Amar Rav Buddha : Ad D'Lo Yada

אמר רבא מיחייב איניש לבסומי בפוריא עד דלא ידע בין ארור המן לברוך מרדכי

We drink on Purim to celebrate the victory over our enemies in the Babylonian government. In ancient times, a raucous feast with drinking and dancing was common after such a victory. We Jews were no different. We may have thanked our God for helping us out, but our joy and celebration would have been no less rambunctious. Maybe we didn’t ‘sacrifice’ virgins or engage in sexual debauchery, but we likely did drink and celebrate to the fullest. I just don’t see how drinking accomplishes the stated goal.

The Talmud in Megillah 7a state “This says Rava: One is required to celebrate on Purim to the point at which the distinction between ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordechai’ is obscured.” So which part is to become obscured, the cursed and the blessed, Haman and Mordechai, or both? And how exactly are we to obliterate this distinction? In general we assume that alcohol consumption would be the means by which we lose our ability to discern. It’s just that I can’t imagine myself getting drunk or high enough to ever not know who my enemy is, especially one who is sworn by his lineage to eradicate my people. At some point, I would likely just fall asleep or pass out, and that point my ability or inability is moot, since I’m not in any position whatsoever to engage in cursing, blessing, or distinguishing moral values.

It seems reasonable therefore to assume the Rava wants us to be awake and aware yet still unable to make this distinction nonetheless, but how does that happen? How drunk would a Jew have to be before he or she started praising Yoshke or saluting Shitler? It makes no sense at all.

I don’t have expertise in a lot of things, but among the few I do is drinking and its side effects. I have also worked in bars and night clubs doing security work and, I can assure you, I have studied the drinking human thoroughly enough to form an educated opinion. There wasn’t a night that went by that I wasn’t constantly aware of “Nichnas Yayin, Yatza Sod” and how many people so easily revealed their ‘sod’ under the influence. The mask they wear in sobriety falls off quickly. I saw seemingly meek persons turn violent, happy people turn sad, lonely souls become social butterflies, and crazy people appear to calm, but I have never seen enemies become friends. That line between love and hate isn’t washed away by a few shots of vodka.

If so, then how does Rava expect us to erase all preconceived notions of friends, enemies, blessings, and curses? What sort of mind-altered state are we to fall into with or without the aid of drinking that would erase our sense of judgment? (There aren’t too many instances where drinking is required at all, let alone required to any extreme, so it seems reasonable to assume, much to the dismay of Chasidim, that the requirement of “ad d’lo yada” may not involve alcoholic beverages.)

It appears that Rava is asking the impossible.

It reminds me of a famous Zen conundrum. There is a saying in Buddhism that goes “If you see the Buddha in the road, kill him.” Does it mean to literally kill the Buddha, or only if we see him in road, but not the grocery store? Imagine yourself being indoctrinated to seek the path of Buddhist Enlightenment, to adore the Buddha and his teachings, and then suddenly have to kill him should he cross your path?

Pose our question the same way. The Torah tells us “timcheh es zecher Amalek”. We also have the story of Shaul HaMelech and the infant prince, and we have the saga of Purim and the treachery of Haman and his sons. So after all that, even at the height of our celebration over his destruction, Rava thinks that we can somehow forget that Haman is cursed and Mordechai is blessed! Talk about ‘killing’ the Buddha! That is a radical paradigm shift.

I thought of four possible answers (last one best):

1) What separates ‘between’ Haman and Mordechai? Fear. Rava is telling us to rejoice openly and fully and not to fear any longer, as we are under the Hasgacha of the Ribono Shel Olam, we can eat and drink in shalom v’shalva. Baruch Mordechai is as automatic as is Arur Haman.

2) “Arur Haman” and “Baruch Mordechai” mean the same exact thing. We can’t have one without the other. Haman is cursed by Mordechai being blessed! Our success is the best revenge possible. We cannot forget that Haman is cursed, but we can remember that his curse is linked to our blessing. An eternal case of “In your face!”

3) Haman is merely a tool of the Ribono Shel Olam. Mordechai reminds us to do mitzvos and learn Torah. Funny thing is that so does Haman in an indirect way. Haman stands as an example to us of what not to be. He serves the same purpose as his nemesis.

4) Last, but not least, is the Zen-like answer to our problem. This is not about Mordechai or Haman, but about curses and blessings. We are trained to think that a curse is bad and a blessing is good, but Rava says that’s not necessarily so. Our notions of good and bad should not be so rigid because the ultimate arbiter of those values is the Ribono Shel Olam. That which appears as a blessing now may very well end up a curse later on. When we believe that we see our “Buddha”, it is time to kill him; to remove our conventional ideas and maintain our spiritual vigilance, even in the post-triumph celebration.

Simchas Purim is a statement of our recognition that we don’t have all the answers and that the things we deem good or bad are not always so. When we see our “Buddha” in the road, when we believe we know blessings and curses, and we should remind ourselves that it isn’t so. The “Buddha” we kill is our complacency that comes from the false belief that we somehow now have achieved all we must and know all that we can. In this, our Seudas Purim is not a simply another victory feast akin to the sort of parties thrown by other nations after battle. It is, at its core, and reminder to remain vigilant to the principles that made this victory possible.

Kol Tuv