Community Magazine March 2019

20 Community Magazine 2030 Route 9 (Lakewood Road) Toms River NJ 08755 Phone 848-223-7970 @whatadeal18furniture Weekly delivery to Brooklyn! A sneak peek of the furniture deals you've been searching for... White Lacquer Hand-Made Acrylic Dining Tables New Concrete Finish Dining table New Grey High gloss dining tables Many 10-14’ Ft dining tables available GIANT DINING ROOM TABLE SALE Second, the Gemara rules, “ Hakoreh et hamegillah lemafrea lo yassa - one does not fulfill his obligation if he reads the megillah in reverse order,” i.e. beginning with chapter ten and proceeding to nine, eight, etc. until he concludes with the opening verse. This halakha is somewhat perplexing. Isn’t this obvious? Why would you have thought to perform the missva backwards? Third, the Gemara states that the Megillat Esther must be written like a sefer Torah, including the parchment, the ink, and rolled on a rod. Why is Megillat Esther the only one of the five megillot to have these requirements? Incidentally, when I was growing up, my friends and I didn’t have our own megillah . Only certain adults had such a prized possession; my grandfather probably owned one. The rest of us all followed along in a booklet or the paper scrolls we got in school. I’ll never forget how I always wanted a megillah of my own; I knew it was an important book, but who could afford it? When I got married, my rabbi called me and said, “Eliyahu, I have a great megillah for you . It’s small, written by a sofer yareh Shamayim , with the hiddur of the Vilna Gaon to be written like an Iggeret , with twelve lines in each column.” I said, “Okay, Hacham, how much does it cost?” He said, “A thousand dollars.” “A thousand dollars?” I replied. I was just married. Who had a thousand dollars? “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to pass.” Yet he insisted that I take it and pay it off in installments. Every year, I would scrounge for some extra funds to make a payment on that megillah. Do you know how precious it is to me today? Not just because the Hacham offered it to me, but because I worked hard for it. Today, every kid before his Bar Missva gets a megillah, with a case and everything. They don’t even appreciate it. Their megillah is probably nicer than mine, but they take it for granted. A Few Explanations The explanation for all these questions begins at the end of the megillah. Esther sends a message to the rabbis of the Sanhedrin, “kitvuni ledorot - let this event be documented for generations.” Meaning, Esther felt that the Purim story was not a regular salvation of the Jews, but that it had special status and should be read every year and even canonized as one of the twenty-four books of the Tanakh . And that is how Megillat Esther came about. Says the Vilna Gaon: The title of this book, Megillat Esther, is actually an oxymoron. It contains an inherent contradiction. The Hebrew word megillat means “to reveal” and “Esther” literally means “to hide.” Which is it? Revealing or hiding? The Gaon goes on to explain that there are two ways Gd runs the world. The first way is miraculous. He openly intervenes in the events of history. In Yessiat Misrayim , Gd’s hand was obvious. There was no other way to view the plagues, the splitting of the sea, the mann , andwhat happened at Mount Sinai. With the secondway, Gd conceals Himself behind the scenes. The Purim story is the classic example. There you do not find any trace of the supernatural. A secular history professor could teach Megillat Esther in Harvard because the story is plausible. It could have happened naturally. לעילוי נשמתם של משה בן עליזה, יצחק הלל בן עליזה, והנרייט לאה בת עליזה, דוד בן גילה, רבקה בת גילה, יהושע בן גילה, משה בן גילה, שרה בת גילה, יעקב בן גילה, ואליאנה בת גילה. ולרפואה שלמה ליוסף בן אהובה מסעודה, שילת אהובה בת עליזה, ודניאל בן עליזה.