March 10, 2017 – 12 Adar, 5777
A Raw Transcript from Ari Fuld’s Grill & Torah Live videos
March 10, 2017 – 12 Adar, 5777
Hey everyone, it’s Friday afternoon, you know what that means, it’s time for someGrill & Torah. We’re talking about the week of Purim. We will be celebrating that tomorrow because we are in a city that is not walled, and then on Monday Jerusalem will be hopping. Not only Jerusalem, by the way, in fact if you lived in Yericho (Jericho)…
[Sidebar]
Ari: One Second, One second… Hello there [Ari’s son Natan Shai in Purim costume].
Ari: Who are you?
Natan: Skeleton. I’m a skeleton.
Ari: Why are you dressed up as a skeleton for?
Natan: Purim
Ari: Purim!
OK, so… The truth of the matter is, you know a Jewish holiday, the definition is always, they came to kill us, we won, let’s eat. So the question is, what is so special about the holiday of Purim that we’re not only eating, we’re drinking. And generally in Judaism, drinking is not looked upon as a positive thing, except for Shabbat and Holidays where you make a l’chaim and drink a little bit if wine. We know it does say that wine “sameach levav enosh” wine will make a human, a person, happy. Right. But generally Judaism does not look upon ever getting drunk as something, as a positive thing.
In the Temple, for example, if someone drank wine in the Temple, they weren’t allowed to go into the Temple according to several of the Mefarshim, the sages.
Nadav and Avihu, sorry, Aharon’s sons, Aharon’s two sons, were actually killed in the Mishkan, in the Tabernacle, because, according to some, they drank a little bit of wine, before they went in, and it is absolutely prohibited to go into the Tabernacle or the Temple when you are drunk.
So what is the issue about this holiday of Purim? Now, I heard this really amazing Shiur [class] by one of the, I guess, up for the job there, they are one of the rabbis who are working on becoming the rabbi of the shul I go to, I heard a really amazing Shiur last week from him, he gave it in the shul, and the question he was asking was a really interesting one.
It says, that by Mount Sinai, the nation of Israel, Am Yisrael, were under Har Sinai, and it says that HaKadosh Baruch Hu [God] lifted up the mountain Har Kigigit, like a roof over our heads, and said if you accept the Torah I am giving you, great, and if not, I will drop this mountain on your heads and your death will be here today.
So the question was asked, that is not exactly, well we all know that there is a famous Medrash that we say that Bnei Yisrael were offered the Torah from God, we said, “Naaseh v’Nishma”, we will do and then we will listen.
In other words, we will first do and we won’t ask questions, and then we will learn about it. And we’re praised for that many times for the fact that we didn’t ask questions, although Judaism is all about questions. But we’re praised for it.
But now we learn that HaKadosh Baruch Hu lifted up the mountain, like a roof over our heads, and if you don’t accept the Torah I’m going to kill you right here, where’s the big, what credit we deserve now? We really had no choice, He was going to kill us.
But before I get to the answer…
[Sidebar]
Good morning Sandy, How are ya. Let’s see? Who’s in the house.
Who’s in the house and where are you from?
What do we got here on Facebook Live.
I’m cooking. We got some steaks, some pargiot, some chicken breasts and hot dogs..
So who’s in the house, where you from, name and location please.
OK, so before we get going, the question is, we were asking about Har Sinai.
It God forced us to accept the Torah, then what is the big deal that we said we would act and then would learn? I mean, our life was on the line, it’s almost as if like a gun was put to our heads, not almost. Exactly. If the mountain was brought up on the top of our heads like a roof and God said you either accept the Torah or I kill you right here, it’s not really that big of a deal that we accepted it right away. We really didn’t have a choice.
So the Jewish sages, the Mefarshim say, that during Purim, on the holiday of Purim, we accepted the Torah by choice. And there is a passage in the Megillah that “Kiblu” that we accepted the Torah by choice, by Purim.
[sidebar]
Ok, let’s see who’s here. Aleia Hutcherson in Jerusalem on Rechov Metudela. Awesome.
Sandy Coffman[-Towner] in here from Arkansas. Fantastic
Mary is here from the UK
Elle Branch from Reut. Awesome. Great.
Alright, so why is Purim such an odd holiday, when in truth there are no miracles, there’s nothing that really happened. If you look even at Chanukah, we know that at Chanukah we had least that miracle of the, the supernatural miracle of the candles being lit for eight days.
[sidebar]
Shalom… looks delicious… Joy Erdile from Vancouver, fantastic. Well I was almost in Vancouver this trip, hopefully next time I’ll make it to Vancouver. We got to work on that.
Anyway, so the question we are asking right now is why is Purim such a weird holiday?
In other words, like I said, Judaism does not look at getting drunk as ever a positive thing, and all of a sudden comes this holiday and we’re supposed to get drunk, like lose control, which in Judaism is an absolute no-no.
We’re never supposed to lose control in Judaism. That’s what Judaism is about. We have the commandments to keep us in control. So what is this holiday all about?
One.
Two… The word “Purim”. And we know we have a very holy holiday called “Yom Kippurim.” So “Yom Kippurim.”
[sidebar]
Tammy, Shalom y’all! Texas in the house. Lubek (?) in the house.
So we know that Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year. So that’s called “Yom Kippurim” like Purim, as if Purim is a more holier day. So what is the story with this Purim? And there was no holidays…
[sidebar]
Hey Jennifer, what’s going on? By the way, everyone listen up, I don’t know, Jennifer, should I tell everyone, or not? You gotta let me know. Let me know, and I’ll publish, you know what I’ll publish.
Anyway, there were no holidays on Purim, and the interesting thing, people talk about Esther and Achashveirosh and Mordechai and things happened that, you know how many years Purim happened over? Nine years! Nine years.
[sidebar]
Hey Pinto, what’s going on.
Nine years, the miracle, I wouldn’t’ call it a miracle. We’re talking about a political struggle. That’s all. Achashveirosh was the king. You know, he had this wife who didn’t want to listen to his decree because the decree wasn’t exactly the best decree in the world, he wanted her to come out dancing naked. She said no to the king and he killed her, and then went searching for another queen, and found this queen Esther from the Jewish nation who was an orphan, and you know, they pick her, you know and she goes in, and Mordechai, her uncle says, do not tell them what nation you are from so she goes to live in the palace.
[sidebar]
Yes? Jennifer, is that a yes? I want to confirm with you, tell me yes one more time and I’m doing it. I’ll let everyone know what’s coming up.
And she goes to the palace and Mordechai says don’t tell that your Jewish, which is really not Jewish. You’re supposed to be proud of that, right? And she becomes somehow the favorite of the king, and the king is losing control a little bit. And then his second in command, Haman, he comes in, and he plans to kill all the Jews, a real genocide. And some crazy coincidence, “Kacha”, however you want to call it, the queen, Esther comes in, tells him, invites for a party twice, three time.
Right, of course Asher, … so if the miracle was how was she picked? Great. First of all, she was beautiful. The Gemorah says she was beautiful. So, I don’t know.
[Thanks Nana]
Nine years. so what is the big deal? It was a political victory. What’s the big deal? What are we celebrating like crazy for?
So, what happened was on Har Sinai, on Mount Sinai, we accepted, we got the Torah. So we got it in a miraculous way. There was fire and brimstone, and we heard the voice of HaKodosh Baruch Hu, the voice of God. No big deal really. If you heard the voice of God, what? You’d say no?
So that was by miracle. You know, the big bank kind of thing. Everyone saw it.
That’s not a choice. That’s not a choice at all. There’s no challenge or belief there. You see a miracle and God, “And well, I don’t believe that.”
That’s a miracle, but that’s not how we survive.
What happens is, we are commanded to see the miracle in everything in life. Not just by the big supernatural things. An interesting thing in Shmonah Esreh we read every day…
[Sidebar]
By the way, everyone please share the video with your friends. Let’s get some more people here.
Everyday when we pray three times a day, so we have this silent prayer, the Amidah, the 18, the 19 brochas of the Amidah. And what’s interesting is in one of the brochas we talk about, it’s a brocha of reincarnation, or, at the time of the Mashiach, that the dead will be coming back alive.
[Lexie! (Ari’s dog barks in the background)]
And that’s a supernatural miracle that people are going to be buried for years, and will come back alive, by the way, just a little piece of information is that the time of Mashiach, so, the people who are buried on the Mount of Olives, it’s the oldest Jewish, active cemetery in Jerusalem, in the world I mean, but it’s located in Jerusalem, people are buried with their feet facing the Temple Mount.
Why? Because when Mashiach comes, and there will be the
resurrection of the dead, the dead will stand up and they will already be
facing the Temple
Mount. So that is just an
interesting piece of information you might not have known.
But, the issue is that we, in that blessing, in Shomnah Esrei, of Techiyat Hameitim, of ressurecting the dead at the time of Mashiach, so that is a supernatural, insane miracle. Right?
In that same bracha, in that same blessing, we talk the blessing of rain. The same bracha we talk about the resurrecting of the dead, we praise HaKodesh Baruch Hu, we praise God for Mashiv Haruach u’Morid HaHageshem, for the one who is responsible for rain.
You gotta… What is rain, which is a natural event have to do with Techiyat Hameitim, which is a supernatural, insane event?
[sidebar]
Thanks Sam, Shabbat Shalom and happy Purim to you too as well.
So the answer given by the Abber Dehum (?) is that just like we look at Techiyat HaMeitim, resurrecting the dead, as something miraculous, we have to look at simple rain as something miraculous.
Now, what’s harder? What’s harder?
What’s easier to appreciate? Let’s put it that way, right?
It’s much easier to appreciate a supernatural miracle.
Right, you know, when your parents or your friends give you a brand new car, or buy you a house, something humongous, you’re going to be saying thanks for the, I don’t how long, right, and with emotion, “thank you so much.”
But what if your spouse or your children or anyone else cook you dinner. Or, I don’t know, take the smallest things that happen. So how appreciative are you of that?
Not so much, right? It’s no big deal.
So that is what’s going on. In Har Sinai it was fire, it was brimstone. What are you going to say? “I don’t believe that.” I’m looking at it right there. You can’t say it. There’s no appreciation really. OK, well there’s God, I’m accepting it.
But by Purim, right? By Purim, there’s no miracle going on here. It’s al natural, right?
You can make a mistake by saying it’s just a political victory. Very simple, right?
There was a political struggle, they have te second-in-command, right? and it happened all over the world, in Achashveirosh’s land. It happened all over the world, right.
So it was a political struggle and Esther won. Big deal. Big deal.
Well there is the big deal, and that is exactly the point. The point is with the little things in life. The point is, when it takes nine years, and you have to remember, how does the Megilla start out? How does the book we are going ot read on Purim start out?
With two guys. Two anonymous people who were working in the kingdom, Bigtan v’Teresh, and they plotted to kill the king. Right. And Mordechai spoils their plot, and reports them, and they get hung. Wonderful.
Nine years later. Right [I’ll show you what I’m cooking in a second here], nine years later the king is in a little bit of an uprising. He sees the queen is inviting his first-in-command, Haman, and keeps on inviting him to parties, like, he’s getting a little suspicious.
And he’s sitting in bed and saying, I’m getting a little nervous about my kingdom, what’s going to be? Give me the book and see who did something good for me and I didn’t repay them. Who comes up? Mordechai comes up.
Nine years before he foiled these assassins plans and he told the king, and so on and so forth. so you can say, no big deal.
But only someone who has their eye on the ball, only someone who really understands that God is really in charge of everything can connect the dots here. Right, most people, nine years ago, who would connect the dots? Nine years ago who would connect the dots? You know, nothing. So…
Here’s what I’m cooking, got some steaks and some chicken…
Anyway, so the idea is by Purim, specifically by Purim, there’s no supernatural miracle, not even a menorah. Nothing’s going on in terms of look at that, look at the fire and brimstone, you know, nothing’s going on there.
[sidebar]
Hey! Hello. Let’s say hello to my neighbors. [Mr. and Mrs. Marc Strohl]
Anyway, so we said nothing is really going on
[sidebar]
What’s going on Josh. By the way for those that don’t know, check out Josh, Josh Hasten. He just signed in. Josh is an amazing guy, working for an amazing organization [Regavim] which basically exposes illegal building of both the Arabs and the EU who are another organization building illegally in Israel to try to change the status quo here. Check it out. If you’re not following him, he’s the man to follow.
Anyway, [I want my steaks medium rare, nothing more than that, give me a second, let me flip these babies over.]
So davka on Purim, specifically on Purim, on that holiday, that nothing miraculous happened, in other words, there were no miracle, really no miracles, there was a political victory… when we can see God in that action, and can say, you know what, we can call this coincidence, but it’s not. This is the hand of God.
Here’s how it ties into everything. OK, we know that when Bnei Yisrael, when the Nation of Israel got out of Egypt, the whole world was terrified of us. It was like after the Six Day War. No one wanted to touch us. The were terrified to fight us.
Then one nation came up. Amalek.
Amalek the nation came up to fight Bnei Yisrael, and the Pasuk says, “Asher
Karcha Baderech” Right, so people
they, they cooled you off, you were hot, no one wanted to touch you, so they
cooled you off.
But there’s another explanation, “Keri” from the word “Mikre” – coincidence.
Right, they thought that getting out of Egypt was one big coincidence. So
what? The sea split, there was an earthquake, it was split by coincidence.
They took the actual hand of God, which was obvious to the whole world, and made it a coincidence. And so now, here on Purim, when once again the descendents of Amalek, which was Haman, Haman as the descendent of Amalek, when that man, once again, he does a lottery, and he picks the date to destroy the Jewish people out of a lottery, the same coincidence kind of logical thinking without any God in the picture. He made a lottery, by chance. That same Amalek, we are fighting again.
But this time, this time, it was our job as the nation of Israel to say there is no coincidences. There’s no such thing, as Bigtan v’Teresh, Mordechai caught them nine years ago, no coincidence. No coincidence that Mordechai picked Esther. There’s no coincidence that Esther – A to Z, it keeps moving up and up and up and up.
Right. There’s no such thing as a coincidence.
And that is what it means, on Purim, Am Yisrael accepted the Torah by choice.
In other words, there were no miracles, there was no fire and brimstone, sparks. This was just us saying Yes, God exists in the world, and the Torah is real, and there was no pressure, there was no… You know, the wedding night, everyone is dancing, and the flowers on the table, people are dressed up and everything is special, that’s wonderful. But the question is what happens fifty years down the line in the morning when you both wake up, morning breath, no one’s got their hair combed, no makeup is on. Do you still have that same love?
That’s the question.
And that’s what it’s talking about here with Purim.
Har Sinai was great. It was a bang. It was amazing. Right Amazing.
Mitzrayim [Egypt] was amazing, miracles right, left, every two seconds.
Purim comes along. Do you see God in Purim? Or, are you missing it?
And so I think that is the message of Purim, and therefore, the masks go on our face, because what we are are skin and bone, that’s not the main thing. We are tools. What we do with our bodies is the issue, so we put the masks on.
When you drink alcohol, right, it says, “Nichnas Yayin Yeitzeh Sod” When wine goes in, the secrets go out, or the soul comes out. We’re scared of peer pressure, of doing the right thing, of acting as really observant. When you drink that wine, you get rid of that fear and you have your soul, your neshama comes out, and you behave the way you are scared to behave because of peer pressure.
And so we’re saying specifically with mundane, worldly things, wine, meat, anything else, that is exactly how we are celebrating the holiday of Purim.
With the physicalities, with this world, that everything we call on Purim is coincidence, that’s how we’re celebrating Purim, so that is the idea behind this crazy holiday, whichis an awesome holiday.
[sidebar]
I will try to be a little bit live on Purim, although I don’t know if I want to do that for my own sake. But we’ll see about that. In any case people, what I am going to ask you. I said it a couple of days ago, and I’m going to say it again. We have an amazing opportunity. Standing Together has been invited to cosponsor a huge, huge meal for IDF soldiers in the Hebron area. I said the minimum is 700, we’re up to 1200 soldiers that we are cosponsoring for, and we are looking for people to join us and help us sponsor this meal for over 1200 at the end, but right now at 1200. So if you’re interested… I forgot to paste it. Toto, what’s going on. You got here a little bit late, you’ll have to rewind and watch the whole thing. But for those who are on right now and you want to help with the meal that we are doing you got to check out the website – I forgot, because I’m a nincompoop , I forgot to put this on, before I started the video, but for those of you who still don’t know, the website is www.STogether.org. On the left side, as soon as you go in, under the left picture, we have the Purim campaign.
[COMMENT: Aleia Hutcherson · 18:51 Drink to get rid of FEAR!]
Well, it’s not drink to get rid of fear. It’s not fear that I’m scared of the world. No, no, no. That’s not what Judaism believes. You’ve got to face that. It’s drink to get rid of your own fears to behave the way you are supposed to behave. It’s taking off the hard shell that we all wear. You know Billy Joel says, we wear a stranger, so it’s taking off that stranger and allowing us to behave in the way that we are supposed to be behaving.
So the link is right there people. It was up to 5000 when we first started, it’s around 7-9000 dollars now to cover the whole meal. So, I’m talking to you guys. Hit that link and join us.
Remember, yeah Purim we get drunk, we do wear masks, and everything else, but the message is clear once again. The message is like I said before, and those who didn’t hear and just signed in, welcome, but you gotta listen from the beginning. The message is davka on the holiday of Purim when nine years went by and no miracle happened – that’s when we found God.
We found God in what others would call coincidences.
And I will talk about Israel right now. We’ve been here for 68, 69 years now in the new State of Israel, where the Jewish people came back to the land of Israel, and some people call this a coincidence, there are even some people who say it’s not a good thing. The Six Day War was a coincidence where we beat six Arab nations who outnumbered us thirty to one. Oh, where was God?
It’s ridiculous.
That’s where you have to find God. Not just in the miracles. In the small everyday things in life.
Alright people, I’m signing off, everyone have a wonderful week and Shabbat Shalom, and don’t forget to hit that link. Share the video. Let’s go, share it out and hit that link.
Chag Sameach to everyone, and Happy Purim to everyone and have an awesome weekend. Signing off from Efrat…
