One Coin—Two Sides

When we check the weekly sedrah reading for Shabbas Chanukah (ie the narrative of the sale of Yosef, in the weekly Parshios of Vayeishev, Mikeitz or Vayigash) looking for some prophetic hint or link to the holiday, we find to our surprise a whole host of phrases that sound familiar to us, not related to Chanukah, but rather related to Purim! Word after word, phrase after phrase are ‘lifted’ from this entire story and ‘borrowed’ for use in Megilas Esther. And like everything else about Purim, not a bit of it is mere coincidence.  Says Esther Rabah, Parsha 7:7, both offspring of Rachel (Yosef and Binyamin, represented by Esther and Mordechai, both from the tribe of Binyamin[1]) shared similar fates, reflected by the similarities within their pesukim :

 ז  ויהי באמרם אליו יום ויום– ר’  יוחנן  בש”ר  בנימין  בר ר’  לוי  בניה של  רחל  נסן שוה וגדולתן שוה. נסן שוה: הה”ד (בראשית ל”ט) “ויהי כדברה אל יוסף  יום יום” וכאן כתיב “ויהי כאמרם אליו יום ויום ולא שמע אליהם” ולהלן כתיב “ולא שמע אליה לשכב אצלה“. וגדולתן שוה: הה”ד (שם מ”א) “ויסר פרעה את  טבעתו מעל ידו ויתן אותה על יד יוסף וילבש אותו בגדי שש” וכאן כתיב “ויסר המלך את טבעתו אשר העביר מהמן ויתנה למרדכי” להלן כתיב (שם)  “וירכב אותו במרכבת המשנה אשר לו ויקראו לפניו אברך” וכאן כתיב “ונתון הלבוש והסוס וקראו לפניו ככה יעשה לאיש אשר המלך חפץ ביקרו“:

Rebbe Binyamin bar Levi above points out the most obvious of the literary parallels (eg from B’reishis 41:34,37,42,43) but they really show up all over the story of Yosef and his brothers (see the table at the end of this text—by no means exhaustive!—for an eye-popping summary of how many, and how strong, some of the parallels are. Some of the listings are single words and are not very convincing as individual entries, but in the aggregate the presence of borrowed phrases is astonishingly compelling and unquestionably nonrandom.)

The usual messages that are derived from these similarities are to highlight multiple parallels between their situations. Both Esther and Yosef:

• were taken from their families against their wills, chosen by the will of the Almighty to be thrust into a situation that led to the salvation of their people;
• became secret insiders close to the seats of power, did not [fully] reveal their true identities; both were given ‘local’ names to supplement their ‘Jewish’ ones;
• participated in multiple displays of royal celebration and sumptuous pageantry, well represented by the fabulous garb of the nobility;
• participated in different ways in allaying the disturbed sleep of their respective kingdoms’ rulers;
• Most importantly, both revealed one of the essential truths of reality, and a recurrent theme of the ongoing saga of the Jewish People—that HaShem always directs human destiny from behind the scenes and sows the seeds of  redemption in what appear to be events of tragedy.

This last message would have been particularly significant for the Shavei Tzion, the returnees from the Babylonian exile back to the Holy Land at the time of the rebuilding of the Second Temple. Those brave souls would have found great difficulty in uprooting (voluntarily!) a second time once they were well-ensconced in Bavel/Persia, especially given the tremendous social upheaval of the catastrophic Galus Bavel . The unspoken subtext on the part of the Men of the Great Assembly who authored the Megilah may have been to foster a mass aliah back to Eretz Yisrael: just as HaShem did not forget us in Mitzrayim, and orchestrated a galus that morphed into a magnificent ge’ulah, so too He could be using the events of the Churban Bayis Rishon  as a stepping stone to an even more magnificent ge’ulah, and an even closer relationship with the Divine in the Bayis Sheni (alas, a potential outcome that was only partially fulfilled). As Yosef uttered on his deathbed at the end of Sefer B’reishis:

כד וַיֹּאמֶר יוֹסֵף אֶל-אֶחָיו אָנֹכִי מֵת וֵא-לֹהִים פָּקֹד יִפְקֹד אֶתְכֶם וְהֶעֱלָה אֶתְכֶם מִן-הָאָרֶץ הַזֹּאת אֶל-הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּע לְאַבְרָהָם לְיִצְחָק וּלְיַעֲקֹב: (50:24)

In summary, we are surprised to find multiple references to Purim  within the weekly sedros which always accompany our Chanukah  celebrations.

In a complementary fashion, it makes sense to check out the weekly sedros  surrounding Shabbas Purim to see what parallels we might find there.

That turns out to be a little harder to nail down, since Purim ‘wanders around’ quite a bit depending on whether there is an Ibur Shanah, i.e. whether there are one or two Adars in any given year. Most (nonleap) years Purim falls out near the end of Sefer Sh’mos, just AFTER Parshas T’rumah (which relates instructions for making the Menorah, 25:31-40); or in Parshas T’tzaveh (recounts instructions for compounding the oil for the Menorah  27:20-21, and the ceremony for the Chanukas  Hakohanim V’haMishkan, 29:1-46); or in Parshas Ki Sisah  (instructions for making the anointing oil for the Chanukas  haMishkan, 30:22-33). On leap years it occasionally falls out in Parshas Vayikra (laws given on the very day of the Chanukas  HaMishkan— since that narrative follows the initial appearance of the Shechinah in the Mishkan in Shemos 40:34); or more commonly in Tsav (which recounts the narrative of the Chanukah  of the Kohanim  with the anointing oil, 8:1-36); or occasionally even in the sedrah of “Vay’hi bayom Hash’mini”, the narrative of the Chanukas  HaMishkan itself—and not coincidentally, on the eighth day of the consecration!

Thus, pretty obviously, the weekly sedrah around Chanukah-time points us AHEAD to Purim, while the weekly sedros around Purim-time point us BACK to Chanukah!

What’s the message?

The most fundamental message from Chazal would seem to be that neither Chanukah nor Purim exists by itself or can be viewed in isolation. Just as the Shalosh Regalim  are one integral unit so that none of the three exists without the anticipation of the other two (eg see Shemos 23:17, and 34:23-24, and most explicitly D’varim 16:16:

 טז   שָׁלוֹשׁ   פְּעָמִים  בַּשָּׁנָה יֵרָאֶה כָל-זְכוּרְךָ אֶת-פְּנֵי יְ-הוָֹה אֱ‑לֹהֶיךָ בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחָר בְּחַג הַמַּצּוֹת וּבְחַג הַשָּׁבֻעוֹת וּבְחַג הַסֻּכּוֹת וְלֹא יֵרָאֶה אֶת-פְּנֵי יְ-הוָֹה רֵיקָם)

so too are Chanukah and Purim, the two yomim tovim of galios. They are both intimately intertwined with each other, two halves of the same coin, and represent the totality of the Jew’s survival in exile; the Jew must surmount the double threats against both his physical life (Purim) and his spiritual life (Chanukah) and he must remember that the whole point of his continued physical existence is constant dedication—and REdedication—to his spiritual purpose!

DOES THIS ANALYSIS MAKE HISTORICAL SENSE?

For this analysis to have merit, the weekly order of sedros currently in place must have been present without alteration dating back some 2200-2400 years, when the Megilah was likely written.

We can abstract from the Gemarah that such is indeed the case! Meseches Bava Basra 15a imputes authorship of Megilas Esther to the Anshei K’nesses Hagedolah, the Men of the Great Assembly. Rashi specifies these to be “Chaggai, Zechariah, Malachi (the last of the prophets) Zerubavel (AKA Nechemiah, born in Bavel, returned to Israel as Judean governor, one of the leaders of the Shavei Tzion), Mordechai, and their ‘colleagues’ ”.

According to the Gemarah in Meseches Megilah [2], the current yearly assignment of the Parshios was in fact established by Ezra—the very same Ezra who organized the first generation of the Anshei K’nesses Hagedolah, and who was a contemporary of Mordechai!

Interestingly Shimon HaTzaddik, one of the last members of the Anshei K’nesses Hagedolah (Avos 1:2) lived approximately 150 years prior to the Macabeean revolt, and the events of Chanukah. Therefore, even if the Megilah was written by latter members of the Men of the Great Assembly rather than by Mordechai and the early members of that council, they borrowed phrases from a Shabbas-Chanukah-sedrah that did not yet in their time exist as such! (ie, the events of Chanukah occured almost 200 years after the events of Purim and the timing of those events could not have been rationally predicted at the time Megilas Esther was written!) That would attest to the idea that the Megilah was written with ru’ach hakodesh, justifying its canonization by the self-same Anshei K’nesses Hagedolah within K’suvim[3]!]

So even as you are booing Haman—remember the sparkling lights of Chanukah, piercing the Darkness of Exile, and attesting to the steadfastness with which we cling to the Torah of our Creator throughout the generations!

PARALLELS BETWEEN NARRATIVES OF YOSEF AND MEGILAS ESTHER

Listed chronologically by narrative of Yosef

[1]              Megilas Esther informs us of their lineage: “Yimini” = “Binyamini”

אסתר פרק ב

ה אִישׁ יְהוּדִי הָיָה בְּשׁוּשַׁן הַבִּירָה וּשְׁמוֹ מָרְדֳּכַי בֶּן יָאִיר בֶּן-שִׁמְעִי בֶּן-קִישׁ אִישׁ יְמִינִי: … ז וַיְהִי אֹמֵן אֶת-הֲדַסָּה הִיא אֶסְתֵּר בַּת-דֹּדוֹ…

[2]              Meseches Megilah 31b:

תניא ר’ שמעון בן אלעזר אומר  עזרא  תיקן להן לישראל שיהו קורין קללות שבתורת כהנים קודם עצרת ושבמשנה תורה קודם ר”ה

Thus these 2 fixed times for the recitation of the 2 ‘Rebukes’ in Chumash relative to the holidays set the yearly parshios into the same pattern that we currently use!

[3]              For a possible contrary perspective see “Chanuka’s Biblical Roots” by Rabbi Menachem Leibtag at http://www.tanach.org/special/chanuka/chanuks1.htm and especially http://www.tanach.org/special/chanuka2.txt