ומרדכי יצא מלפני המלך כו׳

The maamar opens with Esther 8:15, Mordechai leaving the king’s presence in royal garments, and returns to this verse at its end. It begins by linking Purim to Yom Kippur through the name: Yom HaKippurim can be read Yom Ke-Purim, “a day like Purim.”

What the two days share is a movement from below upward. Yom Kippur is teshuvah, a person returning up to G‑d; Purim is named after the pur, the lot that was cast before Haman, and a lot comes up from below. Yom Kippur has its lots as well: those drawn for its two goats, one “for G‑d” and one “for Azazel.”

The question is how anyone can rise when sins separate him from G‑d. The answer is drawn from the words the Kohen Gadol said as he placed the lot on the goat, “To G‑d, a sin-offering,” read as “even the sin rises to G‑d.” Sin can rise because above, as the verse says, “even darkness does not darken”: in G‑d’s oneness nothing is dark.

That there is no darkness above does not yet explain how a person below can get there. The answer starts from the fact that Yom Kippur is the day the second Tablets were given, a second Giving of the Torah.

Because the second Tablets were given on that day, it was chosen to be Yom Kippur. At Sinai, the Torah says, G‑d spoke “face to face,” and that raises a question: G‑d has no body, so what can “face” mean?

The answer is that “face” and “back” describe the will. What a person wants, he faces; what he does not want, he turns his back on. At Sinai all of Israel’s will was turned to G‑d, and everything bodily was left behind them, as “back.”

The Sages say that at each utterance at Sinai the people’s souls left them. They still had bodies, but their bodies had no place in their will.

So it was as if they had no bodies, and they faced G‑d entirely; and as a face is answered by its reflection in water, G‑d’s “face” turned to them. A second question follows: Ezekiel saw on the throne “the appearance of a man,” yet G‑d has no form.

The answer is an analogy from love: when a person loves another, the beloved’s image is engraved in his heart, as though it rested upon him. The analogy implies that the “appearance of a man” on the throne is not G‑d’s own form but, as it were, the image of those He loves.

The same applies now: every bodily act should be “back,” done without one’s own desire in it. The Sages describe a holy sage in marital union as one whom “a demon compelled”; if that is so of union, it is all the more so of other bodily things.

This is not because union is repulsive, as people think since immersion is needed after it. The maamar says the opposite: it is a great thing.

It is great above as well, where Kabbalah speaks of union between divine attributes; and eating and other things, all the more, must be “as though compelled,” though the brief words “not to say that this one cannot eat” seem to warn that this is no reason to refuse food. With the body as “back,” the bond with G‑d is face to face. On Purim this came through the hanging of Haman and his sons “above fifty,” which recalls the gallows fifty cubits high that Haman had prepared; the maamar treats the point as known.

A new section begins. Everyone, the people as a whole and each person, wants to cleave to G‑d and tries hard, yet feels he attains nothing, and some foolishly lose heart over it.

This despair is a great mistake. In exile we cry out in Isaiah’s words, “For Avraham did not know us, and Yisrael does not recognize us,” and the maamar notes that the verse names Avraham and Yisrael (Yaakov) but leaves out Yitzchak.

The Gemara tells that in the future Avraham and Yaakov will not plead for Israel but Yitzchak will, and the maamar sums this up as “Yitzchak will redeem us.” In earlier times everything was revealed: prayers for material and spiritual needs were answered, and there were prophets. This was because the attributes of Avraham and Yisrael were revealed; they belong to the light that fills all worlds, the light that enters each world in its measure.

Because those attributes were revealed, people saw open miracles such as the Splitting of the Sea and the Exodus. In this exile, as the psalm laments, “Our signs we have not seen,” and the maamar reads it exactly: the signs are there, but we cannot see them.

On the contrary, the hidden miracles are themselves G‑d’s awesome and mighty deeds. The words echo the Sages’ answer to those who asked where His might and awe were while strangers revelled in His Temple and enslaved His children: His restraint is His might, and the survival of one people among the nations is His awe. The verse goes on: “there is no longer a prophet,” and no one knows how long the exile will last.

The reason, in the verse’s words, is that “Avraham did not know us”: the redemption comes from “You, Havayah, are our Redeemer,” and the Name Havayah means “He was, is and will be,” G‑d beyond time. That is above Avraham, since even the supernal Avraham and Yisrael, the divine attributes they stand for, count before Him as created beings.

The proof is the verse “For six days G‑d made,” read as it is written, without “in”: the six supernal days, the six emotive attributes, are themselves something G‑d made.

When redemption comes from Havayah Himself, above the attributes, its miracles cannot be seen openly. Yet even now, when earning a living is hard, each livelihood is truly a miracle like the Splitting of the Sea, to which the Sages compare a person’s sustenance; it is only clothed in nature.

For this reason Yochanan the Kohen Gadol abolished the “awakeners,” the Levites who each day said in the Temple, “Awake! Why do You sleep, O G‑d?” He held that G‑d needs no awakening.

As the verse says, G‑d neither slumbers nor sleeps; it only seems so because we do not see, as explained above. “I, G‑d, have not changed”: nothing has changed in Him, only in what we perceive.

The concealment comes because this exile is described as “She has fallen, she shall rise no more.” The maamar ties this to the light that encompasses all worlds and the light that fills them: in this state one cannot rise up above, but one can be close.

Because of this, a miracle in exile comes clothed in nature, and so the whole Purim story unfolded through natural events. The same holds for prayer: when we cry out and seem unanswered, it is not that there is no answer.

We simply do not see it. On the contrary, the Sages teach that when Israel was exiled to Babylon the Shechinah went with them, and Ezekiel’s “I was in the midst of the exile” is read as Knesses Yisrael, which is called “I,” the same “I” as in “And I am prayer.”

In earlier generations prayer was answered openly. Now the verse “And I am prayer” applies: Knesses Yisrael is itself prayer, tefillah, a word the maamar links to naftulei, Rachel’s word in naming Naftali, which Chassidus reads as joining. Its very being is bound to G‑d even when no answer is seen.

Therefore the Megillah says of Esther, “when her father and mother died,” and the maamar identifies her father and mother with the level of Avraham, which is no longer revealed. Then “Mordechai took her,” and Mordechai is “abundant in kindness” (rav chesed).

The verse also says Esther was “beautiful of form and fair to look upon,” read here as the time when her will is done; then Mordechai “took her to himself as a daughter,” which the Sages read “as a house,” that is, as his wife, and with this, the maamar says, Atik Yomin, the inner dimension of Keser (the Crown), was revealed. That revelation comes through “And Mordechai went out from before the king” in his garments, which are the six orders of the Mishnah.

Each garment of the verse is matched to an order of the Mishnah. Malchus, the “royal” of “royal apparel,” is Zeraim, the order of agriculture, for Malchus is the “earth,” and the two verses speak of what grows from the earth; techeles, “blue,” is Moed, the order of the festivals, whose name means an appointed time.

“White” is Nashim, the order on marriage; “a great crown of gold” is Nezikin, the order of damages and the courts; and “a mantle of fine linen” (butz) is Kodashim, the order of the Temple offerings, because butz is another word for “bad,” the linen of the priests’ garments.

“Purple” (argaman) is Taharos, the order of the laws of purity, because it holds many colors. After the garments comes the open revelation of Purim: “The city of Shushan rejoiced and was glad; the Jews had light.”