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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
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