To Endure or to Build: The Journey from Zachor to Shushan Purim
Visitors to Israel since October 7th invariably come back marveling at both the enormous pain and the outstanding strength and spirit that they witnessed. That spirit is focused – as it must be – on getting thru each day. The army and its soldiers must continue down the grueling path to victory while their families manage the anxious and difficult wait for their safe return. The remaining hostage families pursue every possible avenue of advocacy despite the utter emotional and physical exhaustion created by their ongoing excruciating uncertainty. Families still displaced identify new and creative ways to keep themselves and their children stable and productive in their transient homelessness. The stress is unceasing for everyone from business owners to governmental leaders to emergency responders. And then there is the grief that has stricken so many immediately and personally.
One cannot and usually must not think about the day after when so much energy must be focused on getting through today. We will have turned the corner when we are able to shift our attention from assuring our survival to realizing our broader vision for the future. This transition is present both in the redemption odyssey of Shemot, the Book of Redemption (Exodus), and in Yehoshua’s shift from Zachor to leading Klal Yisrael into Eretz Yisrael.
Shemot begins with the Jewish people suffering bondage in Egypt to the extent that they could not even hear Moshe’s message of redemption: V’lo shamu el Moshe mikotzer ruach u’meiavodah kasha (Shemot 6:9). Their hard work resulted in a shortened or shrunken spirit. While we instinctively read this as a critique, a visit to Israel today will help us see it instead as a necessary adjustment. Moshe was coming to the Jewish people with a vision for the day after, for Sinai and Eretz Yisrael, but we could not yet go there. Klal Yisrael needed kotzer ruach, complete and total focus of their spirit and energy on the short term, on getting through the day. Vision would need to come later.
And it does. Beginning in Parshat Terumah, with slavery behind us, we begin to engage in restoring a home for God in our midst. That is not the grinding kotzer ruach work of survival but the aspirational pursuit of Hashem’s vision for creation and our mission within it, described in terms like nediv lev, nadva rucho, n’sa-o rucho, motivated and uplifting hearts and spirits, building a magnificent house of God whose functionaries are garbed in holiness, honor, and glory (bigdei kodesh… l’kavod u’letifaret - Shemot 28:2). With the survival mode of bondage behind us, we expanded our spirit and vision beyond making it to the next day. That is the full story of this book, the transformative journey from kotzer ruach to n’sa-o rucho, from a group of survivors to a nation of dreamers.
Yehoshua goes through a similar transition. While his first experience of leadership was in the narrow sphere of survival mode, defending the Jewish people from the attack of Amalek, he would ultimately proactively lead the Jewish people into their homeland and place of destiny, Eretz Yisrael. Poignantly, Rav Yitzchak Hutner (Pachad Yitzchak 15:2) suggested that it is for this reason that Shushan Purim is celebrated by cities surrounded by walls since the days Yehoshua led us into the land. While Purim celebrates our successful battle for survival on the 13th of Adar, when we had to fight to defend ourselves from the nations who had been given free reign to attack us, Shushan Purim marks the next day when we commemorate our proactive “conquest” of Shushan. The shift from survival to conquest originates in the shift from Yehoshua’s war against Amalek to his battle of conquest of Eretz Yisrael.
During these difficult times when we need the kotzer ruach focus of getting through unspeakably difficult days, the heroic Israelis on the literal and figurative front lines are driven, fueled, sustained, and uplifted by an awe-inspiring idealism and determination that draws upon the message of Moshe that we did eventually absorb and that we have since refused to forget. It is plainly evident that the Exodus has granted the best of us permanent liberation, cheirut olam, such that even our periods of grinding hardship are borne with the awareness of our past redemption and future destiny. We will not just survive the attacks of Amalek; with Hashem’s help we will flourish in our holy land.