The Real Money Secret of Purim (10 Minutes)

0:10A guy comes to Rav Nissim again. "I love HaShalom," he says. He gives him a check in the morning and says, "For the love of supporting your kiruv organization. There you go. I believe in what you do, please give me something. Give me a blessing." So Rav Nissim sees him again. Now, this guy's worth a hundred million dollars. He says, "Listen, ask me for one blessing, the most important thing that you want, anything you want, and I'll pray all year for it." One thing, the guy's worth a hundred million dollars, rabotai. So what are you gonna think? Yeah, refuah shlema, for my kids to get married, for my wife to be nice to me, for me to become a talmid chacham, I don't know, to live to a million, I don't know, something. What? Kavod harav, please, for Hashem to give me parnasa tova this year. Kavod harav, please, for Hashem to give me parnasa tova, like he's homeless. For Hashem to give me parnasa tova. That's it. That's all I want. Everything else I have, Baruch Hashem, is parnasah tova. That's all I need. That's all I need. Parnasah tova. A hundred million dollars he has in the bank. Parnasah tova. Why?

1:20The Gemara is not just some book that a group of people wrote because they have some intellect. The Gemara is from Ruach HaKodesh. It comes from Hashem. It's from Mount Sinai. It's not just random sayings. The Gemara says there is no such person who will ever have enough. Why? You give him a hundred, he wants two hundred. You give him two hundred, he wants four hundred. You give him four hundred, he wants eight hundred. And the Gemara says no person ever died with even half of what he wanted because he always wanted more. This, we already saw so far, is a problem. How is it connected to Purim? That's how Purim started. Before the disaster, the Gemara tells us that Achashverosh was actually more anti-Semitic than Haman. He hated Am Yisrael just as much, if not more.

2:24But he wasn't as passionate about it. But he wanted to make sure that he kills us from the inside, not from the outside. Not like Haman. Haman wanted to kill everyone. Achashverosh was very similar to the Greeks, who wanted to kill off our religion. So what did he do? He had a party celebrating that they did not build a Beit HaMikdash. According to his calculation, the Beit HaMikdash was supposed to be built. According to the prophecy from the book of Yeshayahu (Isaiah), the prophet Yeshayahu said there was going to be a seventy-year difference between the first Beit HaMikdash and the second Beit HaMikdash, and he calculated that the seventy years had passed, and it wasn't built. That means that Hashem gave up on Am Yisrael. So he said, let's celebrate. How are we gonna celebrate? I'm gonna invite all the Jews. I'm gonna invite all the Jews to the White House, and I'm gonna have them celebrate with me while I wear what I wear. I wear Jewish clothing; I wear the clothing of the Kohen Gadol. I'll bring all the tools from the Beit HaMikdash, and they are gonna say, "No, don't worry about it. He's the king." He's allowed to get a stomach in our hotel. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna make them feel good about themselves now. We have kosher wine. "We'll make you kosher wine." You want kosher Chinese food? I'll give you kosher Chinese food. Whatever you want, I'll give you.

3:52Just start changing the Torah. Make it like a Goyishe version of Torah. Make it like the New Testament type of Torah. You know, people say, oh, it's the same thing, no? Chas v'shalom, same thing. But unfortunately, kavodchem, the reality is that we went. We went to the party. We went to the party, we drank the wine, We didn't listen to the Kiruv rabbi named Mordechai screaming at the gate, "Don't go, don't go. I know it's the White House, but we don't belong there, we're Jews. We don't belong in the White House. We don't belong writing stories for politics. We don't belong there. We just gotta survive, learn our Torah, and wait for Olam Haba, wait for Mashiach. That's all we're here for. We're not here to be politicians. We're not here to be journalists. We're not here to be anything. We're here just to be Jews." Make our kids Jewish, be Jewish. That's all we're here for. No one wanted to listen. Why? They wanted to cancel out the blessing we say in the morning: "Sh'lo asani goy." We want to be a goy. Why? The guy's in charge. He's in leadership. Let's be like him. Look, he's even celebrating our holidays now. Look, he has the Kohen Gadol's uniform. Looks nice on him. No! He has kosher wine. Wow, he cares about us, gave us kosher wine.

5:18Look, he has kosher Chinese food. He has kosher - this food, Bukharian food, Ashkenazi food - this food, gefilte fish, all types of food. Look, we're at the White House. What's the problem, Mordechai? Why are you such a machmir? Why are you such a machmir? We went. Hashem says you went. Strike one. But in Hashem's eyes, It's not baseball. There's no three strikes. It's one. One small act changes everything. One small act was the difference between Moshe Rabbeinu entering Eretz Yisrael or not. The Rambam says that if Moshe Rabbeinu would have entered Eretz Yisrael... He would have been the Mashiach. They would have built the Beit HaMikdash and there would have been four thousand years of Yemei Mashiach, no sins, no Yetzer Hara, no Churban Beit HaMikdash, nothing. Everything good. Already Gan Eden in this world until we go to the next world. But he made a small tiny mistake that to us is not even a mistake. What did he do? He hit the sela.

6:26He hit the rock and said, “Oh, listen, bring some water out.” The first time, Hashem asked him to do it, he told him to hit the selah. So he hit it. The second time, he didn't tell him to hit it. So Moshe figured, kal vachomer, I did it in the past, it worked last time, I'll do it again, it's going to work this time, big deal. What's the problem? Hashem says it's a big sin, it's a significant transgression, it's a big deal. Why? Just a little bit less kiddush Hashem. Just one tiny small act. That tiny small act changed everything. What if everything you did wouldn't have led you there? In Eretz Yisrael, everything is good. One small mistake, and you must endure Gehinnom in this world for the last few thousand years. A few people go have some kosher wine; they go to the White House or to Ahasuerus. They hang out with the guys. Big deal. Why did Ahasuerus want to do it? He wanted to show off his money. But what do we say? Whoever has money and loves money never has enough money. So Hashem made the next move. What was the next move? Someone else had more money than him. Only one other person in the world had more money than him. His name was Haman. Haman had more money than Ahasuerus. As a matter of fact, the Midrash tells us that aside from Korach,

7:53No one had as much money in the history of mankind like Haman. Haman comes to Achashverosh and he says, "Hey, Achashverosh, listen, there's a bunch of people. They're strange. They're not like us. They act like us, but they're really not like us." Let me kill them, and just in case, so you don’t even think about it, let me give you a little small down payment. How much? 10,000 kikarei kesef. What’s 10,000 kikarei? It sounds like $10,000. The guy has a hundred million dollars in the bank. Why would he care about $10,000? Rabotai, I did the heshbon. I did the math. How much did Haman give him as a down payment? In today’s worth, if you figure out the cost of silver being $16.60 an ounce... Exactly three hundred and thirty-four million dollars. Down payment: let me kill the Jews. Three hundred thirty-four million dollars: let me kill the Jews. We think he's gonna say no. He hates the Jews already and he loves money. Why did this happen? Jews went for a couple of drinks.

9:07It could have always happened. It could have happened before. It could have happened after. It could have happened a million other times. It never happened until the Jews decided they wanted to be like the Goyim. You want to be like the Goyim? You don’t want to sanctify yourself? If you don’t want to sanctify yourself, I'll send the Goyim as a weapon to separate you, to remind you that you're not like them. What will I use? I will use the same thing that you thought was good. So, the story of Purim technically only happened because of the lust for money. Achashverosh loved it, Haman had it, and we made enough mistakes to deserve it.