Just after the Arabs attacked the Jews in what became known as the Yom Kippur War, the Israel Defense Forces held an emergency appeal in Nashville. My father was speaking, and probably because he couldn’t get a babysitter, he brought me along.
He ended off with the story of Purim, how Mordechai reminds Esther that what needs to happen will happen, the Jews will be saved with or without you, but if you sit complacently in your palace then they will be saved and you will perish.
One lady that I knew stood up and said that for five years they had been setting aside money for a family vacation: three thousand dollars. She gave the money to defend Jewish lives.
Success is the most coveted of blessings, appreciated because we feel it is earned. We stepped forward. We did something. We didn’t just talk about it.
You can sit on the sidelines, you can talk and criticize and encourage and curse and bless and it doesn’t make that much difference. Or you can get your hands dirty, your feet black and your bank account red and sweat and cry and plod and slip and fall and. . .and do something. Then, and only then, can you ask for, and do you deserve a blessing: success.
Are you needed? Can someone else do it? If Esther didn’t want to do it, or “couldn’t” do it then yes, history would continue its play without her. But if Esther wants to, then all of creation is waiting for her; this is her moment. That is a worthy bracha, a Divine gift, the ability to make a difference: you can kill yourself over something worth living for.
A man came to the Rebbe and asked for a blessing: that he be able to continue learning uninterrupted, with serenity. The Rebbe was uncharacteristically flabbergasted. “There are thousands of kids who aren’t learning Aleph Beis and you’re worried about your serenity!!”
Whether we deserve serenity or not is another issue. But as our parsha testifies, serenity was not the blessing of Moses. Holiness was, and that comes through accomplishment, not a stress-free environment.
Be careful what you ask for. Or as American Jewry’s beloved creation Tevye says, maybe it’s time to choose someone else. To be holy means to achieve. We would have it no other way. May the redeemer come to Zion, heralds the siddur, and may I play a part is the quiet fervor in those words.