Big Breakers

Incredibly enough, tyrants never learn. In every generation, a new Haman arises from the seed of Amalek who strives “To destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews from young to old” (Esther 3:13). Yet, we shouldn’t be surprised, because our sages from the Gemara told with their Divinely-inspired wisdom that this would be the template of Jewish history until the coming of Mashiach. In this manner, we can learn so much more from the Torah about current events than we can from any real-time media broadcast.

In recent months, a week doesn’t go by without our hearing another threat against our very existence from Iran’s Ahmadinejad and his henchmen. Iran is working around the clock to attain their nuclear weapon, which they aspire to aim at the Hashem’s chosen people in the holy Land of Israel. Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. This is also no surprise, especially since Rebbe Nachman and Rebbe Nathan teach as that the characteristic trait of the Haman-Amalek spiritual impurity is denial, particularly the denial of Hashem and His holy Torah. Denial and heresy lead to amnesia, explains Rebbe Nachman. Ahmadinejad fits this mold too, since he’s obviously forgotten what happened to Hitler, to Sadaam Hussein, and to every other tyrant that entertained the idea of destroying the Jewish people. The tyrants have all vanished, and we’re still here.

The folly of Haman and Ahmadinejad amazingly resembles the silly designs of the big breakers, those tremendous ocean waves that come crashing down on the shore. The Gemara quotes Raba Bar Bar Chana, the lofty tzaddik who is famous for his cryptic metaphors that contain deep secrets of Torah. Raba Bar Bar Chana says (tractate Bava Batra 73a), that sailors told him about a type of tremendous wave in the middle of the ocean that is 750 miles wide and 750 miles tall. The sailors said, “Once during a voyage at sea, a wave cast us so high that we saw a small star from close up, and it looked like a 35,000-pound sack of mustard seed, and if that wave would have thrown us any higher, we would have been burnt from the heat of the star. Another wave raised its voice and bellowed, ‘My comrade, if you leave anything in the world that you haven’t flooded, then I will come and destroy it!’ The first wave then replied, ‘Go see the might of your Lord, for He doesn’t allow me to violate even one extra hair’s breadth of shoreline, for it is written, I have given a border to the sea (Jeremiah 5:22).’”

The great Talmudic commentator the “Maharsha” of blessed and saintly memory explains that Raba Bar Bar Chana is allegorically telling the history of the Jewish people. The sailors represent the Jews. Each big breaker is another wave of tyrants and troubles that are an existential threat to the Jewish people. The star represents the nations of the world, which like mustard seed, is sharp and bitter, for the schemes they concoct against the Jews are also sharp and bitter. The 35,000-pound sack of mustard seed symbolizes Israel’s never-ending suffering at the hands of the nations. The Maharsha further interprets the aforementioned Gemara passage and writes, “The People of Israel are nearly burnt in one diaspora, and suddenly the big breaker dissipates on the beach. In like manner, the trouble that threatens Israel’s existence vanishes as if it never existed, until a new “wave” of trouble appears and seeks to destroy everything that the previous wave didn’t destroy. The new wave crashes down on the beach with a deafening noise, and also vanishes as if it never existed.”

In his brilliant conclusion, the Maharsha states, “The second wave never learns from the first. Likewise, the tyrants never learn from their predecessors and come to destroy the world and Israel. The tzaddikim are symbolic of the shoreline, and they save the generation.”

The Maharsha wrote the above commentary more than 300 years ago. What could be as more accurate description of Hitler and Ahmadinejad? We therefore see how accurately the Torah explains current events and gives us understanding of everything that’s happening around us, past, present, and future.

Maybe you’re shrugging your shoulders and asking, “This is supposed to console me? Why do I need to know about a new tyrant that emerges in every generation who aspires to kill the Jews, G-d forbid?” Like Raba Bar Bar Chana says, no tyrant learns from his predecessor. Both the Zohar and Rebbe Nachman of Breslev say that fate and the stars have no power over the people of Israel who observe the Torah and its mitzvoth. But, when the people of Israel forsake the ways of Torah, they become subjugated under the vicious heel of the nations. Ingrained in the fiber of creation is an iron-clad rule: Israel must be subjugated, either under Hashem or under the cruel boot of hostile nations. The choice is ours.

History also shows us the weaponry is not our salvation. Our enemies fight with horse and chariot, But we shall call the name of Hashem our G-d (Psalms 20:8). King Hezekiah told Hashem that he has no time to neglect his Torah study, and therefore cannot be bothered with the Assyrian siege on Jerusalem. The next morning, the entire Assyrian army was found lifeless in the Judean desert (see Kings II:18-19).

In recent years, we learn that normal political and military solutions simply don’t apply to Israel. We must turn to Hashem for our salvation. Hashem miraculously rescues us from the tyrants of every generation; that’s the message of Purim, which you’ll see in the following 2-minute film clip.