Mazel

Bess Myerson was born with two attributes for which she could take no credit: her Jewish name – at the time, a liability; and her good looks – an ongoing blessing. Myerson was the first, and to date, the only, Jewish Miss America, and historians understand her winning the title in 1945 as a watershed moment for many American Jews. After all, if there was ever a time when the Jewish world was acutely aware of its own insecurity, it was 1945, in the wake of the Holocaust and prior to the state of Israel. It wasn’t just that Myerson was Jewish; Myerson was identifiably Jewish – by name and association. Her parents were immigrants from Russia, she lived in the Bronx in the Sholom Aleichem Coop houses, she spoke Yiddish in her home. When she was accepted to the pageant, she was told to change her name so as not to be recognized as a Jew. Myerson refused. Some of the judges received anonymous calls warning them not to vote for her. Three of the five sponsors of the pageant pulled out of the arrangement that the winner would advertise for them. Not only did Myerson hold her ground, but this dark-haired beauty and musical talent went on to win. In response to these experiences she began a career speaking out against racial hatred and prejudice for the ADL in schools and civic auditoriums all around the country.

Like Myerson, we can’t take credit for our names or looks. These things are due to mazel – mazal tov, good luck, or mazal ra, bad luck – thrust on us at birth for better or for worse. But it was not by luck or by chance that Bess Myerson became, if you will, Bess Myerson. Myerson became Myerson at the moment that she took these attributes over which she had no control – and took control. It was her fateful decision to take a stand in a world of chance that transformed her from a product of luck and circumstance to a woman and heroine shaping her own destiny.

With one week before Purim, I thought that we would look at the original Bess Myerson – Queen Esther. There are, to say the least, many ways to approach the megillah, the scroll of Esther. It is a fairytale about Mordecai and Esther triumphing over the wicked designs of Haman. It is a story about the first Jewish community outside of the land of Israel. Some read the story as a powerful commentary on gender roles, with Esther and Vashti as a proto-feminists – the Bess Myersons of their day; some see them as just the opposite. Certainly, one cannot help but ask what the story of Esther says about Jews living in a non-Jewish world, in days of old and today.

All these readings are undoubtedly correct, but this year I want to suggest that in order to understand the story of Esther, we need look no further than the name of the holiday itself – Purim. Purim, of course, means “lots,” and refers to the method by which Haman determined on which day to kill the Jews. “In the first month…in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, pur – which means “the lot” – was cast before Haman concerning every day and every month...” (Esther 3:7) Our Purim celebrations fall when they do, because it was on that day that the lots – the pur – fell, a day of destruction ultimately transformed into a day of triumph.

I believe that the fact that the fate of an entire people was to be decided by a roll of the dice is not peripheral to the story but is in fact central to its conception. In the entire Bible, only in the book of Esther is God’s name never mentioned, a lacuna that directs us to its fundamental and somewhat subversive message. The story of Esther, the story of Purim, opens up the possibility for one day of the year, for one book of the Bible, that maybe, just maybe, the world is not governed by God, but by chance, or, if you will, Mazel. That unlike Deuteronomy’s system of reward and punishment, unlike nearly every other book of the Bible, unlike Yom Kippur when our deeds are recorded and rewarded or punished, Purim suggests a radically different way to see the world. Our names, our looks, our fate are all subject to indeterminate and random twists and turns, everything is – as the story goes – a roll of the dice.

Think about it. Think about all the “what ifs” of the story. What if Mordecai hadn’t been at the palace gate to overhear the plot to assassinate King Ahasuerus? What if Ahasuerus had not been sleepless that night and had not asked that the book of records be brought and read to him? What if the throne had not been vacant for a new queen? What if the King hadn’t chosen Esther? There is, writes the bible scholar Marvin Fox, a shameless heaping of improbable coincidences throughout the story. The story of Esther is a secular story, not just because God’s name is not mentioned, but because it depicts a haphazard world of black swans, a world shot through by contingency, a world of Darwinian chance and not providential design.

Which is exactly the point. Because only if you accept the premise that the world of Esther is a world regulated by mazel, and not by God, does the rest of the story snap into focus. The critical pivot of the story occurs in the fourth chapter at the moment when Esther must decide whether she will or won’t use her position – obtained through no merit of her own – towards a greater purpose. Up until that point Esther was a passive participant in the narrative, acted upon, never pro-active. “Who knows,” asks her Uncle Mordecai, “perhaps it is for just such a crisis that you have attained to royal position.” (4:14). Esther becomes Esther, our heroine, not because she was beautiful, not because she was royalty, and definitely, not because she was Jewish. Not unlike Bess Myerson; in fact, precisely like Bess Myerson, Esther becomes Esther only at the moment that she transcends the attributes and qualities and circumstances that have been bestowed, thrust on, or assigned to her and chooses to assert herself in the narrative of her own existence. Esther triumphs because she recognizes that while she lives in a world of chance, she cannot be immobilized by that realization. She triumphs because she insists on putting her own imprimatur on her life and the life of her people.

Just a short while ago, I was officiating at a wedding and as we were all lining up for the processional, I happened to be standing next to the father of the bride. He turned to me and asked, “Rabbi, do you have any daughters?” I replied that I did. To which he responded, “You know Rabbi, let me tell you, as a father you make the best decisions you can for your children. You send them to the right schools, summer camps, give them opportunities as best you can and teach them everything that is important to you. And you know what Rabbi – then it all just comes down to mazel.” At that exact moment, as if on cue, the music started and the processional began. To this day, I don’t know if he liked his daughter’s husband or not.

His point, I think, is a point borne out by our own lives and it seems to be the message of Esther. So much of life comes down to mazel. How is it that two children born of the same family can emerge with such vastly different temperaments? Why are some people born into good circumstance and others not? How do we explain the unfathomable misfortune that is evident to anyone with two eyes to see and a heart to hurt? If there was ever a Shabbat morning to consider that the message of Purim, it is this Shabbat. What possible explanation can we muster in response to the horrific and still unfolding humanitarian disaster in Japan, other than allowing for the Purim possibility that we live in a world governed by chance? I am sure that many will seek to explain where God was and wasn’t in this tsunami. I personally don’t believe such questions bring me any closer to finding faith or giving comfort. It strikes me as far more conscionable and advisable to attribute the events of the last two days not to God, but to that horrible force in the universe called “chance.”

And it is for this very reason, that on a day like today, we acknowledge that the message of Purim rings uncomfortably true, that we, like Esther, dare not be immobilized. Another scroll of the Bible, Ecclesiastes, teaches that even though we live in a garbled world of cosmic indeterminacy “whatever is in your power to do, do with all your might.” (Ecc. 9:10). Crazy as this world is, granted the gift of human choice, we are given the ability to impact our fate. Each of us can and should write ourselves into the story of our lives; we dare not sit on the sidelines.

I am reminded of the story of Goldstein who keeps praying to God to win the lottery. The first week goes by. He doesn’t win. The second week he promises, “God, if I win, I will give 10 percent of the winnings to tzedakah.” He doesn’t win. The third week, he prays even harder, this time vowing, “God, if I win, I will give half the winnings to tzedakah.” Suddenly, he hears a voice from the heavens: “Goldstein, for goodness sake, meet me half-way, at least buy a ticket.”

Our universe, absurd as it is, often bears a Forrest Gump/lottery like quality, like a feather floating in the breeze. And yet we must step up, we have to buy the ticket, we must insist on becoming actors not the acted upon. The existentialist thinker Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote of man’s existence:
“…at first, he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be…Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also what he wills himself to be. (Essays in Existentialism, p. 36)
At this moment of global crisis, but really at every moment that seems to lack purpose, purpose is found not by asking questions with no answers, but by doing everything that is within our power, in this case, acts of audacious charity and compassion, to bring about meaning and humanity in this world.

Let me conclude with another fairy tale of sorts, this one told about Moses Mendelssohn, a great Jewish thinker about whom I have spoken many times before. Aside from being the father of modern Jewish thought, Mendelssohn, you may be interested to know, was short and had a grotesque hunchback. One day he visited a merchant in Hamburg who had a beautiful daughter, and Moses fell in love instantly. The woman was repulsed by his misshapen appearance. When it came time for Moses to leave, he gathered his courage and climbed the stairs to her room to take one last opportunity to speak with her. He was saddened by her refusal to look at him. After several attempts at conversation, Moses shyly asked, “Do you believe that marriages are made in heaven?”
“Yes,” she answered, still looking at the floor, “and do you?”
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “You see, in heaven, at the birth of each boy, God announces his future partner. When I was born, my bride was pointed out, but then God added, ‘your wife will be humpbacked.’ Right there and then I called out, ‘Oh Lord, if I may, give me the hump and let her be beautiful.”
And the merchant’s daughter looked up into his eyes and was stirred by some deep memory. She reached out and gave Mendelssohn her hand. Later she became his wife.
It is a nice tale. It tells how Mendelssohn had the courageous chutzpah to transcend his circumstances and find love. In the real world, we can’t presume to know how decisions are made in heaven, and we don’t know how hunchbacks and beauty are assigned. What we do know is that here on earth, imperfections and injustices and grievances are there for anyone looking for them. Our world, good as it may be, is far from perfect – it is full of flaws and blemishes. As human players on this shaky stage, we can respond with aggression, rage, resentment and inaction, or with productivity, growth, creativity and love. As we enter the season of chance, let’s be sure that we have marshaled the right blend of character, confidence, chutzpah and strength of will to do what we are all capable of doing and what we are supposed to do in our own time as our heroines did in days of old and to actively and wisely choose to shape our own destiny.

Shabbat Shalom.