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Jewish World Review March 4, 2004 / 11 Adar, 5764 The Book of Esther: The Story of Human Importance By Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo In life, it's the Divine who's in the details http://www.jewishworldreview.com | From a subjective point of view, it seems that the existence and behavior of a single human being is of little importance. After all, with the exception of those leaders, thinkers and scientists who really make a contribution toward the advancement (or devastation) of mankind, the vast majority of people, numbering in the billions, do not seem to make any difference in terms of the future and wellbeing of our society. If not for the fact of their numbers, they would have stayed unnoticed and the world would not have missed them if they would not have been born. From an objective point of view, however, it seems to be very different. Suddenly, every human being becomes of ultimate importance. Let's examine a historical case in point. Letitia Ramolino, the mother of Napoleon Bonaparte, met her future husband, Carlos Buonaparte, at the cheese market in Ajaccio. Under normal circumstances, she would not have gone there, since it was her brother who normally shopped for the family. However, on that very sunny day, he decided to see some of his friends and asked his sister to do the honors. Why? He wanted to thank his friends who had just sent him some bottles of wine. They had bought the wine on a long journey to visit their uncle, who had just been released from a hospital after he had been hurt by a carriage in the town, Sevilla. This carriage had gone out of control because one of the horses had fallen ill, due to poisoned food that its master had fed it. This, in turn, was the result of a farmer who had sold the food to a shopkeeper who had forgotten to put it in a cool place, and it had started to rot. The fact that this food had come to this shopkeeper and not to the man the farmer would normally sell it to was due to the fact that… etc, etc. The infinite cobweb of causes in this chain of "trivialities," to which nobody would give any significance as far as world events are concerned, ultimately led to the creation of the Code Napoleon and the battle of Waterloo. Every act, smile, cry, sneeze or silence, in fact, our very presence or absence, causes an ongoing chain which may start at home but, like a pool in which one throws a little stone, it will ultimately touch a large part if not the whole of society. Would it be possible to remove one pawn, even when it is only a babysitter in one's home, within a few days all discussion in the country would be different and in a few more days it would have an impact on foreign countries and millions of people. True, nobody is indispensable, but everybody is a link in an infinite web of world affairs. Consequently, nobody can ever say: I am not important. Everybody makes a difference in the overall state of world affairs. And not just in the form of a "drop in the ocean" but in every aspect. Without him everything would have been different! But how, we should ask, are we to survive and stay sane once we know what we could cause by one little "unimportant" act? Our conversation with a friend could cause a disaster or a world revolution. The smile we give a sick person may ultimately help him, but could also be misunderstood and cause his death and the death of many others. And even if we decide to move to a forest and hide there till the end of our days, how will we know that our absence is not bringing about terrible after-effects or denying mankind much potential happiness? Indeed, we do not know. The veil of uncertainty will ultimately fall in front of us, and we will find ourselves in total darkness. The reason for this is that we are clearly the father of our actions, but, once we have acted, our deeds are no longer ours. They have removed themselves from our parental authority. In fact, it may very well be that one has only good intentions but the outcome of his deeds leads, in the end, to a disaster. In 1520, when Las Casas, a deeply religious priest in Cuba, realized that his parish had been destroyed by the Spanish, he received permission from Cardinal Ximenes to employ a few hundred black people to help him restore it. As such, this was a noble deed, he saved his parish, but he destroyed the lives of millions because he became, without being aware of it, the father of black slave labor and apartheid. Dr. Guillotin invented an axe that would substantially decrease the pain of those who had to be executed. No doubt he meant well, he could not suffer the pain of so many who had to die and tried to help them, but tens of thousands cursed his name. This is the irony of history. This being so, what shall man do? And to what extent is man responsible for his deeds? He is not able to know the ultimate effects of his actions, so where is the distinction between responsibility and pure fate? There can only be one answer to this question: Man is only responsible for those consequences he could clearly have seen in advance. He can only be taken to task for those matters that he can see as the direct outcome of his actions. He is not responsible when unexpected external matters creep into the picture, which he could not have foreseen. More than anything else, it is his intention that counts and not so much the effect. This is the deeper meaning of the Book of Esther. Looking carefully into the story, one realizes that matters of cause and effect are turned around in a web of surprises that nobody could have predicted. Speaking in terms of pure logic, the story should have ended in the total extermination of the Jewish people. That it did not, was solely dependent on circumstances which were beyond responsible human action and prediction. It's for this reason the sages remarked that "Esther" symbolizes the "hESTER panim," the hiding of the Divine's "face", which means nothing else than that His direct providence is only noticeable after the event. (Despite being Scripture, the Divine is not mentioned anywhere in the Book of Esther) What may be perceived by man as an infinite amount of arbitrary incidents, a confusing web of coincidence, is, after all, the result of G-d's active role in history. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo is a world-renowned lecturer and ambassador for Judaism, the Jewish people, the State of Israel and Sephardic Heritage. Comment by clicking here. © 2004, Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo