Purim and the Inscrutable Will of God
“Thus will be done to the man whom the king wants to honor.”
A brief thought after davening, after hearing Megillah reading, after coffee, and before everything else that Purim will bring this year:
According to Rav Shagar1, citing some of the Chassidic masters, one of the central words of Megillat Esther is kacha - “thus” - as in, “Thus will be done to the man whom the king wants to honor.”2 He similarly quotes the Baal Shem Tov as saying that kakcha is an abbreviation for keter kol haketarim - “the crown of all crowns.” In the Jewish mystical tradition, the divine crown refers to God’s inscrutable will, above and beyond any reasoning: that is, not merely transcending human understanding, but transcending the concept of “understanding” altogether.
In other words, the will of God is paramount and supreme. Asking why God does something is tantamount to asking the reasoning behind His will - and that is a meaningless question and a theological error, according to the Kabbalists.3 God acts because He acts, and the meaning behind His actions is assigned after the fact.
“Thus will be done.” Why? Because the King has decided that it will be done. The reason is determined later. God’s will needs no justification, nor does a term like “justification” apply to it at all.
This, says Rav Shagar, explains why Mordechai, in demanding that Esther risk her life by approaching the king, does not definitively state that “This is why you became Queen,” but instead asks, “Who knows if you were granted sovereignty for a time like this?”4 Similarly, Esther suggests that the Jews of Shushan fast on her behalf for three days, and after that - “If I perish, I perish.”5 Lacking here is any definitive statement of what will happen. Instead we hear an acceptance of the divine will, a will that contains no promise of personal salvation. (Mordechai does, of course, recognize that the Jewish people will not be destroyed - “Relief and deliverance will arrive for the Jews from another place”6 - because God Himself promised that the covenant would not be breached. This, however, is a far cry from confidence in personal salvation and safety.)
Chazal suggest this same idea when they assert that, “Anyone who lengthens his prayer and expects it to be answered will come to heartsickness (i.e., his prayer will not be answered affirmatively).”7 Overconfidence in our ability to influence the divine will, a belief that God must answer our prayer because it was offered with intensity, represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what God is and how He relates to us. He might listen to our prayers, but always on His terms, not ours. If we mistakenly believe that God has no choice but to answer us as we wish, we undermine the likelihood of our prayer being accepted. God does not have to do anything, and our well-placed confidence in His love and protection does not imply a guarantee that such protection will always be there in the manner that we demand it.
Kacha ye’aseh - thus will be done. Why? Because the King demands that it be done.
Human beings long to be in control. We believe that we shape our destiny, and delude ourselves that our successes are exclusively our own. This drive is legitimate, and was programmed into the human psyche by God Himself.8 It must nevertheless be coupled with a recognition that the ultimate realization of our goals is determined by the divine will. No matter how hard we work, failure remains an option because God’s will always prevails over our own; and religious growth begins when we understand that our dominance is limited. “Precisely because of the supremacy of the intellect in human life, the Torah requires, at times, the suspension of the authority logos. Man defeats himself by accepting norms that the intellect cannot assimilate into its normative system. The Judaic concept of hok represents human surrender and human defeat… He withdraws from the rationalistic position. In a word, withdrawal is required, in all areas of human experience and endeavor; whatever is most significant, whatever attracts man the most, must be given up.”9
Purim represents the King’s crown, an acknowledgement of the impenetrable will of God, the realization that the 13th of Adar could have been a day of genocide rather than a day of defense, and that the 14th of Adar might have been a time of mourning rather than a time of celebration. After the fact, we derive meaning from the events dictated by the divine will; but that meaning remains subservient to the divine will itself. There have been other Purim-like events in Jewish history that ended without reason to celebrate - yet they equally indicate the dominion of the will of God.
By recognizing that things could have ended very differently - as they tragically have in other contexts - we begin the process of authentic religious growth and leave behind our childish assumptions that God’s will inevitably accords with our own understanding of what should happen.
Thus Purim, for me, is a day when we admit that God’s will wins the day; and having internalized that knowledge, we can learn to pray appropriately. When we pray with the knowledge that we cannot force God to fulfill our desires, but can merely request, our prayer becomes a vehicle for developing a mature relationship with God. Understanding that God ultimately will do what He wants, we experience true gratitude for those times when the Infinite chooses to listen to the prayers of His people, and saves us from those who want to ensure that the name of Israel is never mentioned again.10 And we continue to pray that His inscrutable will somehow becomes accessible to us, so that we can derive meaning from it in order to further enrich our spiritual lives.
In ancient Persia, His will - God’s “thus” - saved the Jewish people from annihilation. May a similar salvation arise in His will this Purim, as well.
See ״על צחוק המגילה,״ p. 113
Esther 6:9
Others such as Maimonides suggest that the divine will is transcended by divine knowledge, which is not the position of the Kabbalists. For a fuller discussion see Rav Shagar, ״מסך לנפש לבוש לנשמה״ in להאיר את הפתחים, p. 61
Esther 4:14
Esther 4:16
Esther 4:14
Berachot 32b, according to Rashi’s interpretation
See Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, pp.14-19
Rabbi J.B, Soloveitchik, “Majesty and Humility,” in Confrontation and Other Essays, p. 39
See Tehilim 83:5