Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #145 The Purim Story / Freedom and Danger / Prototypes in Biblical Characters

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#145 The Purim Story / Freedom and Danger / Prototypes in Biblical Characters · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

0:01
Welcome to another episode of Come Together.
0:14
We are back another episode. Crazy day.
0:18
It is Monday, March 2nd. War broke out over the weekend.
0:25
It feels like there has been non-stop news to just keep track
0:30
of and be terrified of God and just, you know, I mean, like you
0:37
really got to just at a certain point just put your phone,
0:41
social media aside and just it's too overwhelming.
0:45
It's too much. We're not meant for it.
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We're not meant for it. It's too much, man.
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It's way too much. Yeah, we, we have Perm coming up
0:55
and I want to talk about Perm because Perm is actually one of
0:58
my favorite philosophically. It's my favorite.
1:00
It's probably my favorite Jewish holiday and my favorite day of
1:05
the year. And I think I, I mean, I, I've
1:08
been doing the podcast for a year and a half now, almost two
1:11
years. And I believe I spoke about it
1:14
in passing a little bit and I kind of wanted to give it a
1:17
little bit more attention. But I did want to also give a
1:19
couple of of a couple of disclaimers and I think
1:21
important ones, which is that I'm just me.
1:24
I'm just a dude that loves his stuff.
1:27
And I've been learning this my whole life.
1:31
Does not mean I am an expert on it does I mean I know it
1:34
backwards and forward a lot of times, lots of times in my
1:38
experience, my I thought I knew something and it turns out that
1:43
I had just often reviewed my very fundamental or superficial
1:48
understanding of it, my very youthful understanding of a lot
1:52
of biblical stories, Torah stories, Jewish holidays and
1:57
history, reality, whatever. I mean, I'm just finding out
2:00
more and more that the more I read and the more I learn and,
2:03
you know, even though I think I know something I don't really,
2:06
so I want to. Just begin by saying even before
2:11
I talk about anything with the holiday at all, that whatever
2:14
I'm saying, the I guess the premise will be grounded.
2:20
In material where I will speculate, I will say that I'm
2:24
speculating where I am saying that this is something that I
2:29
thought of or came up with or put the dots together to.
2:32
That is also it's something I'm going to say and something that
2:37
you definitely do not need to consider, even if and you know,
2:41
if it's interesting to you. The whole goal of this is really
2:43
just to make just to make us think a little bit, just to open
2:46
our minds a little bit. And whether we choose to accept
2:50
or accept this information, information or these thoughts or
2:53
not is totally up to you. Oh man, where to begin.
2:59
So Perm is a relatively obscure Jewish holiday.
3:02
It is one the one one of the reasons why it's so obscure is
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actually, in my opinion, one of the reasons why I like it the
3:09
most. Perm is perm along with
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Hanukkah. Hanukkah is the Jewish is it is
3:16
it rabbinically decreed Jewish holiday.
3:19
That does not mean that it's not a holiday.
3:22
That's not mean it's not real. It is rabbinically decreed and
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there are not a lot not there are not lots of rabbinically
3:31
decreed holidays in general and nor are there many that last
3:35
until today. And, and, and we say, and, you
3:39
know, and, and, and there are Jewish commentators, Khazal,
3:44
what I'll refer to them as. Which were which?
3:47
Is an acronym actually. For.
3:49
Khazal stands for Hakamim are are wise ones.
3:53
The the the the wise leaders Zika namala Vacha should be
3:56
remembered in memory. So just some context there.
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That's so this so these are talking about the sages, the
4:06
early stages that had been the early receivers of a lot of
4:09
these ideals are actually many times, especially with the perm
4:12
contest context and story may or may not have actually been alive
4:17
around that time period themselves, just a generation or
4:20
two removed. Which is really interesting
4:22
because the Perm story takes place at the destruction towards
4:26
the sorry, towards the end of the first exile of Jerusalem,
4:33
right before the second one. And actually the Perm story
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leads directly into the Second Temple time period, which I
4:40
believe was in the year 70, but or maybe it was destroyed in the
4:44
year 70, but again, not positive.
4:46
I have to check that anyway. The point is.
4:51
That there are a lot of leaders, a lot of thoughts.
4:53
There's a lot of opinions on what the story on, on, on the on
4:57
the holiday. But one thing that's interesting
5:00
about the holiday is that there doesn't seem to be many
5:03
prerequisites. Typically speaking, in a lot of
5:05
Jewish holidays, which is very popular in pop culture or at
5:11
least relatively commonly known throughout the country that
5:15
there's there's several holidays.
5:18
Shabbat is one of them. Shomer Shabbos, Big Lebowski,
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all these fun. Different cultural references
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where you don't use electricity, you don't work, you don't do
5:25
what's called malacha, which is extraneous effort or or creative
5:30
acts. And then there's different
5:34
degrees of nuance based on the holidays.
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But that's why Jews will often be walking in the streets on
5:40
holidays. That's why on Saturdays, that's
5:42
why they won't be getting in the car.
5:44
That's why if anyone ever asked you, I've had a conversation
5:47
with people that are like, why do people ask me to come in and
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turn off the AC or turn on the oven or something like that?
5:52
And part of the reason why is because it's one of the holidays
5:55
that we don't do anything or most a lot of things.
6:02
There's a whole bunch of there's actually.
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I mean, the truth is that as far as what you're allowed to and
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not allowed to do is extremely, extremely complicated and
6:10
extremely, extremely nuanced. And it's not anything that I'm
6:15
even close to an expert on, which is the value of having to
6:18
have a spiritual leader or a rabbi in your life, is that a
6:21
lot of the material is just really complicated and nuanced
6:26
for an everyday person to pick up and figure out by themselves.
6:31
Sometimes you can, but I'm definitely not confident enough
6:35
myself that I feel like I could just determine exactly what the
6:40
nuance is for myself. I hope I'm not rambling.
6:44
I'm getting to the point, which is that perm doesn't seem to
6:47
have a lot of prerequisites. Same thing with Hanukkah, right?
6:50
You think about the your association with the days are
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typically candles, typically with doughnuts or latkes, the
7:02
the fried potatoes or with Purim.
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It's kind of dress up and you read from a scroll and there's a
7:09
lot of drinking going on and there's a lot of costumes going
7:12
on. And but there doesn't seem to be
7:14
on any kind of real formal religious behavior necessarily
7:22
associated with it, especially typically the behaviors that are
7:26
typical in Jewish holidays. So one of the reasons why is the
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same reason I mentioned earlier that it's rabbinically decreed
7:36
holiday. And the rabbi's or the sages
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that would have decreed it may not have been comfortable being
7:46
giving us commandments like God would and telling us, hey, you
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know, don't do this, don't do that.
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Instead, what you could do is, hey, this is a day that
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ordinarily might be an ordinary day, but let's do XY and Z
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particular things to actually elevate the day.
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We can't tell you what not to do, but we could tell you extra
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things to do to make it special and to to make it mean something
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to you. And that actually kind of gets
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down to the first point. So perm to me is the holiday of
8:13
freedom. And I'm going to explain exactly
8:15
what that means because pay sock or Passover is typically
8:18
associated with freedom. And it is, I don't, I don't mean
8:23
to take that away, but this is a little bit more philosophical
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freedom and this is a little bit more what I would call relevant
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to today's world. And the sages actually say that
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the perm is the holiday that is the light of the dawn of the
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time without miracles. I think I've said this before,
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and if I have, I apologize. But what that means is right
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like that, that, that, that until the perm story.
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And actually there's many different examples in different
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Talmudic sources for stories about people that were alive for
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the first Temple and the second one and the one.
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And, and when they saw this, the second temple being constructed,
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they were crying because it was just so mundane relative to the
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beauty and the magnificence and, and the godliness of the first
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one. And there's actually something
9:14
to that, that the idea on the holiday of the poem embodies.
9:23
When we believe that, you know, we believe that, you know, we
9:27
have individual identities, obviously, and then we have
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national identities and we have individual stories where I could
9:34
experienced something in my life.
9:36
High school, for example, was really difficult.
9:38
Or towards the end of high school, beginning of college, I
9:42
was really not confident to myself.
9:44
I was really unsure of myself. I would generally depend on
9:48
other people to validate me rather than me validating
9:52
myself. And actually, it's funny, I went
9:56
to an event this weekend that I saw a lot of people from that
9:59
time period of my life and it really, really threw me through
10:04
emotional loop, especially because it was a drinking beer
10:08
pong type of event. So I so alcohol, I'm sure just
10:12
blunts that kind of experience. But my point being that I have,
10:21
you know, that, that, that was a particular part of my life that
10:23
I can't say I was. I, I, looking back, I was
10:26
particularly fond of, I don't think I was, I was actually
10:27
very, very happy senior year of high school, you know, my year
10:32
abroad, my year in Israel and, and my, in the, in the beginning
10:36
of my college experience, I would tell you I was very happy.
10:40
I recall those experiences very fondly.
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But where I am today relative to where I was, I, I sense that I'm
10:47
an evolved person. I, I sense that I'm a more
10:49
mature and sophisticated and responsible and dependable
10:55
person and more with the, with the sense of self, more the
10:58
sense of awareness of who I am and not necessarily needing
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other people to validate what I'm doing or who or the way I'm
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doing it in order for me to be confident in the way that I'm
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pursuing what I think is valuable.
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Then I have those moments in my early 20s, early to mid 20s
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where I was living in Seattle and I really didn't know what my
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life was going to end up looking like.
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And I was trying to make a lot of big decisions that the
11:25
consequences were going to be enormous, like who I'm going to
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marry, where I'm going to move, what kind of family do I want to
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raise? What kind of community do I want
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to surround myself with? To what, how, how, how strict,
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how strictly observant or religious should I be?
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A lot of these questions come up in your mid 20s because a lot of
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these questions in this particular point in your life
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meet, you know, mean something and, and, and the decisions you
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make based on these ideas impact our futures.
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They really do. And there are, and there comes a
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time, I think in really everyone's life.
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And actually, I have a very good friend of a very close friend
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going through this right now. I'm going to keep everything
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completely anonymous except for the fact that his father's I'll
12:13
at the moment. And I was talking to my mom and
12:17
my mom had lost both of her parents, has lost both of her
12:19
parents already. She lost her brother.
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And you know, one thing that I was saying was there's always
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this dynamic, I feel like in life and part of the reason why
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it's take why. I mean, there's a million
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reasons. Of course, I'm sure that it's
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hard to my hard to my friend. I'm sure one of the
12:34
psychological reasons why is because, you know, even though
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I'm an adult and even though I'm a 30 year old working man with
12:42
kids and a wife and a home, I don't look at myself like that.
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I look like I, I, I'm still a kid.
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Like, I, I talk to my, I work with my dad.
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I talk to my dad 100 times a day.
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I count on my mom for, for advice and for our relationship.
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And I'm extremely, extremely close with her.
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And like, I look at myself like a kid still, you know, and, but
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I don't know that a certain, I don't want to face this.
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And the day that this happens is going to be an extremely,
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extremely painful one and one that I can't even really think
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about. But there's going to be a day
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where I'm not going to be able to say that I'm a kid anymore,
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that I, you know, that I'm a kid to parents now like that.
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That's not going to be a relationship that that manifests
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in my life. And instead, and there's a
13:30
comfort to being a kid and there's a comfort to knowing
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that I could call a dad, I could call a mom, I could call, you
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know, my friend to send me a meme.
13:37
And it was, you know, when you're in stealing and you're in
13:39
debt, you know, and you're just hoping that this dead uncle
13:42
somewhere that just, you know, that, that, that, that you, that
13:44
the, you know, the government's looking to pass on his, his
13:47
estate to you. There's something comforting
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about having that safety, that safety net of being a kid.
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And there's something extremely, extremely scary and extremely
14:00
uncomfortable and extremely unpleasant about losing that.
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And then you could, you know, and, and, and this doesn't
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necessarily even mean, you know, financial, this could, I mean,
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this is emotional. This is just knowing that
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you're, you know, I think that as long as people have parents
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alive, they kind of have a hope that the parents are going to
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take care of them. I think it's just so
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biologically and evolutionarily deep and so foundational.
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I don't think that I can't, I, I think that as, as long as a
14:28
parent, a kid has a parent alive, there's a hope that they
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could still be a kid, you know, and the reason why and, and this
14:37
and this whole entire thing is the metaphor, what I like to say
14:42
for what could also happen on a national level, right?
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America, for example, is a very, very young country.
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And we're going to, you know, and, and, and relative to
14:53
Europe, relative to Asia, relative to Africa, relative to
14:56
South America, you know, I mean, the, the American culture, the
15:02
American country, the American establishment is very, very,
15:06
very young. Only, you know, 250 years old
15:08
is, is nothing is a drop in the bucket, you know, and so we're
15:13
taking time. We got to figure out this whole
15:17
democracy thing, this whole freedom thing, this whole having
15:21
such a huge country with such enormous influence in the way to
15:24
balance everything. It takes time to do this and
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it's a growing process and it's painful and it's just as painful
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as all the unpainful, unpleasant, you know, high
15:36
school, growing up, coming of age experiences that you've ever
15:39
had in your entire life that I've ever had in my entire life.
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We're going through this on a national level because that's
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what happens. You know, I mean that that
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because we're because we're a country going through, you know,
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going through the growing up process.
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And this, the perm story is actually a story of a nation
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that goes through this process as well and individuals that go
16:00
through this process. And it's really a story of be of
16:05
the fruit kind of blossoming and then becoming mature enough that
16:11
it is now. No, it's, it's no longer able to
16:14
be supported by the tree and it falls off.
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And that's the perm story. It's a really, really
16:21
interesting. And that, that that's just your
16:22
metaphor, of course, but that's really, but that, that's really
16:24
what the story's about. Because and I, I love this
16:28
argument. I love this conversation in
16:29
general. I love the philosophy talk.
16:31
I love the conversations about God and whether or not he exists
16:35
and how you can prove or not prove it.
16:36
And, and what is provable and what is not provable.
16:39
And, and, and, and, and it's fun.
16:40
I honestly like it's, you know, I don't know how much it
16:43
dictates how much my behavior changes, but it's a lot of fun
16:47
to think about. And then of course, I do think
16:50
that when certain ideas culminate and really build up,
16:55
and especially when they have time to sit and settle in our
16:57
heads and in our in our consciousnesses and
16:59
subconsciousness for long enough, it really does lead
17:02
inevitably to change and hopefully good change.
17:05
You hope so philosophically, just for a minute, that this was
17:13
all kind of background to the context of the poem story, which
17:17
is that we have this first temple, like I mentioned, which
17:20
seems to be full of open miracles, God's glory.
17:26
And for some reason, whatever reason that it is, the Jewish
17:29
people do not maintain their moral ways and their
17:35
relationship to God and their relationship to the values that
17:38
God encouraged the Jewish people to pursue vis a vis the Torah
17:43
and the Bible. The the five books of Moses and
17:47
those are just categories and extensions, obviously include
17:49
the Talmud and everything else. And you can really make a very
17:55
strong argument. I would say that when God, you
18:02
know, when God, if every, if every time that anyone did
18:05
something wrong, everyone was struck down by a lightning bolt,
18:11
you got, you get an authoritarian God, you got, you
18:15
got this, you got this Palantir minority report person existence
18:21
being where everyone is kind of afraid to do anything wrong
18:25
because if they do anything wrong and they're going to get
18:27
struck down by God's hand. And God's, you know, and, and,
18:30
and, and lightning is coming out of the sky and you're bringing
18:33
these, you know, these sacrifices and these animals
18:35
that represent different aspects of, of, of our animalistic
18:39
behaviors that we, that we're trying to rectify and we're
18:42
sacrificing, we're trying to burn and to get rid of
18:47
particular animalistic traits and replace them with something
18:50
more spiritual and something more group consciousness
18:53
oriented, which is the root of a lot of the korbanot, which are
18:57
the sacrifices that are brought. It's hard to say that all that
19:04
could be done completely of free will and in a completely
19:10
wholesome way because it's not being done wholesome.
19:14
You're being, you know, you got miracles going on around you.
19:17
You got things going on that are far beyond your control.
19:20
You feel like if you step out of line, you're, you know, the big
19:24
man is going to come get you. And while people, while that
19:28
might encourage people to behave, we certainly can't say
19:33
that that's free. That's a free society.
19:35
That's a free world. You know, that's the that's the
19:38
issue that we're that that's the issue that we're really dealing
19:40
with today. And I mean, we're talking about,
19:43
we're talking about the idea of, and you know, we have this right
19:46
now in happening in China. It's actually being taken from
19:50
an idea into practice. And it's been going on for many,
19:53
many years now, this idea of social credit scores, the idea
19:58
of mass surveillance in order to uphold the laws and to maintain
20:01
order and. People know that they have to
20:04
behave because if not Big Brother's watching, and while
20:08
that is safe, that's not free. Purim is the story, is the
20:16
holiday that represents God saying, you know what, you guys,
20:22
if you guys really want to have a real relationship with me,
20:26
then I can't be so imposing on you.
20:30
Then I can't be there breathing down your neck every single time
20:36
that you think that you want to do something right or you want
20:38
to do something wrong and you're not sure what to do.
20:40
And then you and then, and then you turn around and you see me
20:42
right there or then like a little, a little ball of fire or
20:45
just sizzle up next to you and you'll be like, OK, OK, I know
20:47
the right thing I'm going to do. And God understood.
20:49
And God and God told us in the perm story, not actually told
20:54
us. He did not actually literally
20:55
tell us this. But this is what I deduce from
20:59
the fact that miracles stop happening and that we call that
21:02
and that their sages call that a golden age God saying I'm giving
21:10
you the freedom to choose to see me and to participate with me
21:14
and to participate in my way of life or not.
21:17
And the way that I know that you know that I that that I exist
21:23
and that you know that I'm real and that you want something to
21:25
do with me is if you in an entire world where all of God's
21:31
existence could be denied, in an entire society that is telling
21:36
us over and over and over again that there's no way that God's
21:39
real and there's no way that God exists.
21:40
And you can't. Never.
21:41
Prove it. All you got to do is.
21:44
You got to just open your eyes and you open your heart a little
21:46
bit and you'll see me. You'll see me everywhere.
21:49
And, and this is actually an enormous, this is actual textual
21:52
theme. There's a literary theme in the
21:54
Megillah as well, which is the Megillah.
21:56
I'm sorry, is Hebrew for the story the, the, the story or the
22:00
scroll, Miguel Esther is the scroll of Esther, the telling of
22:05
Esther, the story, you know, the what's it called?
22:09
The not fairy tale, but the story of Esther and God's name
22:17
is not mentioned in that story one time.
22:21
It's obvious that God participates in it, or it's kind
22:26
of obvious. It's obvious to the people that
22:27
want to see him in it. And it's obvious by the Jewish
22:32
people's reaction in the story that they see God in it because
22:37
they say because, because after the whole story takes place
22:41
towards the end of the counting of the actual magilla.
22:43
And I'm just going to refer to as the magilla for context, by
22:47
the way, because I'm not going back and forth to all these
22:50
terms. If I talk about Megillah, it
22:52
just means the actual whole story of Esther in the text.
22:58
Towards the end of the actual text, there's passages about how
23:02
the Jews were decided to receive and take upon themselves God.
23:09
And they use the same terminology as when the Jews
23:12
accepted the original 10 commandments and the original
23:15
Torah, Bible Torah at Harcenai at Mount Sinai.
23:21
He uses the same language. So the sages draw a parable,
23:25
they say, just like over there, the first time we were that the
23:28
Jewish people accepted God's word and accepted responsibility
23:31
of the life of additional responsibility and moral weight.
23:37
The Jews accepted it also on the Perm story, at the Perm story.
23:42
But we did it in a new way. We did it in a world that didn't
23:46
have miracles. We did it in a world where we
23:47
didn't feel like we were coerced into it, where we didn't feel
23:50
like we absolutely had to. Because if we didn't do it, Big
23:54
Brother was going to come. The big guy in the sky was going
23:56
to get mad. We participate in it because we
23:58
actually, we God pulled himself back and even though he pulled
24:03
himself back, we still found him.
24:05
And we said, that's the kind of relationship we want.
24:08
And I mean, I think that like this, that, you know, even you,
24:12
I mean, you might laugh and you might scoff and you, and this
24:14
might not be a good enough idea. I would, you know, and I
24:18
totally, totally hear you, but think for yourself to think to
24:22
yourself why we don't like to be pushed or forced into
24:24
relationships with people and why we want, we like to pick our
24:28
own friends. Why we treat our friends better
24:31
than we treat our family, who we know that we have to have a
24:33
relationship with, who we know that like, like the way I treat
24:37
a lot of my friends is a heck of a lot better.
24:38
The way that I treat my sisters and brothers, my biology, my, my
24:42
immediate siblings. And part of the reason why is
24:45
because I know at the end of the day that if I don't talk to my
24:47
brother for a month and then I call him, I could say, dude, I'm
24:49
so sorry. It's been crazy.
24:50
I missed you, how you been? And I he'll be like, he's OK,
24:53
I'm his brother. If I have friends that I don't
24:55
call for a month and I don't hear from them, like, dude, I'm
24:58
so sorry. I've been so busy.
24:59
I missed you. They're like, yeah, well, you
25:00
know, I've been busy too. And I got to talk to you later,
25:02
you know. And so there's one relationship
25:06
that doesn't necessarily need to exist.
25:08
And those are the ones that we feel are the ones that are worth
25:11
fighting for. And then they're the ones that
25:13
we know that will always be there.
25:16
And those are the ones that we tend to take for granted.
25:18
And when God pulls himself out of the picture, it gives us
25:23
opportunity. It gives us an opportunity to
25:25
not take him for granted because we do know from all the biblical
25:28
stories and all the times in the day throughout the books of the,
25:32
you know, throughout, throughout the, the, the Bible.
25:36
We know through all the Torah that just because God is
25:42
revealing himself does not mean that it convinces anyone of
25:44
everything of anything. Does not guarantee good
25:47
behavior. Does not guarantee that we are
25:49
not going to rebel. Does not guarantee that we act
25:52
morally in any kind of way whatsoever.
25:54
Doesn't mean that we listen to pay attention to him that we
25:56
even want to participate with him.
25:58
It's crazy. So having so so we know that a
26:01
forced relationship, a coerced relationship, while it might be
26:05
scary, while it might be might might create some of the most
26:08
incredible stories that we could ever imagine.
26:10
It's not conducive to a relationship that both
26:15
participants feel like they are getting something out of it.
26:19
And we felt, we felt and people felt that, hey, if we don't have
26:29
the right to choose to rebel, then like, what does our service
26:35
mean? What does that have to do?
26:36
Like what, what, what, what, what kind of value could that
26:38
possibly have to any kind of God?
26:40
So just the premise of the actual day to me is really,
26:47
really cool because. So we have this idea.
26:51
We have these ideas that were all, you know, that number one,
26:53
relationships cannot be forced. As we get mature parents and,
27:00
you know, kids stop being kids, eventually we become parents.
27:05
And when we lose our parents, we really lose our identity as
27:08
kids. And this happens on a personal
27:12
level. This happens on a national
27:14
level. I think that obviously, you
27:16
know, when America became its own country, or like, I would
27:19
even, I mean, even the entire westward expansion, you could
27:21
say was like our freaking puberty process is crazy, you
27:24
know, or I mean, the Civil War. Yeah.
27:28
I mean, like, like we had a lot of, we had a lot of growing
27:31
pains that came from what you would call like teenagehood.
27:36
And now we're like trying to be mature adults or that we're
27:40
trying to be mature adults in the room.
27:41
And it's almost working. But sometimes it works better
27:44
than sometimes it's sometimes it's a little harder to do.
27:50
We also have God's name missing from the actual story.
27:54
And so we have this constant theme of like what makes a real
27:58
relationship or not. And then we also have the same
28:00
terminology that's used by the So the holiday represents
28:04
actually accepting, you know, God's Torah, God's Bible, God's
28:08
word to us, God's commandments and instructions and ways of
28:12
life. And, and it does and, and, and
28:15
perm means it in a very sophisticated sense.
28:18
It means in a very, very mature sense, because it means that
28:22
you're growing up and me. And it's what and what and part
28:26
of what I think in the same theme of that idea of growing up
28:31
and choosing to do this way that you want to do this and choosing
28:34
to have the type as deep of a relationship as you want to have
28:37
or not. Perm's not a day that requires
28:40
anyone does anything either, right?
28:42
I don't work on perm. I take off.
28:45
I don't answer the phone. I don't deal with work calls.
28:48
I don't deal with customers. I'll tell customers that I'm
28:50
working that day. I'll tell them I'm so sorry I
28:52
have to call you back. I'm not.
28:53
I'm out of the office today, but I don't work and I try to treat
29:01
the day like a holiday even though I don't have to and I'm
29:06
not doing anything that is required.
29:10
I don't say that I don't feel like I'm being better than
29:13
anyone else. I'm not saying that I'm keeping
29:15
the holiday better than anyone else.
29:17
But for me, I want the holiday to reflect what I feel like my
29:23
relationship with God is, and that is that it's not the bare
29:27
minimum. It's not the middle of the
29:30
ground. This is a hey, I never had to
29:35
do, you know, I mean, since I became an adult, since I was
29:38
dating, since I chose the person that's going to be my partner
29:41
and raising my family and the and the way that I'm raising my
29:43
kids, I haven't had, I haven't had to do anything.
29:47
I wanted to do anything I've done and I've done everything
29:50
I've done because it was I, I felt like it was right and I
29:53
felt like it was important and I felt like it was real.
29:57
Yeah. And, and I think that's really
30:00
why, why, why perm is so valuable to me is just because
30:04
of the way that the holiday is observed, because of the way
30:06
that that what we the, the holiday is intellectually given
30:10
over in that kind of sense with the story and with that
30:14
storyline and with these ideas that, and you know, we call
30:19
these ideas divertora, words of Torah that come from different
30:24
ideas that tend to reflect on what the potential spirit of the
30:26
holiday is. And I think that these ideas
30:28
exist to bring forward the idea of the holiday and to emphasize
30:32
it. But I actually want to get a
30:33
little bit into the story too, because the story is a
30:37
fascinating, fascinating combination of politics.
30:43
It's a religious story. It's a story that about
30:46
philosophy. It's a story about war.
30:48
It kind of embodies really, really everything.
30:52
And there are different personalities, prototypes, I
30:58
guess that we can call them. And we're going to go over them
31:00
pretty, pretty vaguely for now, only because they're already
31:04
half an hour into the podcast. And I like to cap these around
31:08
45 minutes to an hour. But they're a bunch of different
31:13
characters and a lot of them are very are very famous.
31:15
Esther the queen is very famous. Esther the queen is a really,
31:22
really interesting character because she's the person that
31:24
goes through the actual growing up in the story, and that's why
31:28
the story is named after McGill at Ester is the story of Esther.
31:31
That's why the holiday is always associated very, very strongly
31:34
with her. The texts say that the only
31:38
reason why the holiday was actually ever implemented and
31:40
why the story and why there's an obligation to read the story
31:43
every year, the night of the holiday and the day of the
31:46
holiday is because of Esther and because she personally called
31:52
for it. And she's the person that goes
31:54
through this growing up process because Esther doesn't have
31:57
parents. Esther was born according to the
32:00
story. Mordechai, who is the other
32:05
protagonist in the story and the other sage leader, the kind of
32:09
figure, the the role that he plays, the prototype role that
32:11
he plays is of educator and the educator and teacher, really
32:16
spiritual leader. He raises her.
32:20
There's a question and a debate as to what his relationship with
32:24
her was. He might have been her uncle.
32:26
He could have been her husband. He was definitely her caretaker.
32:30
And the story goes that he took care that that that, that during
32:34
the exile from Jerusalem. And the story takes place in
32:37
Shushan, which is the capital, which was the capital at the
32:40
time of Persia, modern day Iran. And so we know how close Iran is
32:47
to Israel. And then we know how how, how
32:52
ostensibly, you know, and I mean, it's very easy for one
32:56
Kingdom to take place under one rule at one point at that point.
32:59
And and so Jerusalem fell Mordecai and Esther, the Jewish
33:03
people that fell to Akash Virosh, who was these this this
33:08
king, a new king that potentially vis a vis military
33:14
coup had risen to power in the Persian Empire in rural the 127
33:21
provinces. He was married to Nabukhanetzar,
33:24
who is a historical character, Babylonian, I believe, king and
33:32
he is married to either her grand, his grand Nabukhanetzar's
33:36
granddaughter or great granddaughter.
33:38
And through some, so either through military coup or through
33:41
coup or through marriage, this new king is now to start the
33:46
story in place. So the story opens with Esther,
33:51
who is a orphan who is being taken care of by a spiritual
33:58
leader from Jerusalem. They were both banished from
34:02
Jerusalem and ended up in the capital city where a new king
34:08
sits on in the ruling the Persian Empire.
34:11
And this new king, not only was he a new king, the actual
34:16
capital was a new capital. And there is so many cool
34:22
political maneuvers that are elaborated on in this story, the
34:28
whole story that, you know, even though the story revolves around
34:31
Esther, of course, Esther's not really brought up until about
34:34
halfway through the 2nd, 2nd, 2nd chapter.
34:38
And the whole first chapter is really pretty much setting up
34:40
the stage and explaining how Akashviros rules.
34:45
And he seems to be an enormously populist type ruler.
34:50
He rules over 127 provinces, but he does not kind of force any
34:54
amalgamation of culture. He allows every.
34:57
He throws an enormous party for 180 days and goes out of his way
35:03
to basically say come with your traditions, come with your
35:06
rules, come with your language, come with whatever way that you
35:11
guys party and the way that you guys live.
35:13
I want you all to come the way that you are to my new capital
35:17
and we're all going to get to know each other.
35:18
We're all going to hang out for 180 days and party.
35:24
He seems incredibly so. So that alone, you know, I mean,
35:28
when you want to exert power over people, one of the things
35:30
that you do is you, I imagine, make them want to be like you.
35:33
And the things that could potentially keep people from
35:38
from from from breaking apart from separating from you would
35:41
be in the things that you don't understand about them or the
35:44
ways that you guys are different from one another.
35:46
So a lot of times if someone's trying to roll over over another
35:50
people, they force them to take on their customs, their
35:53
language, their tradition, marry their marry their women or their
35:56
or intermarry into their into their communities.
35:59
And part of the reason why is because that way you guys are
36:02
going to completely. Dominated by us?
36:05
But Akashvarish does not seem to have any of those goals at the
36:10
moment. Instead, he just seems happy
36:12
enough to just have everyone like him.
36:15
And Akashvarish's prototype is going to be the person that
36:21
searches for power to the extent that he ends up completely
36:25
losing any sense of self in order to maintain his power and
36:29
king and position of authority. He actually ends up never having
36:34
an identity. And it's so fascinating because
36:38
a man that works so hard to be king over such a huge collection
36:45
of countries, 127 provinces, this entire middle, you know,
36:51
over I, I, I think, and, and it says it's from Hodu, from from
36:56
Hodu to Kush. And I don't know modern day, but
36:59
typically Kush is typically northern Africa or northern
37:03
central Africa. And, and Hodu is Turkey, which
37:06
is like the Middle East. Generally speaking, that's
37:08
modern day. I'm only guessing.
37:11
I have I'm not confirming this for sure, but generally but but
37:15
but it gives you a general idea that it was a pretty big Kingdom
37:19
that this guy was ruling one way or the other and he didn't seem
37:23
and he seemed more focused on people liking him.
37:25
And after all that, the stages Khazal again debate about
37:33
whether the most about the most primitive and fundamental
37:38
aspects of this guy. Was this guy brilliant?
37:42
Was this guy a moron? Was he evil?
37:44
Was he completely benevolent? Did he ultimately hate Jews and
37:49
want to extinguish them with Haman, who will get to, or was
37:55
he just a guy that was kind of talked into it by one of his
37:59
political appointees? And there's a lot of textual,
38:02
there's a lot of textual evidence to back up the fact
38:05
that Akashviros, the king, when he told Haman, who is the
38:09
antagonist of the story, that he can go ahead and kill all the
38:11
Jews. There's a lot of there's a lot
38:15
of text to back up the fact that he may really not have known
38:18
that what he was actually getting himself into.
38:20
For example, Hama doesn't ever actually mention that the Jews
38:24
are the Jews. He says that there is a nation
38:27
in your Kingdom that has their own laws, that has their own
38:30
rules and seems to not really be obeying your way of, of
38:33
thinking. And so give me, you know, give
38:35
me 10,000 coins, give me $10,000, give me whatever amount
38:38
of money that it, you know, that it would take.
38:41
And I'll organize a task force and I'll take care of it.
38:43
By the way, doesn't seem too unreasonable, right?
38:47
I mean, Akashvirosh, especially in the context again, of the
38:50
first of the first chapter of the story.
38:52
So Akashvirosh, I'm sorry to go back to it, is throwing this
38:55
whole party. And he wants and and, and and he
38:57
feels as a new ruler, a little insecure in his ability to in
39:03
his in, in his legitimacy, you know, and, and, and really, hey,
39:07
am I really the king? And so he says, you know what,
39:09
I'm going to go call my wife Vashti, who is a guy in the
39:13
Vukhanetzar, the Babylonian King's granddaughter, a great
39:17
granddaughter. And I'm going to emphasize, I'm
39:19
going to give a bring forward a physical manifestation of my
39:24
link to the Kingdom. But she does not want any part
39:28
of his party. She does not want any part of
39:30
talking to him or participating in this populist event.
39:33
And she actually has her own separate party, completely
39:37
separate from him and ignores his request for her to join him.
39:41
And he gets so mad he doesn't know what to do.
39:45
But he gets mad. And he's granted he's been drunk
39:48
for half a year, granted he's drunk for 180 days and and he
39:53
doesn't know what to do. So he calls a bunch of about a
39:57
half dozen or more advisors and asked them what to do.
40:02
And already this is another political, very politically
40:06
interesting maneuver, right? You're the new king who's trying
40:10
to establish his legitimacy. The queen who is your Direct
40:16
Line to the legitimacy, just said, I want nothing to do with
40:19
you. He calls forward one group of
40:22
people. Says what do I do?
40:29
Doesn't like your answer. Actually, they say get rid of
40:34
her. They say you got to get rid of
40:36
her because right now you're setting a precedent that people
40:42
won't be that, that that women are going to talk back to the
40:45
husbands, that women are not going to value their husbands
40:48
traditions and their values. You got to get rid of her.
40:53
Got rid of her in this 100 in this half a year long drunken
40:56
stupor, gets rid of to of his home.
40:59
His only line to limit legitimacy.
41:01
Excuse me. And once he wakes up from his
41:07
probably unbearable hangover, he realizes what he did and he goes
41:13
nuts and he's like, what did I do?
41:16
And you know that he probably wasn't happy with that original
41:19
crew because he calls forward a whole nother group of advisors
41:23
now. But this time these are
41:25
advisors. And the text emphasizes that
41:27
know the that know the laws of oh, sorry, the first advisors
41:34
knew the laws of of of Persia. The second ones knew the law of
41:38
the times. And he asked the second people,
41:43
what do I do now? And they say, listen, you
41:45
already got rid of her. Looks terrible.
41:48
Can't get you can't take her back if she's alive.
41:50
If you killed her, there's no going back anyway.
41:53
You got to find yourself a new queen, and that is Akashvaros
42:00
for now. So the man, so just to establish
42:03
the story, this man's, this man is the man that does not that
42:06
that does not want to give up his power so much so that he is
42:11
not that we cannot determine whether he's smart or dumb, evil
42:17
or or or or incredibly moral. We cannot determine he not he
42:23
can't determine what type of advisors to get to answer the
42:30
question of his legitimacy. Doesn't know how to go about
42:35
selecting a new wife. Ends up having this enormous,
42:39
massive, disgusting beauty pageant.
42:45
Misogynistic. I mean, complete this beauty
42:49
pageant. These women would spend half a
42:50
year or more, I think between half a year and a year,
42:54
preparing, soaking in oils and salts and perfumes and getting
43:02
themselves ready to be with the king for one day and one night.
43:05
And if the king? Decides that she's not going to
43:08
be his queen. Then she's she's been with the
43:11
queen, with the king. She's she's a special woman now
43:14
and now she can't go back to her husband, whether she was married
43:16
or not. Now she can't go back to her
43:18
family now because she has now she's property of the king.
43:21
She gets locked away, excuse me, for a whole life, for the rest
43:28
of her life. And this went on for years.
43:32
This went on for years and until, until it came to Esther.
43:37
We also have God's name missing from the actual story.
43:40
And so we have this constant theme of like what makes a real
43:45
relationship or not. And then we also have the same
43:47
terminology that's used by the So the holiday represents
43:51
actually accepting, you know, God's Torah, God's Bible, God's
43:55
word to us, God's commandments and instructions and ways of
43:58
life. And and it does and and and and
44:02
perim means it in a very sophisticated sense.
44:05
It means in a very, very mature sense, because it means that
44:09
you're growing up and me and and it's what and what and part of
44:12
what I think in the same theme of that idea of growing up and
44:18
choosing to do this way that you want to do this and choosing to
44:21
have the tip as deep of a relationship as you want to have
44:24
or not perms on a day that requires that anyone does
44:27
anything either, right. I don't work on perm.
44:30
I take off. I don't answer the phone.
44:32
I don't deal with work calls. I don't deal with customers.
44:36
I'll tell customers that I'm working that day.
44:38
I'll tell them I'm so sorry I have to call you back.
44:39
I'm not. I'm out of the office today, but
44:43
I don't work and I try to treat the day like a holiday even
44:51
though I don't have to and I'm not doing anything that is
44:56
required. I don't say that I don't feel
44:59
like I'm being better than anyone else.
45:00
I'm not saying that I'm keeping the holiday better than anyone
45:03
else. But for me, I want the holiday
45:08
to reflect what I feel like my relationship with God is, and
45:11
that is that it's not the bare minimum.
45:15
It's not the middle of the ground.
45:18
This is a hey, I never had to do, you know, I mean, since I
45:23
became an adult, since I was dating, since I chose the person
45:27
that's going to be my partner and raising my family and the
45:29
and the way that I'm raising my kids, I haven't had, I haven't
45:32
had to do anything. I wanted to do anything I've
45:35
done and I've done everything I've done because it was I I
45:38
felt like it was right and I felt like it was important and I
45:42
felt like it was real. Yeah.
45:44
And, and I think that's really why, why, why perm is so
45:48
valuable to me is just because of the way that the holiday is
45:52
observed, because of the way that that what we the, the
45:55
holiday is intellectually given over in that kind of sense with
46:00
the story and with that storyline and with these ideas
46:05
that, and you know, we call these ideas diver Torah, words
46:08
of Torah that come from different ideas that tend to
46:12
reflect on what the potential spirit of the holiday is.
46:14
And I think that these ideas exist to bring forward the idea
46:17
of the holiday and to emphasize it.
46:19
But I actually want to get a little bit into the story too,
46:21
because the story is a fascinating, fascinating
46:26
combination of politics. It's a religious story.
46:31
It's a story that about philosophy.
46:33
It's a story about war. It kind of embodies really,
46:37
really everything. And there are different
46:42
personalities, prototypes, I guess that we can call them.
46:46
And we're going to go over them pretty, pretty vaguely for now,
46:49
only because they're already half an hour into the podcast.
46:52
And I like to cap these around 45 minutes to an hour.
46:57
But they're a bunch of different characters and a lot of them are
47:01
very are very famous. Esther the queen is very famous.
47:04
Esther the queen is a really, really interesting character
47:09
because she's the person that goes through the actual growing
47:13
up in the story. And that's why the story is
47:15
named after McGill at Ester is the story of Ester.
47:18
That's why the holiday is always associated very, very strongly
47:21
with her. The texts say that the only
47:25
reason why the holiday was actually ever implemented and
47:27
why the story and why there's an obligation to read the story
47:30
every year the night of the holiday and the day of the
47:33
holiday is because of Esther and because she personally called
47:39
for it. And she's the person that goes
47:41
through this growing up process because Esther doesn't have
47:44
parents. Esther was born, according to
47:47
the story, Mordecai, who is the other protagonist in the story
47:53
and the other sage leader, the kind of figure, the the role
47:56
that he plays, the prototype role that he plays is an
47:58
educator and the educator and teacher, really spiritual
48:04
leader. He raises her.
48:06
There's a question and a debate as to what his relationship with
48:11
her was. He might have been her uncle.
48:13
He could have been her husband. He was definitely her caretaker.
48:17
And the story goes that he took care of that, that, that, that
48:20
during the exile from Jerusalem. And the story takes place in
48:24
Shushan, which is the capital, which was the capital at the
48:27
time of Persia, modern day Iran. And so we know how close our own
48:34
is to Israel. And we know how how, how
48:39
ostensibly, you know, And I mean, it's very easy for one
48:43
Kingdom to take place under one rule at one point at that point.
48:46
And and so Jerusalem fell, Mordecai and Esther, the Jewish
48:50
people that fell. To.
48:52
Akashvirosh, Who was these this this king, a new king that
48:58
potentially vis A vis military coup had risen to power in the
49:04
Persian Empire, enrolled 127 provinces.
49:09
He was married to Nabukhanetzar who is a a historical character
49:14
Babylonian I believe, king and he is married to either her
49:20
grand, his grand Nabukhaneto's granddaughter or great
49:23
granddaughter and through some. So either through a military
49:27
coup or through coup or through marriage.
49:30
This new king is now to start the story in place.
49:34
So the story opens with Esther who is a orphan who is being
49:41
taken care of by a spiritual leader from Jerusalem.
49:46
They were both banished from Jerusalem and ended up in the
49:51
capital city where a new king sits on in the ruling the
49:56
Persian Empire and his new king. She's living, excuse me, in the
50:00
Kings, she's living with the king.
50:03
And during this time, a guy named Haman comes along and
50:06
Haman is indicative of the prototype of a Malik.
50:13
Whether it's by blood, whether or not whether that is
50:16
philosophically, I'm not sure. I believe it's by maybe both,
50:21
probably, but I'm not sure. I don't, I, I'm not going to say
50:24
one way or another for sure, but he certainly embodies their
50:27
philosophy. And Malik, as far as we know
50:33
today, does not exist. It might exist as a philosophy,
50:39
might exist, exist as a concept. And that concept is a concept of
50:45
it's, there's a couple of different approaches.
50:48
It's a cynicism of a big picture and greater meaning.
50:54
And it's the desire for the most pleasure and positive, the most
51:04
that you can get out of out of any particular given moment.
51:11
Adam's root, Amalek's roots come from Adam, or Asaf, who is a
51:17
biblical character. Asaf was Jacob Yaakov's twin
51:20
brother. And there's actually a very
51:26
interesting relationship there because Jacob Yaakov embodies
51:35
the spirit of making long term decisions that even though in
51:40
the short term are really painful, long term are really
51:44
beneficial. And Asaf, his twin brother,
51:51
hates that philosophy and spends his life accumulating the most
51:59
power that he can grab in any particular moment.
52:03
And their philosophies actually reach a philosophical head when
52:11
Ace of comes in hunting from the field he was just out for after
52:17
a long day of hunting, Jacob Yaakov is sitting hanging out at
52:23
the kitchen. He just cooked up a meal just in
52:25
the last couple hours. Making a soup, which by
52:27
definition requires a lot of thought process and planning.
52:30
You have to let it sit for several hours.
52:32
You have to collect the ingredients, cut them up.
52:36
Soup. You like soup that the soup is
52:38
almost like the opposite of what you do when you're starving.
52:42
When you're starving, you grab rice, you grab bread, you grab
52:45
some wheat, you grab some carbs. You just shove whatever you want
52:49
in your mouth. Soup is something that you make
52:51
when you're trying to be intentional about something,
52:54
when you are sick and you want to recover, when you have a
52:56
bunch of hours and you know that you're going to that, that
52:58
you're planning for something in the long term.
53:01
And Asaph sees Yaakov soup and he wants it.
53:04
And Yaakov says, you can't have it.
53:05
You can. I'll trade it to you.
53:06
I'll trade it to you for the first born for the first born,
53:10
right? And Asaph says, sure, what the
53:15
and I'm starving. I'm so hungry, I'm used to
53:19
eating bread because I don't really typically think long term
53:22
enough to ever make a soup. And if I don't eat now, I'm
53:26
going to die. And if I die, then what's the
53:29
point of even having a being the eldest to being the the having
53:33
the first born, right? So, yeah, sure, go ahead and
53:37
take it. I, you know, I need it.
53:39
And he gives it to him. Fast forward a couple of 1000
53:44
years and you have Haman. Now, Haman is extremely
53:54
successful by every, almost literally every measure I think
53:59
that you could think about. He has a big family.
54:04
He has a lot of kids. He has an enormous amount of
54:07
political and financial wealth and pull.
54:11
He has an enormous amount of respect, everyone.
54:15
It's part of the King's decree that everyone that sees him, the
54:18
street has to bow to him and treat him so socially.
54:21
He's above everyone else. And Mordecai is the only person
54:25
that based on like this principle that he has, this
54:29
philosophy, this ideal that he has.
54:32
I'm not, I don't bow down to people and I just don't, I don't
54:34
do it and I'm not into it. You know, it's a little weird.
54:37
You, you seem like a little power, like a, like a little
54:40
psychopathy and those a little psycho, a little crazy.
54:45
I'm not going to bow down to you.
54:47
And Haman comes home and it tells his family everything that
54:52
I have is, is for nothing, means absolutely nothing because
54:58
Mordechai does not bow down to me.
55:06
I think that's human nature to a certain extent too, I think.
55:10
That. Human nature, and this is
55:13
actually a conversation that comes up quite a bit when we
55:16
talk about or we think about what's going to happen when
55:19
there's universal basic income, or as Elon optimistically puts
55:23
it, universal high income is human beings on a very
55:31
fundamental primitive level. Don't know how to be happy with
55:38
themselves? We're comparative animals.
55:40
We compare ourselves to other people around us.
55:43
The way that we know we're happy or that we're doing well is
55:47
because someone else has it worse, not because we feel good
55:51
about what we have a lot of the time.
55:53
And if you feel good about your life or feel happy about things
55:57
because someone else has it worse and not because you're
56:01
happy to have what you have, then.
56:05
I would. Probably ask you to spend some
56:08
time to think about that a little bit and what that means.
56:11
Just for you. You know, and if it doesn't mean
56:13
anything, then it doesn't mean anything.
56:14
And if it means something, then then.
56:17
Perhaps it will cause you to. Make some changes, at least in
56:20
the way that you think. Haman represents the idea that
56:30
as long as it doesn't even matter what yesterday has,
56:36
doesn't matter what tomorrow holds, it doesn't matter what an
56:40
hour what happened an hour ago. If what happened right now makes
56:45
me feel like I am not relatively greater than everyone else
56:51
around me, every single person around me, then I just can't.
56:56
Then nothing means anything to me.
57:02
I think that this, I think that a lot of us hope, myself
57:05
included, that this idea is a lot more foreign than it might
57:09
actually be. And and that's OK, not OK
57:19
because it's something to become, to be accepting of.
57:22
I think that's OK because I think that if you're on, if
57:28
we're honest about with ourselves, about where we are,
57:32
and we're honest with ourselves about why we feel the way we
57:35
feel and we observe our what, what motivates us and what
57:39
drives us in an honest way. It gives us the ability to grow.
57:47
Just like when we don't admit in a conversation when someone says
57:50
something, someone asks you, do you know what this is?
57:52
Or do you know how that works? And we're always tempted to say,
57:55
yeah, we know. Exactly how it works.
57:58
And if we say and we say, yeah, no one elaborates.
58:01
We never know how it works. And if we say no, we risk
58:04
feeling like an idiot. But at least we can learn
58:05
something new. If we can never admit that we
58:11
have that kind of side to us, then we can never admit that we
58:14
have to grow past it. You can never admit that it's
58:17
work. We have to do that.
58:18
That's that there. That there is a way to that.
58:21
There is a way to conquer that. There is a way to conquer that
58:23
perspective and that mentality. I'm going to have to cut to the
58:28
chase as far as Esther now. And so the basic.
58:34
So now again, we didn't get into why Esther represents freedom
58:37
yet, but we represent what we talked about that she, the fact
58:40
that she does, Haman represents this idea, this cynicism, this
58:46
denial of a big picture meaning, this desire for relative power
58:52
and greatness over everyone else around you to the point that you
58:55
absolutely self destruct no matter what you have.
58:59
And this philosophy, and by the way, hummus philosophy works for
59:03
a while. And the way you know it works
59:06
for a while is because he was really successful politically,
59:09
financially, he was able to, he was able to get married.
59:12
He had a big family. He was able to do all these
59:15
things. I mean again.
59:17
It it did, that philosophy does not necessarily automatically
59:22
destroy you, but it will down the line.
59:26
It will eventually cause eventually there's going to be
59:31
someone that you were not relatively better.
59:34
That or eventually as time goes on and we atrophy, we have to
59:40
accept that we're not that, that, that we're, that we're
59:42
atrophy and, and we have to, and then we can age with grace and
59:47
then we can age and develop with magnificence and splendor.
59:56
We really can't. And all you have to do is just
59:59
accept that we are where we are instead of holding ourselves
1:00:01
relative to everything else around us.
1:00:06
So. Haman, in this fury that
1:00:09
Mordecai is not bowing down to him, encourages Akash Viros to
1:00:13
kill the Jews again. He might have swindled him into
1:00:19
it. He might have been outright with
1:00:21
it. We don't know.
1:00:22
That's actually part of the the political part of it.
1:00:25
That's part of the fun and relatable part to today's world
1:00:27
is that there's so much that goes on to the story that we
1:00:31
could only kind of like piece together and explain like it's
1:00:35
how this, this is the only way it makes sense because there's
1:00:38
no one that's going to confirm nor deny that, you know, And you
1:00:41
have a lot of current events that are probably pretty similar
1:00:44
in that kind of capacity. And he convinces Akash Varos one
1:00:51
way or another, to get rid of the Jews.
1:00:53
And Mordecai hears about this degree again.
1:00:57
He's one of the educated people. He's one of the people that
1:00:59
speaks 70 languages. He probably he probably heard
1:01:03
about this relatively faster. Than most of the other people.
1:01:06
And especially because it takes time for word to spread to 127
1:01:09
provinces. He immediately opens up a
1:01:13
correlation with Esther and says, well actually, first he
1:01:19
panics, he mourns, and then he opens up a.
1:01:22
Correlation with Esther and says you got to do something and
1:01:24
Esther says I can't do anything and Mordecai sends her a message
1:01:32
that changes her and changes her forever.
1:01:35
I'm actually going to pause while I go get it so I could
1:01:38
find and I could quote it directly.
1:01:39
I don't want to make this up. She's living, excuse me, in the
1:01:41
Kings, she's living with the king.
1:01:44
And during this time a guy named Haman comes along, and Haman is
1:01:49
indicative. Of the prototype of a Malik,
1:01:54
whether it's by blood, whether or not whether that is
1:01:57
philosophically, I'm not sure. I believe it's five, maybe both,
1:02:02
probably, but I'm not sure. I don't I, I'm not going to say
1:02:05
one way or another for sure, but he certainly embodies their
1:02:08
philosophy. And Malik, as far as we know
1:02:14
today, does not exist. It might exist as a philosophy,
1:02:20
might exist, exist as a concept, and that concept is a concept of
1:02:26
it's there. There's a couple of different
1:02:28
approaches. It's a cynicism of a big picture
1:02:33
and greater meaning, and it's the desire for the most pleasure
1:02:41
and positive, the most that you can get out of out of any
1:02:48
particular given moment. Adam's root, Amalek's roots come
1:02:54
from. Adam, or Asaf, who is a biblical
1:02:58
character. Asaf was Jacob Yaakov's twin
1:03:02
brother, and there's actually a very interesting relationship
1:03:10
there because Jacob Yaakov embodies the spirit of making
1:03:18
long term decisions that even though in the short term are
1:03:22
really painful, long term are really beneficial.
1:03:27
And Asav, his twin brother, hates that philosophy and spends
1:03:35
his life accumulating the most power that he can grab in any
1:03:43
particular moment. And their philosophies actually
1:03:47
reach a philosophical head when Asav comes in hunting from the
1:03:56
field he was just out for after a long day of hunting, Jacob
1:04:01
Yaakov is sitting hanging out at the kitchen.
1:04:05
He just cooked up a meal just in the last couple hours.
1:04:06
Making a soup, which by definition requires a lot of
1:04:10
thought process and planning. You have to let it sit for
1:04:12
several hours. You have to collect the
1:04:14
ingredients, cut them up. Soup.
1:04:17
You like soup that the soup is almost like the opposite of what
1:04:21
you do when you're starving. When you're starving, you grab
1:04:25
rice, you grab bread, you grab some wheat, you grab some carbs,
1:04:29
you just shove whatever you want in your mouth.
1:04:30
Soup is something that you make when you're trying to be
1:04:33
intentional about something, when you are sick and you want
1:04:37
to recover, when you have a bunch of hours and you know that
1:04:39
you're going to that, that you're planning for something in
1:04:40
the long term. And Asaph sees Yaakov soup and
1:04:44
he wants it. And Yaakov says you can't have
1:04:46
it you. I'll trade it to you.
1:04:47
I'll trade it to you for the first born for the first born,
1:04:51
Right. And he subsides.
1:04:55
Sure. What the and I'm starving.
1:04:58
I'm so hungry. I'm used to eating bread because
1:05:01
I don't really typically think long term enough to ever make a
1:05:04
soup. And if I don't eat now, I'm
1:05:07
going to die. And if I die, then what's the
1:05:10
point of even having a being the eldest to being the the having
1:05:14
the first born, right? So, yeah, sure, go ahead and
1:05:18
take it. I, you know, I need it.
1:05:20
And he gives it to him. Fast forward a couple of 1000
1:05:25
years and you have Haman. Now, Haman is extremely
1:05:36
successful by every, almost literally every measure I think
1:05:40
that you could think about. He has a big family.
1:05:45
He has a lot of kids. He has an enormous amount of
1:05:48
political and financial. Wealth and pull.
1:05:52
He has an enormous amount of respect, everyone.
1:05:56
It's part of the King's decree that everyone that sees him, the
1:05:59
street has to bow to him and treat him so socially.
1:06:02
He's above everyone else. And Mordecai is the only person
1:06:06
that based on like this principle that he has, this
1:06:10
philosophy, this ideal that he has.
1:06:13
I'm not, I don't bow down to people and I just don't, I don't
1:06:15
do it. And I'm not into, you know, it's
1:06:17
a little weird. You, you, you seem like a little
1:06:20
power, like a, like a little psychopathy, little, a little
1:06:23
sicko, a little crazy. I'm not going to bow down to
1:06:27
you. And Haman comes home and it
1:06:31
tells his family everything. That I have.
1:06:34
Is is for nothing means absolutely nothing because
1:06:39
Mordechai does not bow down to me.
1:06:47
I think that's human nature to a certain extent too.
1:06:51
I think that. Human nature, and this is
1:06:54
actually a conversation that comes up quite a bit when we
1:06:57
talk about or we think about what's going to happen when
1:07:00
there's universal basic income, or as Elon optimistically puts
1:07:04
it, universal high income is human beings on a very
1:07:12
fundamental primitive level. Don't know how to be happy with
1:07:19
themselves? We're comparative animals.
1:07:21
We compare ourselves to other people around us.
1:07:25
The way that we know we're happy or that we're doing well is
1:07:28
because someone else has it worse, not because we feel good
1:07:32
about what we have a lot of the time.
1:07:34
And if you feel good about your life or feel happy about things
1:07:38
because someone else has it worse and not because you're
1:07:42
happy to have what you have, then I would probably ask you to
1:07:49
spend some time to think about that a little bit and what that
1:07:51
means. Just for you.
1:07:53
You. Know and if it doesn't mean
1:07:54
anything, then it doesn't mean anything.
1:07:55
And if it means something, then then.
1:07:58
Perhaps it will cause you to. Make some changes, at least in
1:08:01
the way that you think. Haman represents the idea that
1:08:11
as long as it doesn't even matter what yesterday has,
1:08:17
doesn't matter what tomorrow holds, it doesn't matter what an
1:08:21
hour, what happened an hour ago, if what happened right now makes
1:08:26
me feel like I am not relatively greater than everyone else
1:08:32
around.