‫ב”ה‬

‫פורים תשס”ח‬ ‫שיחות רב עוזר‬

Insights into Torah and Halacha from Rav Ozer Glickman ‫שליט”א‬
‫ר”מ בישיבת רבנו יצחק אלחנן‬
‫מעומקא דליבא‬
This past Sunday, I had the privilege to attend two weddings, sitting with old friends at both
celebrations. I left one with the band playing that popular niggun, Mitzvah G’dolah only to show up at
the next one during the same song. I’ve always disparaged these words for their imprecision. A mitzvah?
Where? Not in the Rambam, not in the Chinuch, not in the Ramban, not in any of the enumerations of our
Taryag ha-mitzvos.
I usually enjoy a good argument with a song lyric. It’s nice to feel superior and vastly more intelligent
than the lyricist and that can be very pleasurable. Remember the old Israeli song Pitom kam adam? In
younger years, I thought it was among the stupidest verse I had ever heard. I could regale friends with my
witty parsing of the text. On Sunday, though, the song made me feel sad. I’ve been having that reaction
frequently over the past few years. The emotional distance that I often feel at joyous actions is palpable to
me and it want to share it with you, my most sympathetic audience.
Some of it is surely just getting older. But it isn’t simply slowing down. After all, I’m not that old! And
besides 50 is the new 40, isn’t it? I saw it in a very hip magazine. I think it’s actually something more.
I believe my outlook on life changed irrevocably in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001. Up
until then, I was always an optimist. Something changed for me in the days following those events.
Sometime that winter, I decided that life would never be as good for me as it had before then. And
even worse: my children would never have a better life than the one I had up until then. It wasn’t that I
feared for my life or even for theirs. It was that the calculus of human civilization had changed. I was no
longer certain that humanity would always move forward and that the particular slice of humanity that
means the most to me would be more prosperous, more educated, and more secure than generations
past. I now knew that it might not be so. In fact, I decided that it wouldn’t be. This is a terrible realization
for any ancestor in training.
And so on Sunday I didn’t mock the lyrics of that song; I felt mocked by them. It’s a mitzvah to be
perenially happy? I can have trouble being happy at the happiest of times.
The lyrics, of course, are not from the gemara or the Rambam or the Shulchan Aruch but from the
writings of Rav Nachman of Breslov. Thanks to an insistent m’shulach, I have a copy of Likutei MoHaR”aN and
I know the full quotation from Rav Nachman. He is one of the outstanding Chassidic thinkers who embed
lomdus in their writings, another being Rav Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin. The full quotation with the words
that the band didn’t sing goes like this (in my rough translation): It is a great mitzvah to be perenially
happy, to overcome and distance oneself from sadness and bitter depression with all one’s
strength, for all the maladies that come upon human beings rise precisely from the neglect
of happiness.
Not so silly after all. Read on the literal level, it accords with modern medicine. A
happy human being is a healthier one. For me, it’s more though. I think of Kierkegaard’s
Sickness Unto Death in which spiritual death is described as the outcome of the sickness that
is despair. The Danish philosopher’s metaphors may belong to another religious tradition
but I remember that the greatest teacher of Torah I have ever heard found much inspiration
himself in Kierkegaard’s writings.
Despair is essentially an act of sin. It denies the relationship between the finite and
the Infinite, between man and his Creator. As a Jew, my act of despair threatens my physical
and spiritual health. It removes me from the community of God and those who trust in
5768 ‫פורים‬ ‫שיחות רב עוזר‬
His covenant, Am Yisrael. I perceive my own despair as the act of egoist, a posture singularly
antithetical to our Torah, and it saddens me. Despair is a failure of the spirit.
I think of R. Akiva sitting among the people one Shabbos afternoon, expounding on
Chayei Sarah. He saw that the people were beginning to doze. He sought to rouse them from
their slumber. How does Ester ha-Malka come to merit ruling over 127 provinces? Because she
was the direct descendant of Sarah Imeinu, the heroine of that parashah, who lived righteously
for 127 years.
What’s so rousing about this? Think about it. There is another empire described as having
127 provinces: Rome. R. Akiva was a supporter of Bar Kokhba, the leader of the Jewish rebellion
against Rome. This roused the Jewish community in R. Akiva’s day. If Ester ha-Malka was the
descendant of another noblewoman tied to the number 127, then so were the Jews gathered
in the Beis Midrash that afternoon. They too could rule over 127 provinces, by virtue of their
yichus as Jews. And so are we.
The spiritual slumber of the Jews in the time of R. Akiva was due to the sin of arrogance.
They deemed themselves above Jewish history. In their despair, they elevated their own
political and religious struggles above those of the Avos who preceded them.
And so, as we read Megillas Ester, we must remember that our own struggles with
Islamicism are nothing more than the perennial struggle with Amalek. Hamas and Al Qaeda
are nothing more its latest incarnation.
Tonight, after I had the sublime pleasure of hearing my youngest son read the Megillah,
the band at Yavneh Academy played Mitzvah Gdolah. I see now the imperative in shucking off
our despair and joining in song and dance.
!’‫ לישועתך קויתי ה‬
‫חג פורים שמח‬
These sichos are published by students and admirers of Rav Ozer Glickman shlit”a. We may be reached at ravglickmanshiur@gmail.com.