most contradictory, the most perplexing, the most bizarre holiday in Judaism. And there are many, many contradictory elements. First, It is a holiday about a near-genocide, and so, of course, we dress up in silly costumes and have a joyous party.
Second, The selection from Torah that we use the Shabbat before Purim, called Shabbat Zachor, perplexingly, really has no actual connection to the holiday. Let us add to that the fact that even the verse that we read from it is contradictory and unclear.
We connect Haman, the antagonist, to the Torah, by his purported bloodline as an Amalekite, although in the book of Esther itself, he’s only identified as an Agagite, and only in Esther Rabbah 7:13, a rabbinic midrash from 4th c CE, do we learn
וּמִזַּרְעוֹ שֶׁל עֲמָלֵק וּמִגְּדוֹלֵי הַדּוֹר הוּא, וְהָמָן שְׁמוֹ
‘And of the seed of Amalek and of the greats of the generation was he, and Haman was his name.’ And so we are told in Torah to remember to blot out the memory of Amalek. Do not forget! Erase the memory completely. Right. Remember everybody, we have to forget about Amalek. Every year, we have to forget. By reading the part of the Torah that we just read, that reminds us to never mention Amalek again. Got it.
Third, Purim is a holiday with drinking! In synagogue! On Purim we wear masks and costumes - sometimes mildly inappropriate costumes - in synagogue. And finally Fourth, On Purim we read a holy text and one of our commandments is to hear every word. And then we hand out noisemakers and make noise to blot out the name of the antagonist Haman! Have you ever been in an orthodox synagogue for Purim? I have - and let me tell you - nothing makes less sense than the frum guy in front of you shushing all the people around him grogging out the name haman because he’s afraid he’ll miss a word and fail to halachically fulfill the obligation of hearing the entirety of the megillah. Purim is an intentional paradox: You have to hear all of the megillah but you cannot hear all of the megillah. It’s a farce. It’s madness. It makes no sense. It is nafochu - turned upside down.
Purim has, as you all know, four commandments: to hear the megillah, to give gifts of food called shlach manot to friends, to have a festive meal called a seudah, and to give money to the poor ostensibly so that they can have a seudah themselves.
The holiday of Purim, though, is halachically challenging for me, though. On some level, it is more challenging than Pesach. Pesach - you clean a lot of things and you boil a lot of things and you clean some more things and then you say some magic words and even if you didn’t get to that spot at the back of the cabinet with the vacuum or swab every shelf in 409, dayeinu. It’s done. So what do I mean when I say Purim is halachically challenging? I don’t mean like the frum guy that shushes everyone because he’s worried he’ll miss a word of the megillah.
I mean this: back when I was in rabbinical school, we had a big silly purim schpiel full of songs and jokes and skits. And during the schpiel we took up a collection for a local charity called PATH, People Assisting The Homeless. And a student a few years above me came and said: are you giving the money today. I said ‘no, I’ll mail in the donation on Monday.’ And she looked annoyed and walked away. Now, the reason she was upset is because the mitzvah of matanot le’evyonim is, in its most ideal form according to halacha, to give cash, to a Jew, on the day of Purim, which they will use for their purim feast.
This mitzvah is fairly unique amongst all the mitzvot in Judaism, for several reasons. For one, it is a time-bound tzedakah based mitzvah. Tzedakah is sometimes translated as charity, but it is better translated as righteous financial giving to another person.
The idea of time-bound tzedakah is strange, because according to the Talmud in Masechet Pe’ah, Tzedakah is one of several mitzvot that the rabbis say is ‘ain lahem shiur’, it has no measure, meaning there is no minimum, and no maximum, and other than not being given on shabbat or yom tov, is not subject to time. If I give a million dollars on Tuesday, I am not absolved from giving $1 million on Wednesday if I happen to be rich enough to do so. So the creation of a special tzedakah that must be given on one day is unique.
Another thing: matanot le’evyonim is a mitzvah in which the intent of the receiver is supposedly part of the mitzvah. This is a form of directed giving, like donating to a charity you like and telling them to use it for a specific program. Except matanot leevyonim is not a donation to registered 501c3 non profit organization with a complex organizational chart and twelve subsidiary social welfare programs. Matanot leevyonim is giving $10 to Gary on the street corner, and then somehow, there is some sort of hypothetical expectation of accountability - like that you can tell Gary how to spend his money. It gets into a complicated question that all of us have had to deal with in regards to giving money to panhandlers - if I saw Gary last week with a bottle of mad dog 20-20 or old english, and I see him Monday asking for change for a meal, should I give Gary my $10, knowing that there is a non-zero chance he’s going to take my money to the liquor store? In the social services and substance abuse world, we might use the language of being an enabler for someone who gives money to a person with a substance use disorder. Or, we might take the position that Aaron Sorkin did when he wrote these lines for his first tv series, called sports night. Two characters are debating the merits of giving to the homeless. Isaac, the boss, played by Robert Guillame says:
- Isaac Jaffe : "Danny, every morning I leave an acre and a half of the most beautiful property in New Canaan, get on a train and come to work in a fifty-four story glass high rise. In between I step over bodies to get here - 20, 30, 50 of 'em a day. So, as I'm stepping over them I reach into my pocket and give them whatever I've got."
Dan Rydell : "You're not afraid they're gonna spend it on booze?"
Isaac Jaffe : "I'm hoping they're going to spend it on booze.
Look, Dan, these people, most of 'em, it's not like they're one hot meal away from turning it around. For most of 'em the clock's pretty much run out. You'll be home soon enough. What's wrong with giving them a little novacaine to get 'em through the night?"
Sorkin has a good point: it’s cold sleeping outside. The ground is hard. And I am not the one that decides who is righteous and who is wicked with my tzedakah. I gave tzedakah. The rest is out of my hands. I had a version of this conversation with Rabbi Elliot Dorff, one of my teachers at the Ziegler School, more than 20 years ago. Rabbi Dorff is one of the foremost scholars on ethics and morality and Jewish law. I asked him what he would do if a panhandler asked for money, even if he suspected that that person might use it on drugs or alcohol. Rabbi Dorff replied, I’d probably give them the money.
Matanot le’evyonim for Purim is specifically made for a person to use on their Purim seudah, and a Purim seudah is specifically a time to eat food and imbibe alcohol, which, again, feels like problematic behavior. And for me, that creates a kind of rare moral paradox: we have a mitzvah, but to fulfill it the most literal way might ultimately be to be titen michshol lifnei iver - to put a stumbling block before the blind. And to do it the other way - to collect money from others and donate it to an organization - may not literally fulfill the mandate that halacha has laid down for us. Once again, Purim presents us with a paradox.
The problem is we have a text that creates a black and white mitzvah for giving, but doesn’t take into account the shades of gray for what might be best for the receiver. And in fact, the Shulchan Aruch, the 16th law code composed by Rav Yosef Karo, recognizes this. In Orech Hayim 694, he says the following
ג- אין מדקדקים במעות פורים אלא כל מי שפושט ידו ליטול נותנים לו; ובמקום שנהגו ליתן אף לא"י, נותנים.
We are not strict with the money for Purim, rather anyone who extends their hand, reach out to give to them. And in places where it is custom to give to non-Jews, we give to them.
To this, the later commentators Rabbi Moshe Isserles and Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, known as the Rema and the Mishnah Berurah, add the following:
The halacha is making a subtle shift from black and white to gray: it is acknowledging that although the original intent of the law was to provide for a Purim seudah, it is impractical and possibly immoral to impose upon poor people rules and restrictions regarding how they must spend their money. If 100 people gave Gary $10 on Purim and he can suddenly afford the security deposit on a studio apartment that gets him out of the cold, it would be profoundly immoral to then say ‘no Gary, you have to spend that money on food or beverage for Purim’.
The Shulchan Aruch then adds this law:
ד- במקום שאין עניים*, יכול לעכב מעות פורים שלו לעצמו ונותנם במקום שירצה.
In a place where there are no poor*, take his money for yourself and give it in a place that you desire.
This is a strange idea for us moderns: a place where there are no poor. I wonder what Rabbi Karo meant. Was this an acknowledgement that some wealthy cities have no poor, and therefore one might need to send the money elsewhere? That seems unlikely but I guess that’s what he probably meant. And still - a place where there are no poor. Is that realistic? Did he believe in a future in which poverty would no longer exist?
That is one of the challenges and paradoxes of matanot leevyonim - that it exists in a framework where this one day of tzedakah acknowledges that the overall structure of tzedakah created by the halachic system, a robust system of tithes of the corners of ones field and of dropped gleanings and of monetary contributions to the public food system and of providing orphans with a dowry and a home and so on … that this entire system still means that people will be too poor to provide a fine meal for themselves on Purim. There is a lot of halacha about tzedakah - and most of you can probably tell me the details of the eight rungs of maimonides ladder of tzedakah - but we haven’t fulfilled the commandment appropriately yet.
Purim is a lighthearted romp of a holiday full of merriment and silliness. And also, at the core of it is a commandment that, when we scratch at it a little, asks whether our society is in the process of housing the homeless and feeding the hungry, or whether is it merely giving someone the money to buy the booze to get through another night on the street.
Perhaps that is just another reason why Purim is a lesser holiday on the way to Pesach, one of the shalosh regalim , the three festival holidays that are the most important of the year. Purim is about merriment - but Pesach is about redemption. Matanyot leevyonim is an important mitzvah, and I encourage you to either give to charity that alleviates poverty locally or nationally, or to give to a person in need on the street, or both. The rabbis teach that Purim’s secret twin holiday is Yom Kippur because it is Yom HaKi-Purim - a day like Purim, and on both holidays, tzedakah is an essential mitzvah leading to redemption. May our tzedakah at this holiday bring about that redemption, so that all who are hungry may come and eat, and that someday, if we create that society of tzedakah and justice and equality, no one will need tzedakah at Purim at all. Shabbat Shalom.
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