The Purim story is one that continues to unfold in unexpected ways. But this year, I tried to think about where the story truly turns around. What is the hinge of the story where we realize that things may be different? In the very middle of the megillah, there’s a moment when King Achashveirosh can’t sleep. So he orders his servants to bring him the Sefer haZichronot - literally the Book of Memories - where he read about an event that changed the whole story. There, he saw that Mordechai the Jew had saved him by turning in Bigtan and Teresh and disclosing their plot to kill him. Achashveirosh asked if anything had been done to properly honor this man who saved his life, and when he heard that the answer was no, he knew something had to change. While Haman had been planning to kill Mordechai, here the story changes. Mordechai is honored instead of killed, Esther is then given the courage to reveal Haman’s horrible plot to kill the Jews, and the edict is reversed.
It was because Achashveirosh read through his memories, his records of the past, and saw where he needed to express gratitude, that everything changed. That willingness and desire to read through those records allowed the story to unfold in a different way, and it allowed the story to completely change trajectories. This meant that Haman killing Mordechai, because Mordechai would not bow down to him, was not a foregone conclusion. In fact, it means that nothing is a foregone conclusion. As long as we are willing to stop, recount things that have happened and see how they may affect us, we allow the story, our story, to be different. When we plow through life without taking the opportunity to be reflective about ourselves and what has happened to us, change in our trajectory is nearly impossible.
So while Purim was yesterday, I think there is still an opportunity here to learn from King Achashveirosh. What is our Sefer HaZichronot, our book of memories, and how can we learn from them to let the past affect our future? Which stories would remind us that we need to express gratitude to someone? What memories would ask us to think about making a different decision than we had planned? And how might we be different as individuals if we remind ourselves of the past? Allowing ourselves to go back to these memories, these records of the past, gives us the opportunity to change the future.They remind us that the rest of our story is not yet told; it reminds us that we are still writing. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
