Many years ago during my time working to be mekareiv Jews on Long Island I was honored to have Rav Yechiel Perr come to speak before one Purim to a home study group I led in Bellmore. He posed a strong question to the group: In Nissan Mordechai importuned Esther to appear unbidden before King Achashveirosh to plead for her people. Yet the decree of annihilation against the Jews was not to have been carried out until a full 11 months later on the 13th of the following Adar. Wouldn’t prudence dictate that they bide their time in the hope that Esther would be summoned by Achashveirosh at some point rather than have Esther act rashly and appear unbidden which would almost certainly incur the king’s wrath and a sentence of death for Esther?

Rav Perr went on to tell the story of a Reb Naftali who was a shtadlan (communal intercessor) on behalf of Russian Jewry during the reign of the last Czar. The latter had decreed a public burning of the Talmud and Reb Naftali was asked to plead the Jews’ case in St. Petersburg Russia’s capital city in which a Jew couldn’t even stay overnight without special permission. There was only one problem: Reb Naftali spoke not a word of Russian.

A translator an apostate Jew was hired to accompany Reb Naftali to the audience he had been given on a Shabbos morning at nine a.m. with the prince charged with executing the Czar’s nefarious order. As the two were ascending the steps to the prince’s chambers the translator stopped to clean some mud off his overcoat. Seeing this Reb Naftali exclaimed “S’iz Shabbos; m’tohr nisht!” — It’s Shabbos; you’re not allowed to do that! This enraged the translator who stalked off in a pique leaving Reb Naftali to his own devices.

Reb Naftali proceeded into the building where he stood by helplessly as tens of officiaries whizzed by him; unable to communicate even one intelligible word he began to cry. A woman noticed his distress and when he began speaking to her in Yiddish she summoned a fellow who spoke German and was able to decipher Reb Naftali’s purpose in being there. Once seated before the prince the latter asked Reb Naftali to state his request and he responded simply “When the first wagonload of Shas’en is about to be set aflame please throw me in the wagon too to share their fate.” His words so moved the prince that he replied “If these books mean that much to this old man I won’t go ahead with their destruction.”

Emerging from the building Reb Naftali was accosted by the translator who was curious as to what had transpired. Reb Naftali reply was curt: “We don’t need you and we don’t even need a translator; all we need is mesirus nefesh.” The willingness to put one’s life on the line Rav Perr observed can reach even someone who seems entirely unreachable through appeals to logic or mercy.    

Our frum society has such an abundance of everything nowadays both in ruchniyus and gashmiyus. But that very abundance has given rise to a deficit in one crucial area: mesirus nefesh. And without opportunities for acts of self-sacrifice we are left without the means to impress upon our children and ourselves and our Creator just how much our Yiddishkeit really means to us.  But such opportunities exist we just have to identify and take hold of them.

Personally I have felt that the challenge technology poses to us as Jews and as humans is a gift Hashem has granted to us in the form of a mesirus nefesh opportunity. Ridding our lives of all but the bare minimum of technological devices essential for parnassah would not only help us focus on Torah and tefillah not only enable us to live in the moment and choose the company of man over machine not only spare us from the frightful possibility of falling into the cyber-abyss. It would give us a sense of individual and communal purpose that revolutionary fervor of which I wrote here a few weeks ago.

WHY “HAYEHUDI”? In the “Shoshanas Yaakov” pizmon we recite after leining Megillas Esther we contrast Haman who sought to annihilate us with Mordechai HaYehudi. But “HaYehudi” is simply an identifying appellation; shouldn’t we describe that tzaddik by something he did or sought to do as we do with Haman?

A conversation at the Shabbos table helped crystallize one answer for me. My wife retold a story she heard from Mr. Shulem Halpern a Vizhnitzer chassid who is the driving force behind the Pesach Awareness Campaign a nationwide Project Inspire kiruv effort she is coordinating. Mr. Halpern had struck up a conversation with his seatmate on a plane trip when pointing to Mr. Halpern’s levush the fellow told him “I was dressed like you 25 years ago.” Mr. Halpern braced for a tale of desertion of faith; instead the man surprised him by explaining that he wasn’t actually Jewish but had worked as an extra on the set of the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof. 

During one brief break in the filming he continued he’d headed for a local diner still wearing his faux-chassidic costume. He ordered a ham on rye but to his shock the man behind the counter refused to fill his order explaining that his establishment wouldn’t be party to a religious Jew’s sinning with nonkosher food. “B-b-but I’m not even Jewish ” he stammered “I’m just an extra on a nearby movie set.…”  “Yeah right ” came the quick reply “that’s what they all say. Now get outta here before I tell your wife and your rabbi.”  One of our Shabbos guests Ms. Shana Menaged really put this tale in perspective with a quote she recently came across   “The whole world is waiting for the Jews to be Jews.”

So often we think of the rest of the world as bent on enticing us away from our beliefs and our way of life and there’s certainly much truth to that. Shir HaShirim speaks of that reality in several places. But there’s an opposing tendency too in which non-Jews intuit that we are different special. They expect us to live up to our calling and lose all respect for us when we don’t.

The feast of Achashveirosh Chazal teach served food that was kosher l‘mehadrin. But the point of that bacchanal was to celebrate what in Achashveirosh’s reckoning was the conclusion of the prophesied 70-year Jewish exile with the promised redemption of the Jews nowhere in sight. To partake of such an occasion to figuratively dance on one’s own national grave evinced an utter absence of pride in one’s Jewish identity. And that’s as treif as treif can be.

The tikun for that was affected by Mordechai not by anything in particular that he did but simply by his insistence on being a Yid to refuse to give up being a Yid with all his heart and soul. Hence we sing: Baruch Mordechai HaYehudi. Ay to be a Yid even just a “simple” Yid!

Not only did Mordechai not bow to Haman in the present but says the pasuk in future tense lo yichra v’lo yishtachaveh he will not bow. His entire demeanor bespoke the certainty that never ever would this Jew bow before a mortal. And more: What most enraged Haman was seeing that v’lo kum v’lo zah mimenu Mordechai neither stood nor even flinched as Haman passed. Thus does a Jew suffused with bitachon with pride and with simchah comport himself. That was true mechiyas Amalek on Mordechai’s part treating Haman as a virtual nonentity and therefore vayimalei Haman cheima — Haman was filled with rage.

The Yid Hakadosh of P’shischa once said: “I would trade all the delights of all the worlds for one drop of Jewishness.” Purim is a day to exult in that drop of Jewishness as many drops as one can squeeze out of his soul. Ay to be a Yid!