Shiur Torah #18 Purim, Megillat Esther and Torah Codes

0:00B'Shem Hashem Na'aseh Ve'Natzliach, B'Shiur Torah, and Baruch Hashem, we have a lot of good things happening this week. We have Purim, we have one of the most important parashiyot of the Torah. I mean, technically, Chazal tells us that every parasha, and actually every word, and every verse in the Torah is the same. Meaning that you can learn just as much from every verse as another verse. Each verse is just as important as another verse. But at the same token, they say that the things that you're learning each week are relevant to the week that you're living in. Meaning you can find things in every parasha that are relevant to today, to the world today, to your life today. And you'll see in this parasha that we have a lot of interesting things that are relevant to even what happened today with the speech that Netanyahu made in the United States. There are a lot of people that are obviously voting against him. and trying to go against this whole plan and the whole idea of what's happening with Iran. And it seems like the whole world is sleeping. No one really cares about Israel because the reality of it is that everyone cares about one thing, and it has nothing to do with Israel. Everybody cares about money. So, when you have on one side, you have

1:23Israel, which is the most technologically advanced country in the world, other than the United States, and in some cases even on par with the United States. And then, on the other side, you have several countries that control most of the oil in the world. When you calculate the money, the Arabs have much more. And that's why America will always try to do whatever they can to make them happy. Why are they trying to make Iran happy, though, is a different story. Because Iran, first of all, they're not Arabs, they're Persians. It's a different class. Second of all, they don't do the same type of trading with the United States, at least not publicly, as Saudi Arabia does and the other countries do. But at the same token, it seems like anytime something happens, and they do something wrong... The White House, the current administration we have today, is constantly trying to pretend like it didn't happen, or maybe we could check next time and it's going to become better. And if you really pay attention to some of this stuff, a lot of it is very, very similar to what happened in the Megillat Esther. People stopped paying attention. So, Megillat Esther, the basic version of the story is that you have...

2:44One day, you had this guy that was working inside a castle. He was just an employee, washing and cleaning the horses. His name was Achashverosh. This is Chazal; this is before, in the Megillah you don't have this story. This is from the Gemara and things like that. So this guy, named Achashverosh, was cleaning the horses. He wasn't anybody; he was just a regular employee. The king that was in the castle at the time was from the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar, the sons of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was the king at one time, and he had a daughter named Vashti. So now, one day Achashverosh finds a treasure. And what's this treasure? King Solomon... Shlomo HaMelech was not only a king, not only the smartest human being that ever lived, but he was also one of the richest people that ever lived. He had so much money, so much gold, so much silver, so many diamonds, so much of everything, that he had to divide it into three places. He had to put it all in three different places. That's how much money he had. He couldn't even store it in one place. It was just too much. So he stored it, and Achashverosh one day found one of those treasures.

4:13So Achashverosh became the richest man in the world, the richest man in the country at the time. So now, Achashverosh had so much money that he said, you know what? What do I want with this money? I want kavod. What does anybody that makes a lot of money want? They want kavod. They want respect. They want pride. They want everyone to say, oh, you're great, you're wonderful, you're this, you're that. That's what they want. You ask somebody that has $50 million, $100 million, $1 billion, and they still go to work, and they're still in the news, and they're still, why? Why are you still working? Why? You don't need more money. You can't spend $100 million. You can't spend $1 billion. You can't spend $50 billion. You can't spend it. What do you need it for? Usually, they're going to tell you, no, it's because it keeps me going. It's exciting. That's not really the real reason. Why do they keep going to work? Because when they go to work, or they go on the news... Everyone says, "Sir, thank you. How are you? Thank you for coming." It's all this respect that people get that gives them almost like oxygen to breathe. These people that have this, they want everyone to say, "Thank you, you're the best, you're great, you're wonderful." That's what they live for at that point. And that's what, unfortunately, most people in the world want. They want kavod. When you're young, very young,

5:42You want to make money because you want the girl. Not because you want... You don't even know what kavod is. You just want the girl. Then you get a little older. You already have the girl. Maybe you have a few kids. But you still want to work more. Not because you want a different bike or a different car. You want to have the best so people respect you more. Because if you drive a Honda... And people say, oh, he's a nice guy. If you drive a Ferrari, he's like, ah, this guy is so smart. What do you mean? Did you ever hear him say anything? No, nobody. He has to be smart. He's driving a Ferrari. And then the next thing you know, the guy wants to make more money. He already has $10 million. He wants to make $20 million. Why do you want to make $20 million? Because he wants to be the richest guy on the block. And then the next thing you know, he wants to be the richest guy in the city and the richest guy in the country, and so on and so forth. Because to be the richest, this competition... In essence, it is the root of their existence. It becomes the purpose of their life. But that's also why you find a lot of rich people doing something very terrible, which the Torah does not forgive, which is suicide. Some of the strangest stories in the world you will hear today

7:02that you have very wealthy people that have 50, 100 million, 200 million, sometimes more, and they commit suicide. They have a family, they have kids, they have money. It seems like their life is perfect. It's the life that everybody else wants. But for some reason, it wasn't good enough for them, and they commit suicide. It's strange. Overwhelming. So now you have Achashverosh, who has all the money now, and he wants kavod. So what does he want? If he says, everybody says, oh, he's a rich guy, it's not enough for him. So he wants to buy the melukha. He wants to buy the kingship. And that's what he does. He pays off the politicians that are running the kingdom, and he becomes king. And then, to legitimize his kingship, so no one says, listen, you shouldn't be there just because you have money, he marries Vashti. So, Achashverosh also knew, back in those days, everybody knew Torah. Even the Goyim knew Torah. But was Achashverosh a Jew? No, he wasn't a Jew. So why didn't the king give him the treasure? He didn't give him the treasure; he found the treasure. He found the treasure. The king had died many years ago. He had died already many years before that. Achashverosh found one of the treasures by accident. Hashem said, okay, give this guy treasure. So then he found the treasure.

8:31And he marries Vashti. And now everybody in those days knew Torah. Everybody knew about what happened at Mount Sinai. Not like today, where some people don't even know who Moshe Rabbeinu is. Everybody knew Torah. Even the goyim knew Torah. And that's also part of the reason why a lot of the nations, the first thing that they wanted to do to Am Yisrael was take their Torah away. That was the first punishment. Before taking their food away, before taking their life away, they wanted them to stop learning Torah. Because everyone knew that Torah is special. So Achashverosh was living at a time after the first Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. It was a break of about 70 years before the second Beit HaMikdash was built. So this is during that time, during those 70 years. So during those 70 years, everyone knew that there was going to be another Beit HaMikdash, but everyone was trying to do the calculations of when it's going to happen, when is Hashem going to allow us to do it. So everyone, including Chazal, including the sages, including the Jews, were trying to calculate when this prophecy was going to come true. And Achashverosh was one of those people. He thought that it was going to happen at a certain time. So one day, he calculated that it was going to happen, I think, after 67 years or after 68 years from the first Beit HaMikdash being destroyed, and it didn't happen.

9:50So he decided, "Oh, if it didn't happen, then that means that I'm going to stay a king for a long time because the Jews are not going to defeat me." Because he thought that the only country in the world, the only people in the world that could destroy him are the Jews. Why? Because the Jews have Hashem. So he believed. It's not that he didn't believe. He believed. He was a rasha, but he believed. So he said, "Since they didn't build the Beit HaMikdash, Hashem probably didn't forgive them. My calculation is right, so I'm going to make a big party." So he makes a big party for 180 days. 180 days of celebrations, day after day after day after day, drinking, eating, everything you could possibly imagine for 180 days. Wow. Chazal also say that after he finished 180 days, he started another session of more days, where during the first time he didn't drink, but during the second session he started drinking. and he became drunk, and then one day he has the, oh, and during this time, he invited everyone, including the Jews, and Mordechai, who was not only a big tzaddik, but he was part of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin were the top Jews in the world. They were the ones that were making all the laws, they were the ones that were translating everything, and in order for someone from the Sanhedrin to be a member, one of the qualifications, other than obviously knowing a lot of Torah,

11:15They needed to know at least 70 languages. Why 70 languages? Because if there was ever a situation where they had to make a decision, like if there was ever a court case that had witnesses from different countries... they need to know what they're saying and never ever listen to a translator because a translator can make a mistake, and if you make a mistake in a court case, you can, you know, make a judgment that you could have to kill the person. Yeah, jeopardizes the whole case. So you weren't allowed to listen to a translator. You had to know the language yourself. So Mordechai was not only a big giant tzaddik, knew 70 languages, huge chacham. So Mordechai tells everyone, the Jews don't go to this party. It's Chilul Hashem, you're not allowed to go. But some people are like, no, no, Achashverosh is making us a section with kosher food. It doesn't matter, kosher food. The whole celebration is Chilul Hashem. It's against Hashem what he's doing. He's not celebrating for us. He's celebrating for himself, for his kavod. Some people listened, and unfortunately, some people didn't listen. Maybe in the beginning they listened, and after a while, after a month, two months, everybody else is having fun. They want to join the fun. They start going. And that was part of the reason.

12:29Of why Hashem got very angry and almost got to a point where Am Yisrael was destroyed. This is what happened during that time. So then you have some of the Jews attending. And I'm not talking about just regular Jews that are not religious. I'm talking about really religious Jews going. So then you have the celebration. One day, Achashverosh gets drunk. And he has this conversation with the rest of the people. And everyone's comparing who's the most beautiful woman. And he says, my wife is the most beautiful woman. Vashti is the most beautiful woman in the world. So they say to him, because they're drunk also. So you know when you're drunk, you don't talk like a normal person. You would never say this to a king ever. You would never even say this to your friend. Listen, bring your wife here, let us see her. You would never say that. So they say to him, listen, if she's really the most beautiful woman, bring her, let us see her. And one of the commentators says that not only did he say to bring her, but he wanted her to come and walk around naked. Wow. So he sends people to go get her. Now, originally Vashti wanted to go. She wanted to. She was willing. She was a big rasha. She wasn't a righteous woman or anything; she wanted to go. But Hashem did not want this disgrace to happen, so He gave her something called tzara'at. Tzara'at is the closest thing we have today to leprosy. Leprosy is when you have different spots all over your skin. The difference between leprosy and tzara'at is that leprosy is a physical disease that gives you spots all over your body, like a leopard with spots all over its body.

13:50disgrace to happen, so He gave her something called tzara'at. Tzara'at is the closest thing we have today to leprosy. Leprosy is when you have different spots all over your skin. But the difference between leprosy and tzara'at is that leprosy is a physical disease that gives you spots all over your body, making you look like a leopard with spots. Tzara'at is both a physical and a spiritual disease, causing enormous pain and unsightly appearance. Additionally, one of the Chazal says that she had a horn come out of her head. Hashem did not want this to happen because one of the reasons was that Achashverosh took out the different tools that they used to use in the Beit HaMikdash. Because he's celebrating the fact that he didn't build the Beit HaMikdash, so he's showing off, "Look, I'm the Beit HaMikdash now." So Hashem didn't want this; this is a big Chilul Hashem. To make it even worse, to bring a naked woman, Hashem hates zimah. He hates people that walk around naked and people that are not modest. This is one of the key things that Hashem hates. And it's actually, by the way, one of the things we learn, not just from this parasha, but throughout the entire Torah, is that

15:12If a woman wants to be righteous, it's very different than a man being righteous. If a man wants to be righteous, he has to do, he has a bunch of different things he needs to do. He needs to do tefillin, eat kosher, make sure that he learns Torah a little bit every day, more than a little bit, whatever he can, each person at his level, to be honest in business, to be honest in life, you know, things like this, and do all the mitzvot that we're able to do today. And each person... is not rewarded just for what they do, for the outcome. They get rewarded for their effort. So you can look at a list of mitzvot. There are a lot of things we can't do today out of the 613 mitzvot because we don't have the Beit HaMikdash and things like that. But there are a lot of things we can. But you see, somebody who's a Ba'al Teshuvah, just started now. He can't do all of them in one day. It takes a lot of effort. So why? Are you saying that Hashem's not happy with them? Absolutely not. Hashem is very happy with him, and sometimes He's more happy with him than somebody who has been religious for 20 years. Why? Because when someone is a real Ba'al Teshuvah, he really does it for the right reasons; he puts 100% of his effort into whatever he knows. If he knows it, he does it. So the things that he doesn't do, it's just because he doesn't know. It's not because he doesn't want to do it. It's very different. Sometimes somebody has been religious for 20 years, and he got used to it, and he became like a robot.

16:37and he does it, but it's not, you know, without really wanting. Okay, I keep Shabbat, but I'm going to read the newspaper. Okay, so I'm going to keep kosher, but, you know, I'm not really going to do the blessing like I should. You know, people do blessings sometimes, and they mumble the blessing really quickly, like it sounds like, did you say something? Are you really thanking Hashem now, or are you just mumbling? Without a lot of cheshek, without a lot of really, you know, Love for what we're doing. They lose it sometimes. Or sometimes you see people praying, praying in synagogue, and in two minutes they finish the entire prayer. How did you finish the prayer in two minutes? What are you, a robot? How did you finish? It's because it became systematic. Baruch Hashem, there are a lot of people that are religious for many years that do it really well. And that's where we have to learn from. But the Ba'al Teshuva, Ba'al Teshuva, when they really do it because they believe, they believe in Hashem, They put 100% of their effort into whatever they know. So Hashem says, these are My special children. And actually in the Gemara it says that a real Ba'al Teshuva can get to a level that someone that's been religious from the minute they were born, who has been religious their whole life, can never get to. Why? Someone who has been religious their whole life, was born religious, religious family, from family, lived 70 years, full life, learned Torah, did everything he did,

18:01Great. Baruch Hashem. He only knew one life. He knew the religious life. And he did the religious life. Someone's a Ba'al Teshuva. 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, 60 years. He doesn't know anything. He doesn't do anything. He's not religious. Then one day he wakes up. He sees the truth. He sees Hashem. He knows this is the truth. He's going to put 100% effort into listening to what Hashem says. Everything he does, he does with it. That person is very different because he made a choice. He knew both sides and he still chose Hashem. The one that's religious from birth, he didn't have a choice. His family was religious. His father's family was religious. Everybody he knows is religious. It's like a culture. It's just like people that are in Africa that walk around with their traditional clothing. To them, it's normal because that's their culture. But if we look at them, we think they're crazy. They look at us and think we're crazy. So for someone who's religious from birth, if they're not really working on their Emunah every day, and they're not learning Mussar on a regular basis, they can lose it. They can just become like a... What's Mussar? Mussar is like ethics, and really the... Ethics, in essence, of learning how to behave and how to become a better human being through the Torah. Not just learning rules and regulations like it's a textbook in school.

19:27for learning the purpose behind the Torah. The purpose behind the Torah is to make you a better human being for yourself and for everyone around you. Not just to learn the rules and know that, okay, this is white, this is black, this is kosher, this is not kosher. Yes, you need to know those things. But the reason why Hashem gives us all of those mitzvot is to make us better people. And in reality, it not only makes somebody a better person, but it makes them happier. And Hashem tells us specifically in the Torah that a person cannot become happy without Torah. It's impossible. They could try becoming happy through money, becoming happy through all the other desires that are in the world, food and so on, but you see a lot of people that have all of those things and still are miserable. Whereas, many times, you see people that learn Torah, they have no money whatsoever, they're barely making it every month, but they're the happiest people in the world. How do you explain that? It's Torah. It's Torah.

20:27So now you have, going back to Achashverosh. Achashverosh now became king. He's celebrating for 180 days. He's telling everybody, I'm going to bring my wife, I'm going to show her. Vashti, now that she wanted to do it, but now Hashem gave her this disease; she doesn't want to do it. So she tells the people, no, tell him I can't do it. So Achashverosh, what do you mean? I'm the king. He doesn't know she has tzaraat. She doesn't tell him, listen, I have tzaraat. She says... And he's drunk. And he's drunk too. So he says, tell Vashti the queen, I'm giving it in my own words, tell Vashti the queen to come here. Because the king said so. So Vashti says, tell the king that Queen Vashti is not coming. Why do they change the order? Because, in essence, what Achashverosh was saying... tell Vashti that I'm bigger than her, I'm better than her, I'm the king. She's the queen, but she's the queen because of me. And Vashti reminds him, she goes, no, no, no, no. I was the queen before you were ever king because my grandfather is Nebuchadnezzar. I was already coming from a royal family. So remember that I was a queen already before you. You just became a king because of your money. So this obviously upset him.

21:54And then you have Haman. Haman comes from the Zera Amalek. Haman comes from the seed of Amalek. Amalek was a family, in essence, a people that were created specifically to destroy Am Yisrael. This was a specific punishment to Am Yisrael. In essence, it's the arch-nemesis. Like you see in comic books sometimes, you have Superman and you have, I don't know, somebody else that wants to kill him all the time. All of these people always have an arch-enemy. Same thing with Am Yisrael and Amalek. Amalek were people that were created for the purpose of trying to drive Am Yisrael either out of this world or away from Torah. They came from the seed of Esav. Esav was Yitzchak's brother. Esav was his brother. Esav had a son named Eliphaz. And Eliphaz married a woman, I think her name was Timna. Timna was her name. And she actually originally wanted to convert and become a proselyte, become a convert. But Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, she went to all three of them. They rejected her because they didn't think that she was authentic. They didn't think that she was doing it for the right reason. She actually came from a royal family. She came from a very rich family. But she said...

23:19since they're rejecting me, I'd rather go to Esav, because he's still part of the family of Avraham, and I'd rather be his concubine, which is like a shifcha, like a secondary wife, not a main wife. I'd rather be his concubine, than be, you know, because he's still from the seed of Avraham, than to be part of a royal family that's not part of the seed of Avraham. But as a punishment, because they didn't convert her, because they didn't help her, her son ended up becoming Amalek, And Amalek was born, and from the minute he was born and he had children, all of his descendants were constantly going after Am Yisrael. So after we left Egypt, if you remember a couple of weeks ago we talked about how we left Egypt and Am Yisrael had a war. And the war was with Amalek. And it's not like they had a war over land. For example, we had two choices. We had one choice... to go, in one direction, to Har Sinai. We had two choices of how to get to Har Sinai. And Hashem specifically picked the long way. The short way would have gone through where the Pelishtim were. Not the Palestinians of today. The Pelishtim didn't exist back then. The Pelishtim were on the way, but they knew, Hashem knew that this is going to be a war because they would be afraid that we would take their land.

24:41So with the Pelishtim or with anyone else that we've ever had a war, it was always about land. With Amalek, they attacked us, but it wasn't about land. They didn't want to attack us for no reason. They wanted to destroy us, and they specifically went after the people that were in the back—the weak people, the old people, the children. So Hashem said that at the end of times, one of the things that I will do is destroy and wipe Amalek out of this world. So now... Many years later, there was a king named Saul. King Saul was the first official king of Israel. And Hashem told him, through a prophet, to go to war with Amalek, the nation of Amalek, and destroy all of them. King Saul was a big tzaddik, a giant tzaddik. Even though there are many Psalms and stories you read about how he was trying to kill King David, he was still a big tzaddik because he actually thought that King David was trying to do something against Hashem. There was a very, very big misunderstanding by people that read it and don't know Torah; they think that King Saul was evil. As a matter of fact, Chazal say that if the tables were turned, and King David was the first king, and Saul was not a king, and they were fighting, Hashem would let Saul kill King David.

26:09That's how much of a tzaddik he was. And of course, King David was a big tzaddik. So now, King Saul went to war with them, destroyed everybody except the king, Agag. He left him, and he left all the sheep and the cattle that he had, because he figured, I'm going to take all this cattle, I'm going to make it all korban, all sacrifices for Hashem. Korbanot for Hashem. And that was a big mistake. Hashem did not want those korbanot. He specifically said, kill everything. And also, He did not want Agag alive. So when the Prophet Shmuel came and talked to Hashem, Hashem said, Shaul didn't listen to me. He left somebody alive. Amen. He didn't listen to me. So... King Shaul, it's not that he didn't listen to Hashem on purpose. He actually misunderstood what his rabbi told him. So it's partially the rabbi's fault also. And from there, we learn that when you speak, when you're teaching someone something, whether it's a shiur or it's a two-minute piece of advice, you have to make sure that you're always very well understood. You have to make sure that the people you are telling that to understand what you're saying.

27:34Because sometimes when someone speaks, they speak very fast or even very slow. It doesn't really matter the speed, but they speak and they're very fluid with the information that they're saying. It comes to them naturally. They're assuming that everyone else understands because they understand it. So they think that you understand it. And sometimes you'll see in business, people talk to you. For example, if you have a company and people are trying to sell you something, they use acronyms. Instead of using three words, they shorten it into three letters. Or like, for example, in Hebrew, the word Chazal. Chazal is not an actual word. Chazal is an acronym for three words: Chachamim zichronam livracha. Our sages, may their memory be blessed. That's what Chazal means. So people use shortened words. So when someone doesn't know, and you're using these acronyms, they don't understand what you're saying, but people are very embarrassed to say that they don't understand. Because that hurts their pride. That's a hillul Hashem.

28:35So now, when you speak to someone, you have to make sure that they understand what you're saying. So King Saul didn't understand what his rabbi said. His rabbi didn't make sure that he understood it. So when he saw Agag as a frail, weak man, very, very non-violent type of person, he's like, oh, let me spare this guy. What am I going to do? I don't have to kill this guy. What could he possibly do? I killed all of his soldiers. I killed everyone. There's only him left. He can't do anything. It's like, I'll leave him alone. When the prophet Shmuel heard this from Hashem, he immediately went the next morning and killed him, killed the king. So you would think, okay, great. So where, how come we have Amalek today? Because during those few hours, Agag found one of the women, one of the slaves, the servants that he had, slept with her, and the seed continued. So, a mistake of a few hours, an unintentional mistake of a few hours, is one of the reasons why we're still suffering from a nation of Amalek to this day. Now, throughout the years, and from Amalek is where Haman came from. And throughout the years, Amalek transferred into many, many nations. So, today we don't really know who's from the original seed of Amalek.

29:59Because the Torah says that it's a mitzvah to kill someone that you know is Amalek. Mitzvah, meaning if we know someone is Amalek, we're obligated to kill them. But we don't know who they are, so you can't just go around killing people, obviously. Not in this world. But Hashem knows who they are. That's why Hashem says that at the end of times He will kill all of them. There won't be any confusion. Mashiach is going to come. Mashiach is going to destroy them very, very quickly. obviously to the power that Hashem gives him. So now Haman came from the Zera Amalek. Haman, as a punishment for the Jews going and celebrating with Achashverosh, Hashem gave a lot of power to Haman. Gave him a lot of power. So each time we made a sin, He gave him more power. So one day, Haman tells the king, "Listen, I think, you know," that this Vashti, that she doesn't want to come, it's an embarrassment to the kingship, you should kill her. You're the king. If you don't kill her, then all the wives are going to go around and say, listen, if the king's wife doesn't listen to him, why should I listen to you, simple man? So Haman's telling this to the king. Yes, he's telling this to the king. He's feeding it into his head. He's telling him, you know. When he's drunk. And the king's like, you know what, you're right. Kill her.

31:30He kills Vashti. So Haman says, listen, there are many, many women that are much better than Vashti. We'll bring you all of the virgins of the nation. So they bring him all of the virgins, all of the young women, and one after another, he looks and he doesn't want, and each woman would have to prepare, I think it's a year that they actually have to prepare for, maybe a few months, but I may be wrong on the timing, but they had to prepare for a very long time before they would appear in front of the king. And one after another, after another, after another, he doesn't pick anyone. So then he says, bring me all of the women. What does it mean, all of the women? Meaning married or not married, it doesn't matter. Everyone. Because Esther was married to Mordechai. I know that in the Megillah it says that he was her cousin, but We learned from the Gemara, he was an uncle. Right. But the Gemara explains, he wasn't an uncle. They only disguised it. Why did they disguise it? Because Mordechai knew that if he's going to pick her, it has to be from Hashem. Why? Because he has, imagine, a king has a choice of every woman in the world. It's not like a king today that's in control of one country. King Achashverosh was in control of over a hundred countries.

32:54Over 100 countries were paying him taxes. It's not like today—Obama, okay, Obama is president of the United States, great, good for him, but it's only America. That's it. He can't go into Iran and tell them what to do. Even though it seems like it sometimes, he can't. He can't go to Russia and tell them what to do. Okay, he's president of America and that's it. Back in those days, a king was king of many countries. So he literally had a choice of almost every woman in the world. Wow. Now, In the Megillah, it says that Esther was beautiful to the eyes. But what we learn from the Gemara is that she wasn't beautiful to the eyes of everyone. She was beautiful specifically as a miracle to Ahasuerus' eyes. Why beautiful to his eyes? Because Esther was 75 years old. And not only was she 75 years old, her skin had a shade of green.

33:54Meaning to everybody else, she wasn't pretty. 75 years old and with a green complexion. She wasn't a pretty woman, but she was a pretty woman to him. Because Hashem wanted him to pick her. So Mordechai, being such a big tzaddik, such a big sanhedrin, knew this has to be from Hashem. It's not normal for him to pick a 75-year-old woman. over a 20-year-old woman. There's the Oral Torah and then there's the Written Torah. The Written Torah is what we're reading in the parashat every week. The Megillah is part of the Written Torah, which is part of the Tanakh. But the details, the behind-the-scenes details of every single thing that we have, all of the mitzvot, all of the details of every story, we find in the Gemara, in the Oral Torah. Without the Oral Torah, without the Gemara, we wouldn't be able to read this Torah. As a matter of fact, part of the Oral Torah is called the Keter. In Hebrew, unlike English, we don't have vowels. For example, in English, we have five vowels: A, E, I, O, U. Meaning that in every word in the English language,

35:15one of those letters at least has to appear in that word because that's the foundation of that word. So like a building, for example, you can't build 50 floors without first, excuse me, without first making the foundation. So the vowels are the foundation. So in English, you have these five letters and sometimes Y as the foundation of every word. In Hebrew, we don't have those letters. In Hebrew, we have something called Nikud. Nikud is those dots. That's our vowel system, and also the punctuation. Punctuation, for example, to know when a sentence ends, we have a period. To know when there is a specific, let's say, somebody saying something, like it's quoted from somebody, there are quotes. So all these different punctuations. So in Hebrew, that's our vowels. The Nikud is our vowels. Now, if you look at the Sefer Torah in the Beit Knesset, the real Sefer Torah, there's no Nikud, meaning that

36:15The only reason we know how to read the Sefer Torah and to even know the meaning of each word is because it comes from a different part of the Oral Torah called the Codex. And this Codex actually has a Sefer Torah with a Nikud on it. So if we didn't have this Codex, we wouldn't know how to read any word. We wouldn't understand anything. So sometimes people say, Listen, I believe the written Torah, the written Torah is great, the story of Moses, the story of Abraham, the story of all these people, great, wonderful, I believe it. But the Gemara, no, that's rabbis, I don't believe in it. The Oral Torah, no, that's up to people's interpretation and all of these things that are meaning. The reality of it is, is that without the Oral Torah, the written Torah would be, in essence, chas v'shalom, but useless. Because we would not know how to understand one sentence from The written Torah. For example, one of the most important mitzvot that we have, Shabbat. In the written Torah, it says you have to observe the Sabbath. But it doesn't tell us how. It just says, Shamor et Yom HaShabbat. Okay. Shamor v'Zachor. To remember and to observe it. Okay, great. I'll remember it. Okay, I'll remember that there's a Sabbath. Once a week there's a Sabbath. Great. That's easy to do.

37:37What do you mean observe it? What do you mean shamor? What do you mean? How do I keep it? Do I keep it in my hands? Do I keep it in a closet? How do I keep Shabbat? The rules of how to keep Shabbat are in the Gemara. Another thing is Brit Milah. When Hashem tells Avraham Avinu, the first Brit Milah that we had, to cut the Orlah. Cut the Orlah. What's Orlah? What's Orlah? Where do you find the meaning? There's no meaning for the word Orlah in the entire Torah. Where do we find the enigma? So any mitzvah, all of the mitzvot that we have, tefillin for example, we see tefillin, tefillin has these scrolls in them, there are four scrolls, specific prayers in each tefillin. And each tefillin that you get, there are about a thousand steps that need to be taken in order to make one pair of tefillin. It usually takes about a year to make one pair of tefillin. People don't realize this; they want to buy tefillin for $50, Usually, it's not kosher tefillin. Tefillin, yeah, it's not kosher tefillin. Kosher tefillin usually take about a year to make. The skin of the animal, of the cow, has to be a certain type, has to be treated a certain way, has to be a certain length. The verses have to be written a certain way, with a certain ink. It's very, very, very complicated to make tefillin. It takes a lot of time, a year's worth of work to make one pair of tefillin.

39:04How do we know how to make tefillin? Hashem says, He doesn't even use the word tefillin. He says, put it on your arm, put it on your head. Okay, great. What are we putting on our arm? Do I put a watch on my arm? Do I put a crown on my head? What am I putting on my head? The details of the tefillin are in the Gemara. How do we know that the details in the Gemara are the same details that He gave us at Mount Sinai? Because One of the proofs, the simple proofs that we see in today's age, is when modern Israel came together in 1948, early 1949, and became a modern country, you had Jews from every corner of the world come to Israel. And in those days, the vast majority of Jews were religious. It wasn't like today. Especially in the 1800s, before this, everybody was religious. So people that came from Australia, from Yemen, from America, from everywhere in the world came, and they all brought their Sefer Torah, they all brought their Tefillin, they all brought their stuff. If there was a mistake somewhere, and it was just a rabbi's interpretation to have the Tefillin black, then at some point, somebody would say, you know what, I don't want black, I want blue Tefillin. And I don't want a box, I want a circle.

40:27And I don't want this scroll in it. I don't want Shema Yisrael in it. I want Birkat Hamazon in it. Somebody would have made a mistake. Somebody would have brought a different tefillin. You would have had somebody from Yemen or from... Australia, or from Zimbabwe, or from somewhere else, they came to America, from Ethiopia, come bring your tefillin, it was pink, or something else. But everybody showed up with black ones. Everyone showed up with not only black ones, but they also had four compartments, exactly the same thing, exactly the same thing. So, this is something that shows if this was just rabbis that created these laws, then if a rabbi created it, some rabbi would have changed it. Because you see today, get ten Jews in a room, ask them a question, and you'd be lucky if you have two of them that agree on the answer, if it's a regular question. But if it's Torah, it has one answer. Sometimes you have machloket, but in general, people have a tough time agreeing.

41:29But when it comes to tefillin, when it comes to Torah, when it comes to the details of the mitzvot of the Torah, we know it came from Mount Sinai because we see how people from all over the world, who didn't know that the guy from Australia existed, the guy from Yemen never heard about this guy from Australia, the guy from Australia never heard about the guy that lived in Ethiopia or in Morocco, and all these people came to Israel and all of them have the same thing. So it shows us this is obviously from Hashem. So now the oral Torah is how we know how to do all of these things. Without it, we wouldn't know how to do anything. In one of his lectures, Rabbi Mizrachi says that, chas v'shalom, if it ever comes to a point where a nation tells us, "You have to give up one of your Torahs, or we're going to kill all your people," chas v'shalom, just a hypothetical example, give up one of your Torahs, either the Oral Torah or the Written Torah, either the Sefer Torah that you have here or the Gemara, we would have to give up the Written Torah, not the Gemara. Why? Because without the Gemara, without the Oral Torah, there is no Judaism. We don't know how to do anything. So eventually, if we just have the Written Torah, eventually what would happen, since we don't know how to do anything, is people will start translating it into their own words. They'll start making their own rules. And we wouldn't know what to do.

42:55Whereas with the Gemara and with the Oral Torah, it tells us exactly what to do. So now you have a situation where in the Oral Torah, it gives us all of the details of what happened in Megillat Esther. So now you have Esther being picked as the wife And based on Judaism, people ask, how is she allowed to marry him based on Judaism when she's married to Mordechai? She's considered something called anusah. Anusah meaning she was forced into it. She couldn't tell him no. If she told him no, he would have killed her. And that's called pikuach nefesh, meaning that in order to save her life, she had to say yes. She couldn't tell him about Mordechai. So Mordechai told her, "Be quiet, don't tell him that we're married. Don't tell him anything. Don't tell him you're Jewish. Don't tell him anything. When they ask you questions, just answer vaguely." So now, Hashem made her very beautiful in Achashverosh's eyes. And Achashverosh says, "Wow, Haman, thank you very much. You gave me this wonderful woman. Because of you, I found this amazing woman. I'm going to make you great." So he makes him the number two man behind the king. Achashverosh number one, Haman number two. More problems coming. More problems coming. Now, once...

44:20Haman gets this position. His first job? Destroy the Jews. Why destroy the Jews? Number one, it's in his genes. He's from Amalek. And number two, his arch-enemy is who? Mordechai. He knew Mordechai before this time. In one case, one of the stories is that they were both commanders in armies, leading armies. And Mordechai was a smart... So he knew that when they got food, to distribute a little bit to the soldiers and let them go fight, let them go train, but not give them all the food right away, not tell them, "Listen, here's a buffet, eat whatever you want." Because he knew that they might be there for a long time, so they had to preserve the food. He could only give them a little bit, and that's it. You have to be smart. Haman was different, foolish. What did he do? He said, "Hey guys, we got all this food, do what you want, eat what you want, but then go fight." So what ended up happening is Haman... Ended up having all the soldiers eat all the food. They ran out of food. So then when they ran out of food, who did they go to? They went to Haman. They're like, "Listen, get us food. You're the commander here. Get us food. If you don't get us food, we're going to eat you." So Haman is scared for his life. He goes to the camp of Mordechai. He's like, "Please, please help me." Mordechai goes, "Why would I help you? You're Amalek. You're a rasha. Why would I help you?" Haman responds, "No, I promise you if you..." This is before the events of the Megillah. This is a background story.

45:48if you help me, I promise you I'm going to be your slave. When we come back from this war, I'll be your slave. Okay, signed the contract, gave him the food. So Mordechai gave him food, he gave it to his soldiers, and they didn't kill Haman. So now when Haman leaves, so Achashverosh likes Esther a lot. He says, you know, because Mordechai is important to her, he gets Mordechai to, he's allowed to stay around. At the gate. He's at the gate of the castle, in essence, is the way they explain it. So now every day, when Haman sees him, Haman, Mordechai tries to make him, he knows that he can't make him his slave because Haman is high in the government. What does Mordechai do? He shows him the agreement. You know and I know that you're supposed to be my slave. Everything you have is really mine. And this hurts his kavod, hurts his pride. Burns him up inside. Burns him up inside because he knows he's right. So what Haman does in return is he puts an idol on a chain and hangs it on his neck. Yes.

47:07Why? Because everyone who saw Haman, once he became so important, would bow to him. So he would make them bow to his idol. That's why Chazal explain that when Mordechai saw him, he wouldn't even move his eyes. He wouldn't even move his eyes, just so he would never ever bow to this idol in any way. Not even his eyes; that's how careful he was. Because he knew, this is part of the Ten Commandments, it's not just that you cannot bow to any idol. The punishment is very heavy for this. So now Haman sees everyone bowing to him except Mordechai. And it's burning him inside. He has the whole world, but it's not enough. He wants Mordechai. He doesn't get Mordechai. So one day Mordechai is sitting at the gate, and he overhears these two people speaking.

48:08Here's these couple of guys speaking in a... Bigtan and Teresh. Now we read it Bigtan, but it's actually Bigtana, and I'll explain to you guys in a minute why it's that. These two people, they're speaking a different language than the common language at the time, and they're planning to assassinate Achashverosh. And Mordechai is sitting over there. They don't think he understands them. They don't realize that he knows 70 languages, and one of the languages is the one they are speaking. That's how he found out. It's not that they didn't see him—they saw him, but they were speaking a different language. So imagine someone sits among us and starts speaking Portuguese or Chinese or some language we don't speak. You don't know if he's saying he likes you, or if he's saying he's trying to kill you. You don't know anything. So they were speaking freely, not realizing that he understands 70 languages. So now he tells Esther, "Listen, these two people are trying to kill Achashverosh." Achashverosh finds out, they do an investigation, they catch those two people, they hang them both, they kill them both. They say, "Thank you, Mordechai, for doing this. You saved the king's life." But because he was Jewish, because they didn't care, he said, "Listen, I'm not going to pay you anything."

49:30We'll write you in a book. We'll write you in a book of memories. I'd say a lot of Jewish people do good things in the world every day. Not all the time do they get credit. One day, Haman gets the idea that it's time to destroy Am Yisrael after he gets really mad from seeing Mordechai now bowed to him. He goes to his wife, who's a big resha'ah, an evil woman. And he said, "I have the whole world in my hands except this guy Mordechai. What do I do?" She says, "Listen, go to Achashverosh. He likes you a lot. You're the number one guy. Tell him you're going to kill him. Tell him you're going to hang this Mordechai, especially now." He goes, "Yeah, what if he says no?" She goes, "No, listen, this is what you do. Already prepare it. Get..." A tree, a really, really tall tree. I think it was 25 or 50 feet. I think it's 25 feet tall. 50 feet? 50 feet. 50 feet tall tree. 50 amot, no. 50 amot is even taller. An amah is one and a half feet. Almost two feet, so it's even taller. It's like one and a half feet, so it's even longer, even more than 50 feet. Anyway, big tree. Get a big tree. Put it right next to the king's castle.

51:00and hang him on it so you could see, every time you have dinner with the king, you could see it and you could enjoy yourself. So, Haman goes to start preparing this thing, and he also starts a different plan, which actually happened before this. He goes to Achashverosh, and he says to Achashverosh, listen, there's a strange nation, a nation that's spread around everywhere, It's spread everywhere. They speak a different language. They have different laws. They are, you know, constantly going against the kingdom. They don't do what the king wants. He doesn't say Jews. I think we should get rid of them. And Achashverosh, at this point, he's so happy with Esther and his life. He doesn't care. He goes, here, here's my stamp. Do whatever you want. You're my number one guy. What do I care? Whatever you want. So Haman passes the decree. He sends it to every country. In the next few days, we're going to kill all the Jews. Everyone is obligated to kill any Jew that lives next to them. So Mordechai finds out about this and he tells Esther, listen, go to the king and use your power to tell him this is to save Am Yisrael. You're the queen. You have the power to do something about this.

52:24So now she realizes that this is not an easy thing. She can't just tell him, "Listen, save my people, the Jews," because until this point, he didn't know she was Jewish. Maybe he's going to kill her too. So she has to be smart about this. And she says, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do what's going to appeal to every man, meaning what's going to make every man angry. What makes every man angry? When he thinks that his woman is with somebody else." So what does she do? She tells the king. She fasts for three days, which is the reason why we fast tomorrow. Tomorrow, we fast all day. It starts at about 5:30 in the morning and ends at about 6:45. Unless someone is sick, pregnant, or breastfeeding, you're supposed to fast. Unless you have a specific physical reason that you can't do it, you're expected to fast. This is the reason why we fast. She fasted for three days, not for one day. So she fasted and... After three days, she appears to the king. The king sees her. What's wrong with her? Somebody who has fasted for three days doesn't look too good. She says, "What can I do? It's everything with my love. Please, what happened?" She goes, "Listen, please, I want to make a special dinner for you and Haman." "Me? Okay. Why Haman?" "No, no, please. He's important to me. Please bring him." So already the king is wondering, "What is she telling me? She's with Haman. What's going on here?" So she has...

53:53this plan, this seudah, both appear, and throughout the entire time, this is the first night, throughout the entire time, she's giving Haman extra attention. "Haman, did you eat? No, oh, please, eat this, eat this." Instead of giving the attention to the king, she's giving the attention to Haman. Because she's hoping that the king is going to get so upset that he's going to kill both of them. Why kill both of them? It's not that she wants to die, but she knows that the only way he's going to kill Haman is if he kills her. And if he kills Haman, the thing that they did in those days, if they killed one of the people in the government, they canceled out all of their laws. So since he passed a law to kill all the Jews in a few days, she knew that that was going to be canceled. She just wanted to put her life on the line. That's part of the reason why the Megillat Esther is called by her name. There's another reason, which is actually because the name of Hashem does not appear in the Megillah. It's the only part of the Tanach that doesn't have Hashem's name in it. It's hiding. Esther also means to hide. So Hashem is hidden in the Megillah, but not in Torah. He appears everywhere. But in the Megillat Esther, which is a book in the Tanach, it's not just any book. In the actual Megillah, His name is not in it. does not appear in the Megillah. It's the only part of the Tanakh that doesn't have Hashem's name in it. It's hiding. Esther also means to hide. So Hashem is hidden in the Megillah, but not in Torah. He appears everywhere. But in the Megillat Esther, which is a book in the Tanakh, it's not just any book. In the actual Megillah, His name is not in it.

55:19Anytime it says king, melech, it's referring to Hashem. But other times when it says Melech Achashverosh, it's referring to Achashverosh. So He's hidden in it, but it's not called by His name, which is the Yud, Hey, Vav, and then Hey. That's not it. It's the only book in the entire Tanakh that does not have Hashem's name in it. Yes, it's a little confusing, I know. So now, you have Hashem obviously putting everything in place, but He's hiding Himself. He's not making open miracles like He did in Mitzrayim or at Har Sinai. So, after she fasts for three days, they have the dinner. She makes Achashverosh jealous. And Achashverosh says, "Okay, what do you want now? What is your request? Please tell me." She goes, "The only thing that I want is for you and Haman to come back tomorrow again." All of this just for me to come back. Just tell me. "No, no, no, no. Please, please. Just come back tomorrow again." "Okay, come back tomorrow." She comes back. So she makes this plan. Now at this point, Haman is very happy. He's like, "Listen, in a few days..."

56:47i'm going to kill all of the Jews. Tomorrow, I'm going to kill Mordechai. And on top of that, Esther likes me more than Achashverosh. What a pride that he has. He's celebrating with his family, with his wife and kids. At this time, Achashverosh is not too happy. He's very upset. He's like, well, what's going on here? Is my wife trying to... Is she with Haman? She's not with Haman. And he tries to go to sleep. And all night, every few moments, he falls off the bed. And Chazal say that an angel was sent to push him off the bed constantly. He pushed him off the bed over 300 times. He fell off the bed that night to the point where he had a concussion. So he's thinking, maybe they're trying to poison me. Maybe Haman and Esther are trying to poison me. They didn't succeed tonight, but maybe that's why they're having dinner again tomorrow. But he then says to himself, wait a minute. Usually, when somebody tries to kill me, one of my people in my government tells me. Who is this person? He has to remember who this person is. So he goes, he gets out of bed, and he tells one of his people, which is actually one of Haman's sons, one of his ten sons, to open the Book of Memories.

58:11one of his people, which is actually one of Haman's sons, one of his ten sons, to open the Book of Memories. And he says to him, "Please, you know, read this book to me and tell me, there was a person that saved my life some time ago. Who is this person?" And now, Haman's son obviously hates Mordechai. So he actually, when he wrote it himself, changed it. Instead of saying that Mordechai saved Achashverosh from Bigtan and Teresh, which is two people, he took the last letter of Bigtan, which is Nun, and the first letter of Teresh, and he put it in the middle. He made a new word out of it, "O." So it reads "Bigtan or Teresh," meaning "Bigtan or Teresh." So Mordechai didn't save him from two people. He saved him from either this one or that one. Not to make such a big deal out of it. That's how much he hated that even in the words, it would bother them that Mordechai did something good. So now he's trying to, you know, every time he opens the book, it shows the thing that Mordechai did. So he skips the page.

59:33He's like, no, no, no, it's not this one. He opens a different one. And the malach made it that the same thing appeared on this page also. So then he changes it again, and he sees it's the same thing again. Wow. And the third time, he sees the same thing again. Every page says the same thing all of a sudden. So after three times, Hashem says, no, no, no, come on. What are you hiding? Tell me what it reads. Who is this person? So he tells him Mordechai. So now when Achashverosh slept for a little bit before he fell off the bed so many times, he had a dream about Haman. Haman took his horse in the dream and he took his crown and he took his clothes. So he's like, is this dream true? Is Haman trying to kill me and take my kingship? So now he remembers this person, Mordechai, saved his life. He's like, maybe the reason why Mordechai didn't come to me and save my life again is because I didn't pay him. because he asked Haman's son, "What do we give him for saving my life?" and he says, "Nothing, we didn't give him anything. Maybe that's why. That's what happens with these Jews; you don't pay them, they don't want to do the job. So we have to pay him, we have to do something good for him." All of a sudden, he starts hearing banging outside of his window, and it's the middle of the night. He goes out there and who does he see? He sees Haman.

1:00:56working, fixing this big tree to hang on. He says, "Haman, what are you doing outside of my house? Come, come, come inside. Come, come inside." So Haman comes inside. He says, "Ah, okay, let's see. Let's test this Haman. I'll give him a test. I'm going to tell him that I want to do something nice for somebody. He's probably going to think that I want to do it for him. So, let's see." maybe it's the same thing like my dream. So he tells Haman, "Listen, there's someone that you know who it is, you know who he is, but I'm not going to say the name. You know who he is, but I really respect him and I really care about him and he really helps me out a lot. What should I do for him?" So Haman thinks it's him. So, someone you love, you should not only give him one of your horses, just like your dream, you should give him your clothes, you should give him your crown, and you should have an important person, scream out his name and how much the king loves him all over the city. So Hashem sees, ah, this person really is trying to kill me. So that's what he was planning to do. He was planning not only to take everything from me, but he was planning on having somebody walk him around town to tell everyone that he's the king, pretty much. And that's why he's probably building that gallows to hang me.

1:02:25So now he tells him, "Okay, I like everything you said. Please do all of that tonight for Mordechai. Do all of it for Mordechai." Now if Haman was a Jew, he would have a heart, a real heart, and his heart would break; he would have a heart attack. But obviously, if his heart didn't break, he's obviously this heart of stone. So now Haman has to do what the king says. So the next morning, he goes to Mordechai, and Mordechai at that time is mourning. He's wearing sackcloth and ashes; he hasn't bathed, he's not clean. He's in a terrible situation because he knows that in a couple of days, unless a miracle happens, the entire nation of Israel will be killed. He doesn't care about himself. So he's mourning, but now he hears that the king is trying to honor him, so he sees that

1:03:25that Hashem is getting involved, that the prayers are being answered. And Haman comes to him and says, okay, listen, I have to do all this for you. So come on, let's go jump on the horse. He says, no, I'm an old man. I can't just jump on a horse. I need to, you know, take a bath. I'm going to wear the king's clothes. I can't just look like this. I need to get a haircut. He goes, "Haircut? No, no, what haircut? You don't need it." He goes, "No, no, I need to get a haircut." He goes, "Well, it's the middle of the morning right now. Nobody's open." He goes, "Yeah, but don't forget, I know something that nobody else knows about you, Haman." He goes, "Well, what do you know?" He goes, "You used to be a haircutter for 22 years." He knew everything about him. Haman used to be a barber for 22 years, and people didn't know this. This is also part of the Gemara. "So, you cut my hair." So he cuts his hair, and he bathes him, and he puts all the clothes on him. Wow. And Haman says, okay, listen, at least do me one favor. What? Let me at least wear your clothes. Because I don't want to wear my clothes. Everybody knows me, and it's going to be embarrassing for me. Let me wear your clothes. Okay, he lets him wear the clothes. He goes, hold my, you know, he had a big hat, put on his hat, and Mordechai goes, wants to get on the horse. He goes, okay, well, I can't. I'm an old man. I can't get on the horse.

1:04:48He goes, "Yeah, but we don't have any steps." He goes, "Okay, so you bend down on all fours, and I'll step on you." See, so Haman doesn't have a choice. Mordechai gets on Haman, gets on the horse. He goes, "Are you up there?" He goes, "No, no, one second." And he kicks him as hard as he can. So Haman says, "Wait, doesn't your Torah say that you're not allowed to kick even your enemy while he's down?" He goes, "No, that's only referring to everyone." all of the nations, but when it's referring to Amalek like you, I'm obligated. So Haman even knew our own Torah. So then he starts leading him with the horse, and when they get to the middle of the city, Haman had a daughter also, and she was a rasha, just like he is. And she saw that someone that's wearing the king's clothes is on a horse, and looks like her father. And some rabbi is... clothes. So she's like, oh, who is that? Oh, that's probably Mordechai. So she takes, you know, in those days they didn't have bathrooms like we have today. They didn't have internal plumbing like we have. Their bathroom, you know, was stored in these buckets or holes. So she took all of the bathroom tzoah, and she poured it

1:06:12on Haman. On Haman, on her father. Haman, all this stuff is on him, disgusting and everything else. He looks up, she realizes that it's her father, she jumps off and commits suicide. So, at that very moment, he has all this disgusting stuff on him, Achashverosh calls Esther. He says, okay, we're ready for the dinner. She goes, no, but I can't have it without my dear Haman. Your dear Haman, he says. Yes, I need my Haman. We cannot have the dinner without Haman. He goes, okay, we can't have the dinner without Haman. He tells his soldiers, get him right now. I don't care where he is. Get him right now. So they go chase him. They find him. They say, right now, let's go. He goes, okay, fine. I need to take a bath. I need to... No, no, no, no time. The king wants you now. So they take him with all the stuff on him, all the smell and everything else. They take him to the dinner. So right before, right as he comes in, Esther sees that he's coming in and she tells the king, "King, I'm ready to tell you what I want." He goes, "Okay, what do you want?" She goes, "There is a person in your government that killed your first wife."

1:07:37and is also trying to kill your second wife, me. And not only that, he's trying to kill all of my people. He goes, "What? My dear, who's trying to do this to you? My dear, I love you. Who's trying to do such a thing?" She goes, "Him. Haman." He turns around and he sees, and then he smells this filth on him. He says, "This guy not only is trying to kill my second wife already," But he doesn't even have the respect to show up to my kingdom. Like a human being, he has all this smell. He doesn't know what happened or anything like that. This is disrespect for the king. Just that alone is a reason to kill him. He gets so angry that he goes to his porch, goes to his balcony, to lose some... He didn't want to show his emotions. And what does he see? Hashem sent ten malachim. Ten malachim.

1:08:37to look like, because malachim can look like anything they want, to look like the ten sons that Haman had. And what are they doing? They're outside of the castle, and they're chopping off all the trees. All the king's favorite trees, chopping off the plants and the trees. The king says to them, what are you doing? He goes, no, no, our father Haman told us to do this. He goes, but I'm the king. He goes, no, no, no, our father is really the king. our father's really the king. He's preparing these trees. Even more angry. Then he goes back into the room, and the angel Gavriel pushed Haman on Esther, so he fell on top of her. Oh boy. It's all planned out. He looks at her, and he goes, he's losing his mind. So Haman gets up, and he pushes him again, so he keeps falling on her. He goes, you don't even have the decency... to hide this from me? You want to kill my wife, but before that, you want to take her from me? So he says, and the last thing is, that at that very moment, to put the nail in the coffin, Eliyahu HaNavi, Hashem sent him to pretend. Eliyahu HaNavi, when he comes to this world, he always pretends to be somebody else, that he dresses up as somebody else, either a poor man, an Arab, or, you know, all different things.

1:10:04So he came as Haman's best friend. He came to the castle, came to the kingdom. So Haman says, "Please, please give me good news." He goes, "Don't worry, I got the good news. I have the tree ready." And the king's like, "What tree?" He goes, "Oh, the tree to hang Mordechai. Mordechai is my favorite guy. You want to hang him now?" He goes, "Yeah, Haman told me to hang him." And actually, he made it. I believe that one of the interpreters says also, that the commentator says that he also made it seem like he's going to hang the king also on it, on the same tree. So he told them, "Okay, hang him on it." So they hanged Haman, and obviously the decree is over, and the miracle of Purim happens. Now there's two amazing things that happened after this. After World War II, with all the Nazis, was complete, the Nazis were also part of the seed of Amalek. It's obvious, it wasn't hidden. There, if you look at the speeches that Hitler made, his goal, when he would talk about the Jews, he said that the Jews brought this disease to the world.

1:11:33One of them is the conscience, meaning to care about other people. He felt that the Jews brought that to the world. It's a disease, and he wanted to get rid of this disease. So after the Nazis were taken down, we took a bunch of their sergeants and soldiers as prisoners and took them to court and so on. I think they should have killed all of them on the spot. That's a different story. Anyway, there were ten specific ones that they were going to hang. And part of the prophecies that were written in the Torah is that the punishment for the sons of Haman will happen again. And this hanging happened on Purim. And not only that, before they pulled the lever, One of them said, "This is from the Torah, this is Purim." Meaning that they were the gilgul of Haman's sons. And there's a recording of this, and you can literally see these Nazis, who didn't speak Hebrew or anything like that, actually mention Purim before they were killed. When was this? This is after, this is about 60 years ago.

1:13:01After World War II. World War II was completed in, what, '45, '46? 1945, '46. So I think they hung them a few years later, probably around 1948, '50. When they caught them. Right, when they caught everybody. So that's another thing. Another thing that's amazing about this week's parasha, but since it took a while to talk about the thing, we'll go over a few interesting things about this parasha. The Gemara says in Masechet Megillah, that talks about Purim, It says, where is Mordechai in the Torah? The written Torah is two parts, in essence. There's the five books of Moses, which is what we got at Mount Sinai. But then there's the rest of the Tanakh, you know, the Psalms, Proverbs, Tehillim, Mishlei, you know, all of the other books were written later. So the Torah that we got from Hashem at Mount Sinai is this, the five books of Moses. That's the core part of the written Torah. So the Gemara asks, where is Mordechai in the Torah? And where is Esther in the Torah? They're not mentioned in the Five Books of Moses. And one of the things that Hashem told us is that there's nothing new under the sun. One of the translations of it is that nothing new

1:14:28that people are inventing today or think that they're inventing or innovating. It's nothing new. It's already been here forever. And also, it means that everything that ever happened, is happening, or will happen is in the Torah. Even this conversation—there are ways to find it in the Torah. Everything that ever exists is in the Torah. This is a divine book. It's not a book that some guy wrote. It's a book that Hashem wrote. And there's something called codes, codes in the Torah... It's something that we only started learning how to use in Chazal, in the days of the Gemara, and things like that. They knew about this, obviously, but they were much, much higher than us. But in our generations, or even the last 1,500 years or so, a few hundred years at the minimum, we didn't have the mental capacity that Rabbi Akiva had, or Moshe had, or any of these people. So, About, I think it's about maybe 50 or 60 years ago, one of the big sages saw that there's something called codes in the Torah, meaning that you can find different things using a formula. For example, let's say you're looking for certain names. Let's say, for example, you're looking for the name Hitler.

1:15:55so you would do, you would look, you would type in this computer program the name Hitler, in Hebrew obviously, and you would see if, and you would ask the computer program to find you the name Hitler in the Torah using equal mathematical skips, meaning that they would look for the name, let's say the first letter is Hei, so it would look for Hei, and then it would look for the next letter Yud, Okay, but the yud would have to be a certain number of letters. And then after the yud, the next letter will have to be the same number of letters. So let's say if you're looking for a certain word, all of these letters would have to have, in order for the word to be qualified as something that's valid, the same number of skips between each letter. it would have to have the same number of skips between each letter. So, hay would have to have, let's say, five letters or ten letters. And then the yud would have to have also five letters. The same thing as the other one. And between each letter would have to be the same mathematical skip. So whether it's five or it's fifty or it's three, in essence, the lower the number, the lower the skip, the more you see that this is by design. So, for example, when they looked for the word Hitler,

1:17:11And they also looked for all the related words like "Holocaust" or the camps they had, or even the name of the country. All those words appeared on one page in the Torah, all those codes. You have over 304,000 letters in the Torah. But these codes... All of these words appeared on one page. And that specific page, not only that, but on top of it, that specific page, what was it talking about? It was talking about the punishment that Hashem would give Am Yisrael for not following His laws. Another thing is, for example, when we looked for things like the disease AIDS. So they looked for AIDS. And they saw that on that same page, they saw monkey, they saw homosexuality, and all of these different related words. And the actual page that it's on is a page of the Torah that discusses sex crimes. So it's not only that you're finding all of these words on the same page that are related to each other, but the parashah that it's on...

1:18:32is related to what the words are, showing that this is there by design. So the Gemara asks, where is Mordechai in the Torah? Now remember I said that the smaller the skip, the smaller the skip, the separation between each letter, the better. Meaning if it's five letters between one letter and five letters between the second letter and five letters between the third and five letters between the fourth, it's better. So Mordechai, the Gemara says, Mor dror. In this parasha, in this week's parasha, so it's not only in the Torah, but it's in this week's parasha, it says, so this is a verse that talks about how Hashem is telling Moshe

1:19:33To make this, in essence, this perfume. To make this specific type of perfume as part of the services in the Mishkan. So it says, the Gemara says that the name Mordechai, you can find it in this "Mor Dror." These two words that are in this verse. Okay. So Mor Dror in Aramaic actually means Mordechai. Great, it's cute, nice. But then once we found out this computer program, we saw that if you use the first letter of Mor, which is Mem, as the first letter in the calculation, and then you skip 12,196 letters, you find the letter Resh. And another 12,196 letters, you find the letter Dalet. Another 12,196, you find Resh. And then again, the letter Yud. You find the name Mordechai. Why is... Remember, a few minutes ago I said the fewer letters, the better. So why are 12,196 letters even acceptable? Because 12,196 letters is exactly the number of letters in Megillat Esther. Wow.

1:20:57If it was five letters or ten letters, great, nice, it's like all the other things. But when it's exactly the same number as in the Megillat Esther, which was written a thousand years after the Torah was written... ...wasn't written at the same time. A thousand years later, and it knows already the exact number of letters in the Megillah that’s going to be written a thousand years later, and it’s going to have it there, and it’s in the Gemara. And the same thing it says for Esther. Esther is actually in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is Sefer Devarim. Sefer Devarim... Very interesting. Amazing. These are different things. This is stuff that shows that there is no way in the world that this book, this Torah, was written by a human being. Even the greatest human being ever couldn't even write one page in the Torah. So in the Gemara, it says Esther is in verse...

1:22:2131:18 So it's talking about Hashem telling us, "I'm going to hide My face. I'm going to conceal My face on that day because of the evil that Am Yisrael did." Which is what happened in Megillat Esther. We made a sin. We went to the party that Achashverosh and the goyim were having. We weren't allowed to go there. We're doing exactly what Hashem told us not to do. Don't act like the goyim. Don't eat what they eat. Don't dress like they dress. Don't do what they do. Don't marry their women. He told us specifically, what do we do? We did it anyway. So He says, when you do that, I'm going to hide Myself where you're going to think that I left you. And that's part of the reason why His name is hidden from Megillat Esther. But Esther is also, it's written in the Megillah, it's written with the word Aleph. Aleph Samech Taf Resh. In this verse, it's written with Haster. Haster is with Hey. So they say that Haster, you know, when we first understood this, okay, so in this word it says, so Haster, okay, it's interesting. You know, it sounds the same as Esther. Interesting.

1:23:43but, if you go to the first letter, and you go to the Aleph, and you skip 12,196 letters, for each one of the letters, again, you find the name Esther, which again is the same number of letters as in the Megillat Esther. So it's amazing things like this that You see in the Torah that stuff that shows you this is not only a divine book but Hashem Himself put this together because a human being cannot think about this. If someone writes a book, like people that are foolish and are anti-Torah, they say, "Oh yeah, these codes, we also found words." in Harry Potter or, you know, in a different popular book that was written over the years, they found codes. To find words with an equal mathematical skip is not really the special thing. The special thing about the codes in the Torah is that not only will you find all of the related words on the same page, so it's not like

1:25:11Hitler is on one page, and then Holocaust is, you know, 500 pages later. And then the word, you know, a different word related to the Holocaust is on a different one, like the gas chambers is on a different page. No, it's all on the same page, and the page that they're all written about talks about something like that. Or, for example, Tu BiShvat, the Chag Tu BiShvat, all of the words then about the fruits and everything else, it's in Parashat Bereishit. You'll find it on all, that page talks about all the fruits that Hashem created. So you see that it's not just finding the words, but you're finding the words on a page in the Torah that's relevant to that particular thing. And I'll show you guys, since it's already taken a while, I'll show you one last code that's not related to this particular parasha, but... It's a very, very, very interesting and very special verse that when I first saw this, I think my heart dropped at least a few times. And then we'll finish with the night. So in Sefer Devarim, in Deuteronomy 28:

1:26:34Verse 36. 36. Hashem is telling us. I'll read in Hebrew and English. V'yakek Hashem b'shechin ra al ha'berkayim v'al ha'shokayim asher lo tuchal la'erapeh mikaf raglecha v'ad kadkodcha yolech Hashem otcha v'et malkecha asher takim alecha. In other words, He's saying, Hashem will lead you and your king whom you will set up over yourself to a nation you never knew. Neither you nor your forefathers knew this nation. And there you will work for the gods of others, of wood and of stone. Okay, so in essence, it's a prophecy that Hashem is telling us, a nevu'ah that Hashem is telling us. Because of the sins we made, not following the mitzvot and so on, Hashem says, "I'm going to spread you amongst the four corners of the world, and you're going to go to other countries where there's going to be foreign kings. And in those foreign nations, you're going to worship," He's already telling us, "you're going to worship their gods."

1:27:57The god of wood and the god of stone. What's the god of wood and the god of stone? What's the god of wood and the god of stone? Wood. What's Christianity? Christianity is the cross. The cross is wood. It's not metal. It's wood specifically. You see, every cross you see, people have on there, you know, it's wood. Stone, that's one major religion. Christianity and Catholicism, in essence, are the same. As far as the main book they use, the New Testament, it has the god of wood. Because their god, in essence, is represented by this wooden cross. What's stone? What's the other major religion in the world? Islam. Islam. Islam, what do they have? Where is their major, most important place for Islam in the world? In Mecca. What do they have in Mecca? That square stone, that giant square stone. God of stone. Great, so this is Hashem already telling us about the two major religions other than Judaism that are going to exist in the world and we're going to fall prey to these. He's telling us already thousands of years before they existed. The Torah is from 3,300 years ago.

1:29:13The New Testament is only from about 2,000 years ago. The Quran is about 1,400 years ago. So it's many, many years after us. So Torah was already around for almost 1,500 years before the New Testament and 2,000 years before Islam. Hashem is already writing in His book that they're going to exist. Again, this by itself, this is written a couple of times in the Torah, this specific God of wood, God of stone. It's written a couple of times in the Torah. But He's already telling us about these religions thousands of years before they existed. So that by itself is amazing, right? What's the name of these gods of wood and stone in Islam? What's the most important part to them? Islam. Islam is in Mecca. Mecca is the key place. In Christianity, you tell somebody "Mecca," They start bowing. Oh, Mecca, you know, Mecca is an important place for the Islamic people. For the Christians and Catholics, what is it? Yeshu. In Hebrew, Jesus. In Hebrew, it's Yeshu.

1:30:28There's no other word to say Jesus in Hebrew. Some people in the recent, last few years, they started calling him Joshua or Yeshua. It's not Yeshua and it's not Joshua. It's specifically Yeshu. It's always been Yeshu. That's what it is. Yeah, Yeshu. Yeshu is Hashem. So Hashem already told us that they're going to exist. Right? Right? What else does Hashem do for us? To show us that in case you didn't understand this verse, in case it's not literal enough for you, in case there's a confusion, if you do the codes and you have seven mathematical skips within the letters, in this verse, not just on the page, in this verse you find both the name Yeshu and Islam in it. In this verse. So it's seven skips of seven letters. You go to the Yud, you skip seven letters, you get the Shin, you skip seven letters, you get the Vav. For Mecca, you skip to the Mem, skip seven letters, and you get the word both in this verse. It's not just on the page; it's in the verse. So in case there's confusion about who the god of stone is and who the god of wood is that Hashem doesn't want us to go to, He's saying that they're not real gods.

1:31:54In cases of confusion about who it is, I give you the names. All we need to do is learn Hashem's Torah just a little bit. Fifteen minutes a day, twenty minutes a day, a little bit a day. Over a year, it becomes a lot of minutes. Over five years, even more minutes. Over ten years, even more. Over time, it becomes a lot of Torah. You learn what Hashem wrote to us in this amazing, amazing Torah that He gave us, and you're going to find the greatest things you will ever find. And that's why when you see someone studying Torah and they don't have a penny in their pocket. A penny! But you see a smile from ear to ear. Why? Why? Because they have the truth. Because they see a miracle every day. Imagine you live every day, and every day you see a miracle. Every day you see a miracle. Every day you get a chidush. Every day you see siyata d'Shamaya. Hashem wrote me a letter, and I'm reading it every day. It's amazing. And that's the amazing thing. You will find in this week's parasha not only things that we can learn, and b'ezrat Hashem we're going to go over some things about this week's parasha even next week. There's a lot more about this parasha.

1:33:17You're going to find things about the parasha, you're going to find things about the Megillah, you're going to find things in the entire Torah, but every time you look into the Torah, you'll find extraordinary things in it that not only show that the Torah is divine and from Hashem, but more so, it connects you with Hashem in a way that's hard to explain. Be'ezrat Hashem, we'll continue learning. Have a Chag Sameach. Remember, for Purim, there are four things that you need to do. The Tzom is tomorrow. Okay, the fasting is tomorrow. You have to hear the Megillah at night and again in the morning. As a matter of fact, the one in the morning is even more important than the one at night. So tomorrow night, and then the following morning, the next morning, that's the Megillah. The second thing is Mishloach Manot, to give a gift, that's on Thursday, and you give, it has to be 218 grams of mezonot. No, there's two things that you need to give. So Mishloach Manot is to give to somebody something that they can make, in essence, what the halacha is

1:34:41is to give them something that they can make a meal out of. So they made a minhag over the years where people give candy and things like that, but the real halacha, the real halacha is to give somebody at least two things that they can make a meal out of. So, for example, if you're giving them a loaf of bread, or a bun of some kind, and a can of tuna, or a salad, or cheese, or something like that, that's actually better than candy. Because, in essence, what it's supposed to be is 218 grams of mezonot. And it's something that they're supposed to be able to have a meal from. Why do we do this? It's because Hashem says that one of the things that we need to do on Purim is to unite, to be together, the sense of unity. 218 grams. 218 grams is even a couple of cookies. It's small. You give two cookies. Two cookies and a drink. Something like that. And you give it, each person needs to give At least one. It's good to give, you know, so let's say you and your wife, you give one, she gives one. She has to give to a woman, you give to a man. Ideally, you give two, but one is the obligation. Some people give to everyone, but you don't need to give to everyone. If you give, you know, one, you give, and one somebody else gives, your wife gives, it's fine. If you're single, only you give one. Mm-hmm.

1:36:03So that's one thing, and Hashem wants to make sure that in this holiday of miracle, the miracle that happened to us, to remember this miracle, we have to unite. And not only we have to unite, we have to make sure that everyone is celebrating on this holiday. So we're celebrating, the key of celebration is what people do, people eat. So He wants to make sure that every one of us, every one of the Jewish people, has enough food to eat, to make a meal. That's why candy is not necessarily the best thing, because even though candy is great for kids, It's not something that somebody who doesn't have money can make a meal out of. Someone who doesn't have money to make a meal, he's not going to make a meal out of chocolates. You know, give him a little bagel with cream cheese. It doesn't have to be too fancy. It's not something that needs to be elaborate. It's just something small. The second thing we need to do is to give a gift to the poor. To poor people. Give a gift to poor people. Again, this is on the day of Purim. This is on Thursday. This is not tomorrow. Both of these things to two. You give two, and your wife gives two. Tomorrow morning we have to give, no? No, this is on Thursday. All of it you give on Thursday. The real Purim is on Thursday. It's not tomorrow. Tomorrow, it starts at night. The reason why we read the Megillah at night is because, based on the Jewish calendar and Jewish religion, the day starts at night. That's why every time a holiday starts, it starts at night.

1:37:32But so, in essence, the real holiday is actually the following day. So the Mishloach Manot and the Matanot La'evyonim are on Thursday. Right, exactly. It's Yom Chamishi. So you give it, you give two to two poor people. If you don't know two poor people, then, you know, the Rabbi, I'm sure, can connect you to two. Right, right. So that's something that we can do. What's the last thing, I think? The Megillah, the Matanot. Oh, and the last thing, it's 216 grams, I'm sorry, 216 grams of mezonot, which is a bun. 216 grams of mezonot, and either... a small bottle of gefilte fish or a can of tuna or a salad, something that they can make a meal out of, something you can make a sandwich out of. And then the last thing is, it's called mishteh. Mishteh means we have to eat more meat and drink more wine than we usually do. So, if you never drink wine the whole year, if you don't drink wine, I don't drink wine personally,

1:38:56So for me, I would have to drink just one glass of wine. That's considered a lot for me because I don't drink wine. But someone who drinks a lot the whole year, let's say someone who each Shabbat drinks a bottle of wine, they have to drink a little bit more, but you're not supposed to get drunk to the point where you're falling. That's not allowed. A lot of people think that you're supposed to get drunk where you can't tell the difference. That's not allowed. No one is ever allowed to get drunk to the point where they're falling and they can make, it's called Chillul Hashem. So it's supposed to always be able to, you know, be a normal person. Yeah, a buzz is fine, but, you know, being drunk is not, you know. As a matter of fact, the sages and the tzaddikim, Purim is a very, very special day for them because they drink, but they don't drink to the point where they're falling. They drink to the point where they're very comfortable. So when you're next to, when you're sitting at a meal with one of these big tzaddikim, whether it's Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Zichrono Livracha, or all these other things. He gives them all the secrets of the Torah during the time he's drunk. It's things that they don't give the whole year; they give it during Purim. So they use even the drinking for the good. You're not supposed to go drinking and fall on the street like one of these degenerates that goes to a bar with his college friends. It's drinking for the right reason, right, to be happy. So if you don't eat meat the whole year, then having a small piece of meat is good. Not chicken meat. Um...

1:40:23But women, by the way, have no obligation to drink wine because it's not considered modest for women to be drunk. So, women are not obligated in the mitzvah of drinking wine. Only men are obligated in this mitzvah. But again, if you don't drink in general, then one glass of wine is good. If you drink once in a while, you can drink, let's say, one or two glasses, then one or two glasses, maybe three glasses is fine. Like a little bit more than what you usually do. But it depends on how much you drink in general. The four M's. And that's the holiday. Have a great holiday. Many miracles. An easy fast. An enjoyable fast. And we'll see you soon. Thank you very much.