A Quick Torah Thought

 Few are the organizations we know that would say, "No more donations, we've got enough!" But that's precisely what happened in the building of the mishkan. Growing up as one of seven in an Orthodox home in America, I remember the endless demands of every school and synagogue imaginable, "The School Building Fund," "The Journal Dinner," "The Jewish Future Fund." Not only were these eleemosynary enterprises of a highly competitive nature, guided by peer pressure and the like, but they were strictly obligatory. If you sent your child to a school, as part of your contractual obligation you had no choice but to give to its building fund. Why should you only have to pay tuition, when your predecessors paid for the building fund whose benefits your child(ren) reaped?!  And there obviously is a keen logic to that. Every investment fund puts aside money for a rainy day, every bank and public company puts aside money to pay off lawsuits against it...

 I heard an interesting question at the Purim Seudah this year. The host, Rabbi Baruch Rubanowitz asked, "Who was Megillat Esther intended for? Was it meant as a historical account for the non-Jewish population, or rather, to galvanize or send a message to the Jewish people?"  I was enraptured by the question, alcohol and all, and think that the answer is not all that clear-cut. Or rather, it seems that it was clearly intended for both! The Megillah ends off interestingly with a seemingly banal financial affair, i.e. Achashveirosh instituted a tax on all of the nations. This would seem like quite the non sequitur. It's like sharing an account of the Holocaust, and then capping it off, with what the per capita GDP was in Europe in 1945, or how much disposable income had fallen - or risen - in Germany, since the rise of the Third Reich until the end of the war. For the Jewish people, the tax rate in the Persian Kingdom had very little bearing on future generations, and so i...

More than, anyone, the commentator, known as the Malbim is known for explaining the simple meaning of the verses of the Torah, Prophets and Writings.  The sheer beauty of his interpretation of Megillat Esther is astounding. In America, one grew up hearing, being told that Achashveirosh was a clueless king, with no insights into matters of kingship, to the point where Haman readily pulled the wool over his eyes, and strings to the point where like a puppet Achashveirosh nodded consent to Haman's every whim.  The Malbim presents Achashveirosh as a brilliant statesman, and even more astute conqueror whose Achilles heel was his own love for Vashti, which led him to capitulate before the even more cunning Haman.  The Malbim starts his interpretation by saying that there were two types of rule, one that was boundless, the King being the very heart of the kingship, and the latter, far inferior, one that was bounded by the strictures, and impositions of the State, a mechanism, or...