Resources for Megillah 11

Rabbi Yitzchok Gutterman

1. The גמרא tells us that בלשאצר made a mistake in his calculation of the seventy years of exile and assumed that seventy years had passed and the Jewish people would never be redeemed. Because of this, he used the כלים of the בית המקדש and was destroyed soon thereafter. Years later, אחשורוש made his own calculation of the seventy years and also incorrectly concluded that the seventy years had passed and used the כלים of the בית המקדש at his feast. See the חידושי הרמב"ןhere who asks several fundamental questions: If אחשורוש knew that בלשאצר had tried using the כלים of the בית המקדש and had been killed because of it, shouldn’t it have been obvious to אחשורוש that Hashem plans on redeeming the Jewish people? If so, why would he have trusted his calculations at such peril? Furthermore, what כלים was he using? It says in עזרא that King כורש had already allowed some of the בית המקדש to have been started. 40,000 Jews had already returned to Israel, and the כלים had been taken back with them! He answers that אחשורוש thought that the mini-redemption that happened during כורש’s time was the redemption. After all, he had counted seventy years, and since nothing else had happened, it must be that whatever redemption was going to occur had happened already. As such, he reasoned בלשאצר had died since he had used the כלים of the בית המקדש prior to the מקצת גאולה during כורש’s time. As to where the כלים came from, the רמב"ן explains that there were two exiles from ארץ ישראל to בבל. The first part happened during the reign of יהויכין where some of the Jewish people were exiled, along with some of the כלים of the בית המקדש. It was those כלים that returned with the people who went back to ארץ ישראל during the time of כורש since it had been 70 years after they had left Israel. However, the remaining כלים of the בית המקדש had stayed in ארץ ישראל until the time of צדקיהו when the בית המקדש was destroyed. Those כלים had still not gone back to Israel and it was those כלים that אחשורוש wrongfully decided to use.

2. In אגרות משה, חלק יו"ד ד' סימן ס"ג, Rav Moshe Feinstein זצ"ל was asked if someone was allowed to break off a chip of the כותל המערבי to take home as a souvenir. He answers that it is אסור for many reasons. However, one of the suggestions to allow it was the גמרא in עבדה זרה דף נ"בthat says that stones of the מזבח that were desecrated by the יונים in the time of חנוכה became חולין and lost their קדושה as it says “באו בה פּריצים וחללוה”. We see from here that when Non-Jews come in and destroy הקדש, it loses it’s status of הקדש and becomes חולין. As such, perhaps  there would be no איסור מעילה since the Romans destroyed the בית המקדש. Rav Moshe rejects this based on our גמרא. It was clear that בלשצר knew he could not use the כלים of the בית המקדש until the seventy years were up. This is because there was a נבואה that the כלים would eventually be returned to the בית המקדש after the 70 years were up. Therefore, the כלים were never fully given over to the non-Jews to give it a status of “באו בה פּריצים וחללוה”. Similarly, since we know from פּסוקים that the כותל was never given over to be destroyed, it never loses it’s status of הקדש. Rav Moshe adds at the end of the תשובה that the person who asked the question needs to be rebuked for asking such a question, since even if no formal איסור would be found, some things are reprehensible anyway.

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