Machshavot HaLev - Yeshivat Lev HaTorah

245
Purim
Is It Ever Enough?
Gabe DuBow
)גי:ה רתסא( ”ךלמה רעשב בשוי ידוהיה יכדרמ תא האור ינא רשא תע לכב יל הוש ונניא הז לכו“
H ow could it be that ןמה, who was second in command to שורושחא and
worshipped by everyone else in the kingdom, would care, or even notice, that one Jew
didn’t bow down to him? If someone was engaged in a huge feast, would he claim that
he couldn’t enjoy it because one dish was missing? There’s a vital difference between
desire for honor and desire for something physical. Someone who craves food, which
is a physical pleasure, will be satiated once he starts eating and enjoying the food, and
he won’t care about the missing dish. But honor is not something physical, it’s just a
figment of the imagination.
This is like the case of ןושארה םדא, who had everything except the תעדה ץע. In the cases
of ןמה and םדא, they had a big character flaw in that they would only be satisfied if
they had everything they wanted, but if they were missing just one thing, their desires
would never be satisfied, and life could not move on without it.
There’s a story quoted in Gittin (57b) in which a king said to a young boy, “I will toss
my signet ring before you, and you will bend down to pick it up so that the people will
say ‘He has accepted the king’s rule.’” The boy responded, “Woe to you Caesar, woe to
you Caesar; if your own honor is so important, how much more so the honor of the
Holy One.” The mighty Roman emperor was so obsessed with honor that he couldn’t
even do without the honor of a small child. The child’s response could have been, “No