Purim - 067 Achashveirosh & Haman

Achashveirosh Was Worse Than Haman

On Purim, the forces of holiness, represented by Mordechai and Esther, won against the forces of impurity: Achashveirosh and Haman.

It was not only Haman who was evil. Chazal say that when Esther raised her finger at Haman and said, “This oppressive man, this enemy!” she was actually referring to Achashveirosh; an angel came before she got the chance and instead made her say “Haman”. But she was really referring to Achashveirosh.

Thus, Achashveirosh is also our enemy. Even more so, Chazal say that Achashveirosh was worse in his wickedness than Haman.

So on Purim, we were faced with two enemies: Haman, and Achashveirosh. And Chazal state that Achashveirosh was even worse than Haman!

Let us try to understand these two different evils we faced: Haman, and Achashveirosh. They are not to be understood as the same kind of evil, which would imply that Achashveirosh was simply worse than Haman in his evil.  Rather, Achashveirosh and Haman each represent two very distinct kinds of evil.

The War Against ‘Echad’

What did Haman want to do to us, and what did Achashveirosh want to do to us? They didn’t just hate the Jewish people. According to our deeper teachings, they were really at war with Hashem and His Torah. There are “three ties bound together – Hashem, the Torah, and the Yisrael (the Jewish people)”.[1] Hashem, the Torah, and Yisrael are inextricably bound with each other. The enemies who fight to destroy the Jewish people are essentially attempting to rebel against Hashem, and His Torah, being that Hashem, Torah, and Yisrael are all intertwined.

Hashem is called echad, “One”. He is called “echad, yachid, u’meyuchad (One, Individual, and Unique). Our Torah is also called ‘one’: “Torah achas tiyheh lachem” (“One Torah it shall be, to you”). Although there are specifically two levels of the Torah – the Written Torah, and the Oral Torah – in spite of the two interpretations of the Torah, the Torah is still called Torah achas, one Torah. It is also called “Toras Hashem Temimah” (The Torah of Hashem is complete), implying that it is all one. The Jewish people are called am echad, “one nation.”

Thus, Hashem, the Torah, and the Jewish people are all called echad (one). [Being that there is an ongoing war between holiness and evil in Creation], these three kinds of echad on the side of holiness can be opposed by the side of evil.

There are two ways how echad is opposed by the forces of evil. Either echad is counter by ‘echad d’kilkul’ (the evil kind of ‘echad’)[2], or, it is countered through the evil force called ‘pirud’ (disparity).

Achashveirosh: The Evil Kind of ‘Oneness’

Achashveirosh represents the side of evil that fights Hashem, the Torah, and the Jewish people through echad d’kilkul. He possessed oneness, for evil purposes. The Gemara says that he was one of the kings who ruled the entire world, from Hodu until Kush[3]. This is not a coincidence. The depth of this is that he represents an evil kind of echad: to unify the entire world, under his dominion.

Just as Hashem is One in the side of holiness, and He rules over all, and unifies the entire Creation, so did He allow this power to exist in the side of evil: Achashveirosh ruled the entire world. Thus, Achashveriosh represents the evil kind of echad. The festive meal that he made which spanned 180 days included all of the nations of the world, which elucidates this concept. So Achashveirosh is the “one king” in the side of evil, who fights the holy “One”.

Haman/Amalek: Evil Disparity

Haman, though, is an entirely different kind of evil. Haman did not possess oneness; he is all about causing pirud (disparity). Haman said that the Jewish people are “one nation, scattered and apart between the nations.” His words represent his entire agenda: to cause disparity amongst the Jewish people, who are “one” nation” that he’s trying to bring disparity into.

Haman descended from Amalek, the root of evil which is responsible for causing us to have ‘rifyon yadayim’ (weak hands) in our Torah learning; this in turn causes pirur (crumbling) and pizur (spreading). The Maharal therefore says that the word ‘Purim’ is from the word pirur, to spread. The pur (lot) that he cast on Purim represents his agenda to cause pirur (spreading) and pirud (disparity), and in that way, Haman/Amalek fights the echad of Hashem, Torah, and the Jewish people.

Why Achashveirosh Is Worse Than Haman

Thus, echad on the side of holiness is fought through echad d’klipah and through pirud (disparity).

We can now understand how Achashveirosh is worse than Haman. Which of these forces of evil represent a greater threat– echad (one) against echad (one),or pirud (disparity)against echad (one)? The force of pirud/disparityis entirely nursed from the side of impurity, so it doesn’t stand a chance against the holy force of echad. But echad on the side of evil gets its strength from echad on the side of holiness, which makes it a stronger force to contend with than pirud.

Thus, Achashveirosh, who had the power of echad on the side of evil, is a worse threat to the Jewish people than Haman.

Haman’s Agenda In Connecting With ‘Achashveirosh

Taking this further, Purim wasn’t just a war of either Haman alone or Achashveirosh alone, against Hashem, the Torah, and the Jewish people. It was Haman and Achashveirosh banding together! It was two powerful kinds of evil together: pirud (disparity, represented by Haman), together with echad d’klipah (evil oneness, represented by Achashveirosh), fighting the echad d’kedushah of Hashem, Torah, and Yisrael.

In clearer terms, Haman said about us that we are “one nation, scattered and apart between the nations”. This is a contradiction; how are we ‘one’, if we are spread out? The answer is, we are one, but Haman is the force of Amalek, which tries to cause disparity within us and break our oneness. Our oneness was being fought through the oneness of Achashveirosh, and furthermore, our oneness was being fought through the disparity of Haman/Amalek.

The Gemara says that the pur (lost) cast by Haman fell out on the month of Adar, and thus he rejoiced, for it was the month that Moshe was niftar, so he thought that it will be a month of good mazal for him to destroy the Jewish people. What is the deeper understanding of this? It is because Moshe’s soul is equal to all 600,000 souls of the Jewish people; Moshe represents the ‘root’, while the rest of us are the ‘branches’. Moshe’s soul is the root which unifies all souls together. He is thus the manhig (leader) of the Jewish people. In that sense, Moshe represents echad, the “one” root, which presides over all the other branches and details of the Jewish people.

We find that Haman, descendant of Amalek, cannot attack Moshe. Haman/Amalek can only attack the ‘branches’ of the Jewish people, not the ‘root’. Amalek can attack us from the fact that we are 600,000 souls, which gives power to disparity, enabling Amalek to fight us. Moshe, though, can single-handedly fight Amalek, as the Torah records (“And his hands were raised in faith” – as long as Moshe’s hands were raised, Amalek had no power).

So Amalek cannot fight Moshe himself. But Amalek can fight the rest of the Jewish people, who are 600,000 souls, because the disparity created by the divisions can give power to Amalek.

Taking this further, when Haman bonded with Achashveirosh, he wasn’t just fighting us from the fact that we are 600,000 souls. He was trying to fight even our oneness! Haman/Amalek himself does not have the power to win over our oneness, as we explained (because Moshe Rabbeniu’s power of oneness overpowers their power of disparity), but it still wants to fight our oneness, and looks for ways of how it can do so. How? Through bonding with Achashveirosh. By bonding with Achashveirosh, now Haman gained the evil power of echad with which he could be armed with to defeat Yisrael.

This is the depth behind the war fought on Purim.

Now we can also understand why Haman was so happy that the pur fell out on Adar: he thought that he will have power through connecting to Achashveirosh (the evil force of ‘echad’) to fight us. So Haman wasn’t just trying to fight our ‘branches’; he was trying to fight even our ‘root’.

How Holiness Prevailed

Ultimately, echad d’kedushah prevailed, though - through the power of Moshe Rabbeinu. How do we see this? Chazal state that “Mordechai, in his generation, is compared to Moshe in his generation”. Therefore, Mordechai’s soul had the power of Moshe Rabbeinu: the root soul of Klal Yisrael, the ‘root’ which presides over all the ‘branches’[4]. Moshe Rabbeinu, via the soul of Mordechai, is what won against Haman.

However, Mordechai himself could not defeat the threat against the Jewish people. Mordechai himself might have been able to overpower the threat of Haman alone, but he could not defeat Haman and Achashveirosh together. The union of those two forces of evil could only be fought through combining the power of Moshe, the force of echad/oneness, together with all our other 600,000 divisions in the Jewish people.

Thus, Achashveirosh’s power is countered only through Moshe. Haman’s power is fought through the Jewish people. And when Achashveirosh and Haman are together, they can only be fought when the powers of Moshe Rabbeinu and the Jewish people are combined.

We can see this from how the ‘war’ was silently fought by Mordechai and Esther against Achashveirosh and Haman. Esther told Mordechai to go and gather all the Jews, to engage in prayer and fasting. Why was it necessary make a gathering of all Jews, and why did it have to be done specifically through Mordechai? It was to counter the rise of Amalek’s power. It had to be Mordechai to gather all the Jews together, so that the ‘root’ could unify all of the disparate parts together; the mass gathering represented how all branches must join with their root – the soul of Moshe Rabbeinu – via the soul of Mordechai – in order to counter Amalek.

Haman/Amalek has power when there is disparity, when the Jewish people are all separate souls that are not unified under any one root; and Haman can connect himself to Achashveirosh, to evil oneness, and together, these two forces become supercharged in their evil, a truly terrifying threat to our holiness. But when Haman or Achashveirosh together are countered by our own holy forces (Moshe/holy oneness, and Yisrael/holy divisions), the bond between Haman and Achashveirosh is then weakened - and then we are saved.

Thus, gathering all the Jews together needed to be done precisely through Mordechai, to reveal that the Jewish people are not simply disparate from each other and spread out among the nations, as Haman said. In reality, the Jewish people are unified. This is what we needed to reveal, in order to counter Haman’s claim and weaken his power of causing pirud/disparity.

Haman Was Defeated, Achashveirosh Was Not

After Haman was defeated, though, Achashveirosh still remained. He still ruled the entire world, so although we had won against Haman/Amalek/pirud, we did not yet win over echad d’klipah.

Haman was gone, because his entire power was nursed from pirud, from disparity, and now we had united together [through fasting, prayer, and repentance]. In fact, the downfall of Haman was even through Achashveirosh himself, when Haman lost his power. When our own disparity was removed, our state of echad returned to us, thus there was no more power to Haman. When Haman was weakened, he essentially lost his power to connect himself with Achashveirosh.

This is the depth of how the decree was nullified. Disparity in the Jewish people fuels Haman’s decree, and when our disparity was erased and we became unified, Amalek lost its power.

Amalek fights the Jewish people through the aspect of pirud/pirur/pizur – the fact that we are disparate and spread out, and this is the deep reason of we have a mitzvah to erase them. But Amalek also fights Hashem, and in this aspect, only Hashem can defeat them.

Amalek fights through pirur/pirud and can therefore fight the Jewish people, whenever there is pirur/pirud in the Jewish people. But worse than this threat is the fact that Amalek can also connect with Achashveirosh, with the evil force of echad d’klipah, and in this regard, only the oneness of Hashem can defeat Amalek. For this reason, Hashem said, “I will surely erase Amalek” – only Hashem Himself can destroy Amalek totally.

Haman and Achashveirosh Will Return In The End of Days

Purim will not cease in the future, as Chazal say. The other festivals will cease, because they are in remembrance of the exodus, which will no longer be relevant, whereas Purim is remembered for a different reason entirely, and its reason for existing will never cease. The deeper meaning of this is that when Achashveirosh and Haman banded together, this was not just a one-time occurrence that took place on Purim many years ago; it will return in the End of Days.

Just as the future redemption will last forever, so will Purim never cease – meaning, the union of ‘Achashveirosh’ and ‘Haman’ will come back in the End of Days, for their union created an evil that continues until this day. It will emerge in its full power again in the End of Days. But from that very situation, we will be redeemed.

In the Gemara, there is an argument if we will be deserving of the redemption, depending on if we do teshuvah or not. According to one opinion in the Gemara, we will get ‘a king as harsh as Haman’ which will spur us on to do teshuvah. Haman was not a king, though, so what does this mean? It means that since Achashveirosh and Haman will unite again in the future, in that sense, Haman will be like a “king”.

In the End of Days, the war fought on Purim will return - but the redemption will come from there.

Modern-Day ‘Achashveirosh’ and ‘Haman’

When we reflect on these matters, any bar daas (mature, thinking person) can actually see it taking place now.  We are very close to the end of the 6,000 year era we are in, and the evil forces of Achashveirosh and Haman have returned.

Nowadays, we are a very scattered nation; there is disparity amongst us. We are scattered within our own nation. We are not simply apart from the other nations – nowadays, we are apart within our own nation. In the times we live in, there is no sect of Judaism which is free from strife.[5]

The Sages said that idol worship was so rampant in the era of the First Temple to the point that it was in every corner. In a similar vein, it can be said that in our times, there is no corner which does not contain strife. This is all the evil force of Haman/pirud(disparity)/Amalek – when we become “a scattered nation”, as Haman said. There was never as much disparity within the ranks of the Jewish people as there is today!

But there is also ‘Achashveirosh’ present – an evil kind of “echad”. In our generation, a person has ‘one’ [modern electronic] gadget[6] which connects him to the entire world, all at once – all of the 49 levels of tum’ah (spiritual impurity)!

Anyone with [spiritual] eyes can see it, and it is clear: ‘Achashveirosh’ and ‘Haman’ are here. Of course, it looks different than how Haman and Achashveirosh looked. But it’s the same forces of impurity which they embodied. Haman manifests in all forms of pirud (disparity), and Achashveirosh is manifest in evil echad (oneness). These two evils together are coming to uproot the foundation of the Jewish people.

In Conclusion

If we merit it, the Jewish people will be gathered together again, just as in the time of Mordechai, so that we can reveal our holy power of echad – from Hashem, His Torah, and from the tzaddikim of the generation who possess it.

But the Jewish people will have to be gathered together again in order for echad to be revealed. Although there are all kinds of justified reasons for strife towards other Jews, even if it’s not baseless hatred and it’s considered rational, it is still rooted in disparity. It is ‘Haman’.

When we will be unified together again, when all of our ‘branches’ unite under its ‘root’ (echad), it will then happen that Haman will be erased. Not only will Haman be erased; in the future redemption, even Achashveirosh will be destroyed. “We are still slaves of Achashveirosh”, the Gemara[7] says. Purim only erased Haman; it didn’t erase Achashveirosh. ‘Achashveirosh’ is just as strong now as he was then. But in the future redemption, both Haman and Achashveirosh will be erased.

It will then be revealed the complete understanding of “To the Jews, there was light” – the light of the Blessed One, in its completion.