The Jewish holiday of Purim, which
celebrates God's salvation of the Jewish people from the annihilation scheme of
the evil Haman, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther, is a mere few weeks
away. While the narrative is thousands of years old and depicts occurrences in
ancient Persia, the story's relevance to contemporary society at large is
striking, for it describes the eventual results of an absence of
divine moral norms.
This concept was elucidated by the
illustrious 20th century rabbinic scholar, Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik,
who taught thousands of students at Yeshiva University's affiliated rabbinical
school over the course of nearly half a century.
Rabbi Soloveitchik explained, based
on a careful reading of the Book of Esther, that the locus of its narrative -
the Persian capital of Shushan - was the seat of an orgiastic society, drunken
with unbounded enjoyment and self-gratification. Hence does the text of the
Book of Esther give exceptional attention to the ornate furnishings of the
king's palace, the detailed cosmetics regimen of the women, the eunuchs of the
king’s harem, and so forth, so as to portray Shushan as the apex of indulgence
in pleasure and hedone. Such a society, devoid of divine morality and steeped
in blind and limitless self-gratification, is most vulnerable for takeover by
amoral totalitarianism.
To quote Rabbi Soloveitchik's lesson
on this theme: The
hedonic society is, more or less, a democratic Western society, in pursuit of
pleasure and happiness. That society’s world philosophy and outlook can be
broken into a number of component parts. This democratic society is in pursuit
of pleasure, insists on minimum government interference in private life,
resents controls, demands unrestricted freedom in matters which do not affect
the community, particularly, matters of sexual morality, hates discipline
imposed from above, not even by teachers, is opposed to any constriction...
There is
also another society. There is another path which human beings take in order to
escape from the finiteness awareness and in order to engage in self-defeat, not
only in an allusion but simply in a delusion. The second path, along which
frightened man runs in his wild flight from finiteness and death, leads in the
opposite direction… Man, traveling along the second path, tries to calm the
fear of finiteness through a big lie, through convincing himself that he is
more than man. This is done by intentionally magnifying, a hundred-fold, and
exaggerating and lying about human ability and power to solve both scientific
and metaphysical problems of humanity, and by painting, in iridescent colors,
the eschatological age which should be brought about by man alone, through his
wisdom and creative efforts.
Then
something happens… By idolizing man and setting him up as a deity, it
inevitably leads to the formation of idolatrous cults, from time to time, like
the cult of Stalin… Society, mankind, humanity is idolized, defined and set up
as the omnipotent deity… The idol is the class, not the individual… In the name
of some man-made doctrine or code, they appeal for sacrifices… Arrogant man
becomes a tyrant, and the arrogant society which he establishes turns into a
tyrannical society.
As a rule,
orgiastic society eventually succumbs to a tyrannical, arrogant society…
Orgiastic man overemphasizes the importance of freedom. He simply lacks the
courage, the vision, to have the power of anticipation. He lacks the predictive
element in history. He does not experience history, since he just lives for the
present. Little by little, his power is eroded, and he is replaced by the irrational
(tyrannical) man...
Man
cannot, and must not, legislate the moral norm. Man should be ready to either
accept morality from God, or give up any attempt to lead a moral life.
Imposition of a secular, finite and relative code upon society is in vain and is
worthless. In my opinion, that is exactly what the original sin consisted of.
Adam tried to impose and legislate norms of good and bad. He brought disaster
upon himself and mankind. Irrational man does that with arrogance and ends up
with the law of immorality...
A society that lacks a divine moral
code cannot endure. The empty, meaningless void that is created by pliable and
disposable communal norms gives entry to totalitarianism, be it Marxism,
communism or fascism.
I fear to ponder what would
have eventually happened with American society, originally structured by a
strong sense of Biblical values, had the Democratic party won the recent
elections. The Democrats' rejection of any sense of divine morality and their
basic embrace of unbridled permissiveness portended the eventual collapse
of American society and a severing of its historical connection
to Biblical values. When such values are replaced with trends of
self-gratification and the breaking down of all semblance of
dignified social order, one must worry. When the Biblical concepts of
marriage, gender and even honesty are banished in favor of a contrived
right to totally redefine and overturn these truths, society is in major
trouble.
Rabbi Soloveitchik addressed these
issues very clearly, explaining during a 1974 public lecture in Boston: A
philosophy of homosexualism is being preached throughout the Western world, to
such an extent that a certain rabbi came to me and said, “How can we defend
ourselves against it?” I told him, take out a Bible and read the verse, “You
shall not lie with a male as with a woman.” We are on the defensive, you
understand. Why? And the same is true of abortion and so forth.
I can
never predict what modern society will come up with. Everything is possible.
The most abnormal, obnoxious, repellent ideas may be introduced in the form of
legislation to Congress. And now, since it is modern to be liberal, it’s quite
in vogue to be heretical, so any law can be adopted. The Supreme Court in
America is the most unpredictable body. Did you see, did you read carefully,
the decision about abortion? (Roe vs. Wade)
This is
the meaning of the phrase in Genesis, “children of the flesh”. Children of the
flesh are oversensitive to beauty, to unredeemed beauty. We ourselves
cherish beauty, but redeemed beauty. Unredeemed, vulgar, coarse people. And
simply what the children of the flesh preach is non-interference on the
part of ethics and morality. This man wants to enjoy life, that’s all. Because
actually the pagan way of life rests upon the idea of egocentric hedonism. The
latter was declared by the pagans to be morally desirable. In other words, free
man is expected to reject any restrictive norm interfering with his hedonic
freedom. The permissive society is the pagan society, which heads toward
disaster.
The
permissive society consists of the children of the flesh, who are obedient to
the flesh and its biological pressures. The main
sin of pagan society consists in its exploiting nature for the sake of man’s
enjoyment without the latter accepting responsibility for the very act he
enjoyed. In a word, hedonic society, the generation of the Great Flood, drove
itself and the environment to annihilation. That is exactly what happens to the
Western part of the world, the so-called “democratic world” or the “free
world”.
Rabbi Soloveitchik opposed liberal,
hedonistic societal values, and he likewise was an outspoken opponent of
communism. He voted for Eisenhower, despite the Democratic Party's all-out
efforts to secure the Jewish vote, and he was a staunch supporter of the
Vietnam War, viewing the spread of communism as the greatest evil.
There is another lesson of Purim:
the defeat of lies and hypocrisy. Haman persuaded the king that his Jewish
subjects were not loyal and hence should be done away with. Haman lacked any
factual basis for this claim, and, to the contrary, the Jewish community of
Persia was quite loyal to the government, as evidenced by various events in the
Bible.
The Talmud teaches that one must
pray for the welfare of the government, and to this day, every synagogue
recites a public prayer for the President during Saturday morning
prayers. (I must admit that even though I, of course, always respond Amen to
this prayer, it was quite a challenge to do so the past eight years,
until January 20th of this year.) Haman perpetuated a great lie, and
was a hypocrite par excellence.
And today, with so much fake news
and totally baseless attacks on the president emanating from the liberal media,
inspiring naive people to take to the streets in protest incessantly, the
lesson of Purim that the truth must be sought and falsehood must
be boldly dispelled needs to be taken to heart and acted
upon.
The current hypocrisy of the
American left knows no limits, as media and protesters selectively overlook
liberal politicians' numerous and outrageous statements and acts
of prejudice, and are obsessed with fabricating implications of bias on
the part of President Trump.
We must ask:
·
Where was
the righteous indignation of these people and media organizations when it
came to the racial overtones of an important election season communication by the campaign manager of
Hillary Clinton?
·
Where was
the righteous indignation of these people and media organizations when it came
to the now former Vice President Biden calling then-candidate Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and
clean and a nice-looking guy“?
·
Where was
the righteous indignation of these people and media organizations when it came
to Nevada’s Democratic Senator Harry Reid stating of then-candidate Obama that he was
electable because of his light
skin and “no Negro
dialect, unless he wanted one“?
·
Where was
the righteous indignation of these people and media organizations when it came
to former President Clinton stating about then-candidate
Obama, "A few years ago,
this guy would have been getting us coffee"?
·
Where was
the righteous indignation of these people and media organizations in reaction
to top advisers to the Hillary Clinton ticket harboring and being associated
with misogynistic and anti-Israel views?
·
Where was
the righteous indignation of these people and media organizations in reaction
to top-tier Democratic party and administration leadership making disparaging
remarks about Indians (such as here and here)?
· Where is
the righteous indignation of these people and media organizations in reaction
to Minnesota Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison's likely ascension to
chair the DNC, in light of Ellison's support for Nation of Islam and other
anti-American and anti-Semitic causes?
Purim instructs us not to fall for
the Big Lie and to be ever so wary of efforts to strip society of divine moral
values. I pray that the coming years represent a reversal of these
trends and of the overall damage of the past eight years.
Avrohom Gordimer serves on the editorial board of Jewish Action
magazine, is a staff writer for the Cross-Currents website, and is a frequent
contributor to Israel National News and a host of other publications. He is a
member of the Rabbinical Council of America and the New York Bar, and he
is also a board member of Coalition for Jewish Values, (http://coalitionforjewishvalues.org/), a
national organization that speaks on behalf of what are commonly known
as Judeo-Christian ethics — the moral voice of the Torah. By day, he works
as an account executive at a large Jewish organization based in Manhattan. The
views expressed in the above article are solely those of the writer.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/the_biblical_story_of_esther_and_the_immoral_society.html
