Volume 2                                     2015 – D.v.D.                                               #23

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Thought for the Weekend of Adar 8 & 9, 5775

[Thinking About Adar 14 & 15 (Purim)]    .

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By Rev. Dirk J. van Dalen, Ph.D.       [February, 28, 2015]       – Dr.vandalen@gmail.com

For Such a Time as This, Instead of Looking at The Torah Portion, We’ll Look at The Story of פָורים (Purim).

If it Hadn’t Been…

Esther remains the protagonist in the book that bears her name and Adonai’s finger prints of providence are all over the pages but God’s name is never mentioned. If it hadn’t been for a disobedient wife who rightly refused her royal husband to take part in a less than wholesome activity, the Book of Esther may have never been written because there wouldn’t have been a Queen Esther. “And when these days were completed, the king made a feast lasting seven days for all the people who were present in Shushan…” (Es.1: 5)

The King’s stag party had lasted about a week and by the time his nobles and government officials began to argue about which women were the prettiest; the Median, the Chaldean, or the Persian, His Royal Highness was stoned out of his mind (Est. 1: 10). They had begun to brag about how many women of each nation they had “entertained” and about the women’s “performance.”

Vashti was totally aware of the foibles of those characters and their practices. She wanted no part of it. She was having a good time with the females of the Royal Household and was not about to be humiliated again by the king and his ilk, even if he’s her husband. “I’m not going,” she informed the 7-eunuch retrieval party that came to get her (Est. 1: 12) “I am not going and stand there hearing them crow, ‘take it off, take it all off.’”

The dumbfounded eunuchs who had come to fetch her stood in disbelief as the women with Vashti heard her say the words. There was no anger in them, just resolve. To be respected, one needs to show respect. The King had failed miserably in that area. She didn’t go. The punishment for the refusal to appear at the King’s party was to be never again being allowed in his presence. Vashti realizing that she could have been executed was elated. Never again did she have to degrade herself before her husband’s court by having to disrobe in front of them. How disgusting that had been, she had learned her lesson.

What we learn from Vashti is that she set boundaries for herself where it concerned her horizontal relationships. She was no doormat instead, she became an inspiration to the women around her, she may be seen as the role model for appropriate self-assertion. “And Mordecai, a Jew, had brought up Hadassah, i.e. Esther, his cousin for she was an orphan…Esther had not revealed that she was Jewish for Mordecai had charged her not to reveal her ethnic identity.” (Est. 2: 5- 10) The King who now considers himself divorced issued an executive order to organize a national beauty pageant. The winner would be crowned as Miss Persia aka the

Queen or Mrs. Ahasuarus.

Mordecai had done a commendable job in bringing up his cousin Hadassah who, as the typical Jewish girl, far surpassed the Persian natives in intelligence, poise, and common sense. In addition to being lovely and beautiful, she was educated and thus literate, which wouldn’t go unnoticed by the king.

We don’t rightly know if the women had been rounded up by the King’s “talent scouts” or, whether Hadassah had volun-tarily made her way to the citadel in Shushan after hearing of the King’s edict. We know that Mordecai insisted that she changed her name to obscure her ethnicity. She entered the bridal contest and the royal spa of King Ahasuarus as Esther. She immediately obtained the favor of Hegai, the superintendant of women. From the moment Esther arrived he seemed to be mentoring her as she underwent her extreme makeover although she already was a natural beauty. And, as a Jewish girl, she was the only literate woman in the palace. “Now when the turn came for Esther…to go before the king, she requested nothing but what Hegai…advised. And Esther obtained favor in the sight of all who saw her.” (Est. 2: 15)

After a year of beauty treatments and applicable education, such as the shaping and polishing of regal and social graces, the audience with the king was the final stage in the selection process. Each of her predecessors in the line-up had been an esthetic knock-out worthy of adorning the front page of Vogue Magazine. But, even during the fifth Century BCE, Ahasuarus may have considered that “beauty is only skin deep.” The King is impressed and the Empire of Persia has a Queen again. The time was ca. 479 BCE.

Now it came to pass,… that Esther needed to reveal her true identity “for such a time as this” as an anti-Semitic voice in government was about to make itself heard. This would be the ‘umteenth’ attempt by HaSatan to annihilate - or at least severely disrupt – the line from which Messiah would come. Just as Queen Vashti had put her life on the line by ignoring the King’s summons to appear, Queen Esther would do so by appearing before the king without being summoned (Est. 4: 11) rationalizing that she proclaimed, “if I perish, I perish!”

Esther, with about five years experience as Queen, knew that she had to prepare the heart and mind (compassion and common sense) of her husband before she should approach him with “her” problem (remember that ladies). As the first edict could not be altered or rescinded according to Persian law, a second one from the King but authored by Mordecai would virtually deflate the first one as an armed Jew in conflict will always prevail.

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Think About It, Shabbat Shalom!

SHABBAT MUSINGS

Volume 2                                                                                          © 2015 – D.v.D.                                                                                                     #22

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.                        Thought for the Weekend of Adar 1 & 2, 5775        .                               

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By Rev. Dirk J. van Dalen, Ph.D.                                                [February, 20, 2015]                                             – Dr.vandalen@gmail.com

The Torah Portion for this Shabbat is תרומָה (T’rumah), Exodus 25:1 – 27: 19

“Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring Me an offering. From everyone who gives it willingly with his heart you shall take My offering.”

-- Exodus 22: 2 –

That’s what T’rumah is all about; giving willingly and with a glad heart. It was the mother of all free-will offerings and the people were so enthusiastically involved that they had to be asked to stop contributing. According to the Sages, in contributing to Godly causes, the personal benefits of generosity are far greater than its cost.

“And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.”

-- Exodus 25: 8 --

Can you imagine your congregation embarking on a building program where the people give so abundantly that the building committee becomes overwhelmed with the amount of funds that are coming in, that the people had to be restrained from bringing in offerings (Ex. 36:3- 6)? And giving is not all they did. Every member was assigned a task and everyone involved became endowed by the Ruach HaKodesh, with the needed skills to fulfill the assigned tasks (Ex.28:3). Here we also see that, when  the LORD calls you                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  to a task He will equip you with what’s needed to perform that assignment.

The rest of the Parashas deals with the miracle of a generation of people who have no knowledge beyond of what was needed to tend to a small vegetable garden, a few animals, and the making of bricks. Suddenly they were thrust into the roles of artisans and craftsmen as they set out on a united, multi-facetted, and major project in which braiders, carpenters, casters (in silver and gold), curtain makers, cutters, engravers, erectors, fabricators, fabric dyers, forgers, furniture makers, incense makers, inspectors, jewelers, levelers, mold makers, oil pressers, perfumers, polishers, production managers, quality control managers, sheet metal workers (in bronze and gold), stone carvers, tailors, tanners, tool makers, weavers and wood carvers, etc. All worked toward one objective: “…The making of a Sanctuary, wherein He may dwell among them.” (Ex. 25:8).

We count more than forty times “you shall make” in the Parashas. And they did make all what was ordered by no One less than the Creator of the universe. And they made everything from scratch and per specification provided by Adonai. They saw to it that, “…it was made according to the pattern which was shown Moshe on the mountain”

(Ex.25: 40). The area at the foot of Mount Horeb often

(erroneously?) referred to as Mt. Sinai) was swarming with people as they went about their assigned tasks. Consider that not only land was to be cleared for the Tabernacle, production areas were to be created also. Furnaces and forges were needed to melt the metal for the castings and heat the metal for the forgings. The terrain around the alleged Mt. Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula could not have accommodated these activities. Besides, Mt. Sinai was still in Egyptian territory and the LORD had clearly told Moshe to come back to the mountain where Moshe had his first experience with Elohim during the “burning” bush episode which took place in the Land of Midian in north-west Arabia. That mountain is referred to as Mt. Sinai by Shaul, according to Galatians 4:25. By the locals, the mountain is known as Jabal al Lawz.

When Moshe met Adonai there to receive the Decalogue and the ‘blueprints’ for the Tabernacle and its furnishings, the mountain had quaked while its summit had been engulfed in fire and smoke (Ex. 19: 18). Today, if you could visit this mountain and were allowed (by the Saudi Government) to see its summit, you would find a scorched mountain top as if the entire surface has been exposed to an extremely high temperature fire and the rocks are glazed as glass. The mountain is surrounded with a chain link and barbed wire security fence, installed by the Saudi Arabian Government, and signs, in Arabic and English, warning would-be ‘explorers’ not to venture beyond the fence on risk of death.

Mt. Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula is a tourist attraction with a chapel on its summit that is maintained by the members of St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of the mountain.

Our Bible translations present us with two options: The Ten Commandments are indeed given on Mt. Sinai but it is located in the wrong country. Or, the Ten Commandments are indeed given on Mt. Horeb but the name of the mountain has been confused. Whatever its name, Moshe received the Decalogue on the mountain of which Adonai had said, “…When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” (Ex. 3:12b) “This mountain” is located in the Land of Midian which is in Arabia and NOT in the Sinai Peninsula which is and was Egypt. And guess what; both mountains are still there today and the Ten Commandments are still in force also, for all of us. It is not where they were given but who gave them that is important to us.

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Think About It, Shabbat Shalom!