Rabbi David Fohrman: Okay, Imu, so let's come back to some of these strange statements that the rabbis make about the Megillah. Now, I'd like to start with — 

Imu Shalev: Whoa, whoa, whoa, There's no “Good morning” first? There's no “How are you?” 

Rabbi Fohrman: All right, we can start with a “Good morning.”

Imu: Can we act for the viewers like you like me? Hey, Rabbi Fohrman!

Rabbi Fohrman: Imu, welcome back. It's good to see you again. 

Imu: Welcome back to A Book Like No Other.

A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta and made possible through the generous support of Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum.

So, teasing aside, it actually is time to come back to those strange statements of the Sages. What we're going to do is, we're going to pick up where we left off last time. Remember Rabbi Fohrman was sharing these three puzzling midrashim on the Megillah? Well, if we want to understand them, Rabbi Fohrman suggested that we start with the third midrash. Somehow, that's going to be the key to unlocking all the midrashim.

Now that third midrash, that's the one where Haman is hinted to in the Garden of Eden, so let me just remind you about that.When God confronts Adam from eating from the Tree, He says: הֲמִן־הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתִיךָ לְבִלְתִּי אֲכׇל־מִמֶּנּוּ אָכָלְתָּ — Did you really eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from (Genesis 3:11)? 

That word, הֲמִן, that's the word the Sages are picking up on. That word, הֲמִן, sounds an awful lot like Haman, and the truth is, technically, in the Torah, these are spelled the exact same way. It's the same word, it's just that the vowelization is different. הֲמִן - “Did you really;” Haman - the name of Haman. It's cute, right?

But Rabbi Fohrman ended last episode teasing us with an epic possibility, which is that the Sages were noticing not just this one word, but that these stories, the Purim story and the story of the Garden of Eden, they're deeply, intimately entangled with one another. 

And it's not just that these two stories are connected. There's something intriguing about the fact that one of these stories is at the very beginning of Tanach and one at the very end. If we can understand how these two stories are related, they may shed light on what the entire Book, the entire Tanach, is all about — or at least, it can help us see one sweeping message that takes us from the very beginning through the end. 

And I know what you're thinking, or at least I can tell you what I was thinking. How is one little pun in Haman's name going to lead to some grand vision of Esther as the capstone of the entire Tanach?

Well, patience, dear listener. It is, after all, a journey. But our first step on this journey was just to see if this pun could lead us to anything, any insight into the text at all. Rabbi Fohrman thought, of course, that it could. And the way to see that was to think about the context of the verse in Genesis.

Why is God asking if Adam ate from the tree? הֲמִן־הָעֵץ…אָכָלְתָּ — Did you eat from the Tree? God knows Adam ate from the Tree! The question is more rhetorical, it's more dramatic. It's, “Did you really eat from that tree??!” Like, with two question marks and one exclamation point at the end of it.

What adds this element of drama to God's tone is the very word at the beginning of the sentence, הֲמִן, “Did you really…?” So Rabbi Fohrman thought that paying attention to why God takes that tone, the tone of הֲמִן, with Adam, was maybe the real clue the Sages were pointing us toward.

In other words, it's not just the word that the Sages are picking up on, but how that word changes the entire framing of the sentence, the entire tone of the question. And the best way to describe that tone, Rabbi Fohrman thought, was incredulity.

Rabbi Fohrman: It sounds to me like there's almost a tone of incredulity in God's voice. It's like, “I can't even believe you did this!” And I think the reason why that incredulity is there is because sometimes we ignore the statement that God makes right before He puts the Tree of Knowledge off limits.

Right before God puts the Tree of Knowledge off limits, God makes another command, a first command, a command which arguably is even more fundamental than the command to avoid the Tree of Knowledge and that's: מִכֹּל עֵץ־הַגָּן אָכֹל תֹּאכֵל — From all the trees of the Garden you shall eat, you shall surely eat (Genesis 2:16).

Notice the double אָכֹל תֹּאכֵל, for emphasis; “you shall surely eat.” וּמֵעֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע לֹא תֹאכַל מִמֶּנּוּ, and then a single — But from the Tree of Knowledge, do not eat. Almost as if God takes more seriously the positive command than the negative command. 

And remember, when God creates the trees, the Torah goes out of its way to describe them as having these wonderful aesthetic qualities. These trees are delicious to eat, they are beautiful to look at, and God said to the humans, “It's all yours. There's just one tree I don't want you to eat.” Which I think accounts for God's incredulity, right? If you put human beings in a garden…like, literally, here's this smorgasbord of food, and it's just amazing and wonderful. And then they ignore all of it and make a beeline for the one lousy tree that is behind the curtain. What are you doing? Are you really telling me that you didn't want any of that stuff? You just took this one tree?

And so it's like, here is Adam who's got everything, and seemingly it just doesn't mean anything to him. The only thing he wants is the one thing that he can't have, and there's something about that that reminds us of Haman.

What I want to suggest is that there's a specific moment in the Megillah where Haman himself sees himself this way, as a guy who has everything, but somehow none of it matters. Imu, take a look at chapter 5, verse 11. Let's read it together.

Imu: Before we jump into the verses and see just how Adam-like Haman is, let me just set the scene. Haman is coming home after the first banquet with Esther and the king. Remember, Esther planned these banquets to petition the King to save the Jews from Haman’s decree. But Haman doesn’t know this yet, so he just thinks he was invited to a party because he’s that special, and he's feeling pretty good about it as he makes his way home.

But then something happens that flips his mood entirely. He walks past Mordechai, and Mordechai doesn’t bow to him; doesn’t stand, doesn’t show him any honor, and that makes Haman livid. So he gets home, and this brings us to chapter 5, verse 10, where we’re told: וַיִּשְׁלַח וַיָּבֵא אֶת־אֹהֲבָיו וְאֶת־זֶרֶשׁ אִשְׁתּוֹ — Haman calls for his wife and his family, literally all of his “loved ones,” to gather around him. He seemingly has something very, very important to tell them. And that brings us to verse 11.

Imu: What does he tell them? אֶת־כְּבוֹד עׇשְׁרוֹ וְרֹב בָּנָיו — He's like, “Guys, I have so much money, and I have a lot of kids.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Yep. How weird is that? Can you imagine being hauled out of bed by your dad or something, and he says, “OK, I want all the kids around the dining room table.” And he says, “I need to tell you something,” and he starts telling you about his bank account. He's like, “I got so much money. Do you understand? I had this exit, I was a part of that deal, and I have all these children.” And you're looking around like, what? Dad doesn't realize we know how many children? It's, like, socially off. It's cringeworthy.

Imu: And it keeps going: וְאֵת כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר גִּדְּלוֹ הַמֶּלֶךְ וְאֵת אֲשֶׁר נִשְּׂאוֹ — He's telling about all the promotions he got, all the ways in which he advanced in his career and how high he's become.

Rabbi Fohrman: Higher than any other servant of the King.

Imu: As if they don't know. וַיֹּאמֶר הָמָן —  Haman says, אַף לֹא־הֵבִיאָה אֶסְתֵּר הַמַּלְכָּה עִם־הַמֶּלֶךְ אֶל־הַמִּשְׁתֶּה אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂתָה כִּי אִם־אוֹתִי — and by the way, the queen, Esther, didn't invite anybody to her party with the king except for me. That's how intimate I've become with the most powerful people here in Persia. וְגַם־לְמָחָר אֲנִי קָרוּא־לָהּ עִם־הַמֶּלֶךְ — And by the way, that special party is happening again with me and her. וְכׇל־זֶה אֵינֶנּוּ שֹׁוֶה לִי בְּכׇל־עֵת אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי רֹאֶה אֶת־מׇרְדֳּכַי הַיְּהוּדִי יוֹשֵׁב בְּשַׁעַר הַמֶּלֶךְ — And none of this means anything to me, it's worth nothing to me, any time I see Mordechai the Jew sitting in the gates of the king (Esther 5:12-13).

So he gives a long speech about how he has everything and none of it matters. Okay, so this is what you're saying is Eden-like. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Or Adam-like; the same weird thing that Adam did. He had everything and it didn't matter to him. What's the only thing that mattered? It was the one thing he couldn't have that meant so much more than all the things he did have.

Imu: It was weird and very intriguing to think that beneath the Sages’ little pun, they were alerting us to a deeper resonance between Haman and Adam. I mean, Haman has always seemed to me like such a two-dimensional, cliché villain. But Adam? He's the sympathetic First Human. He sort of stands in for us all.

So to look at Haman as a latter-day Adam was kind of provocative. I was excited to dive straight back into the Megillah, keeping Adam in mind and exploring the character of Haman totally anew. But Rabbi Fohrman slowed me down, slowed me way down. 

He said that in order for us to really mine this connection for all that it's worth, we first needed to just mine what it was telling us about Eden and about Adam. Only then would we be able to bring those insights back to the Megillah.

In other words, what he wanted to do was to take this equation the Sages are making between the character of Haman and the character of Adam and first explore the implications of that equation in the Adam story. Knowing that Haman and Adam are connected, how does that help us read Genesis differently? After all, we tend to think of Adam as the man commanded not to eat from the forbidden fruit, not as the man commanded to eat from all the rest of the fruit in the Garden.

By prompting us to see Adam's bounty, to see how much God gave Adam, the Sages were also prompting us to pay attention to that little, often overlooked detail. God commands Adam to eat from all the trees - just not the one. And seeing this detail begs the question, why did God set up the garden this way?

Rabbi Fohrman: Why would God make a garden with all these wonderful trees and then take one tree and put it off limits? Why do that? If you don't want Adam and Eve to eat from the tree, then don't create the tree. 

Imu: Mm-hmm.

Rabbi Fohrman: By the way, I wrote a book, The Beast That Crouches At The Door, on the Adam and Eve story. This is not a question I addressed in this book.

Imu: Wow, Haman, is this time for bragging?

Rabbi Fohrman: No, this is not a question I addressed in the book. Do you know why I didn't address it in the book?

Imu: I do. I think because you probably didn't have an answer at the time.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's exactly why, and I was embarrassed by that, by the way, because people kept on asking me this question that I didn't really have a good answer to. Like sometimes I would say, well, you know, there's always got to be a nisayon in life, there's always got to be trials. But there was this little voice in the back of my mind saying, “Really, Fohrman? You think God was like a parent and put this chocolate chip cookie right in the middle of the kitchen and then hid behind the curtains to see if the kid would eat it? And when the kid ate from it, He came out screaming because there had to be a trial? ‘I needed to see if Bobby would obey me?’ What kind of parent does that? That doesn't seem like a nice thing to do.”

Imu: No, it really doesn't seem nice. But in light of our midrash, it also no longer seemed like an accurate complaint against God. Because, remember, by drawing out what was Haman-like in Adam, the Sages were also implying that you can't just ask why God put one tree off limits. You have to ask why he put one tree off limits while giving Adam access to all the other trees.

Rabbi Fohrman: I think what the Sages are doing was saying, no, no, no. Maybe there was a point here, right? There's a point in putting Adam in a garden where he can have everything but one thing. Again, it gets back to the most fundamental command of the garden.

The most fundamental command of the garden was not to avoid the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was, “Eat, yes, eat of all these wonderful trees.” The most fundamental command is, “I love you, I want to feed you, I want to nurture you, I want to give you all these great gifts.”

Imu: It's such a wild wrinkle on how we understand this story, because normally you think of the God character in the Tree of Knowledge story as maybe a little cruel or capricious, but actually if you understand that the core command was “Hey, I'm giving you everything,” then it's generous, it’s kind,  it's loving, it’s Father.

Rabbi Fohrman: And now if I ask, “Okay, Father, you're giving me all these gifts. What possible rationale could you have for withholding a single thing?” And let me just put it to you. Let's say you're a father. Let's say you're a grandfather. Let's say you're somebody who loves a kid and you come bearing gifts - GI Joe.

Imu: Oh, you are dating yourself.

Rabbi Fohrman: I'm sorry. What are the wonderful toys these days? What are the wonderful toys little whippersnappers have these days?

Imu: Lego. Lego's pretty timeless.

Rabbi Fohrman: Lego, right? And you have this great Lego set. It's got 550 pieces, and you come with this wide smile, and you give it to your kid.What do you want to see from that kid when you give it to him?

Imu: I guess if I'm in a healthier state, the thing I want to see is that the kid delights in it.

Rabbi Fohrman: Mm-hmm.

Imu: And,  slightly less I would say, I certainly want gratitude for the gift.

Rabbi Fohrman: But notice how guilty you felt when you said that. Like, in a healthier state, I'd love it if the kid enjoyed it. Of course, in a not-as-healthy state, I sort of want gratitude. What if I started beating up on you for that and I said, Imu, you're such an egotist. You really need little five-year-old Bobby's gratitude? Let the kid just enjoy the gift!

Would I be able to guilt you into saying, nah, I don't need the gratitude? Or is there a healthy reason why you actually might want the gratitude?

Imu: I feel like it's good for the child's development to understand not just where this gift came from, right? Like, he shouldn't take Lego sets for granted, but I also think that there is a mature quality to not just having the Lego set, but to enjoying the Lego set as part of your relationship.

And by the way, this is true for me. Like, the things that are most precious to me in my home, the ones we'll call sentimental, are almost always tied up to a relationship. Like, my grandfather's siddur.

Rabbi Fohrman: Mm-hmm.

Imu: You know, my mother crocheted for me a lulav and esrog holder, and if my mom's listening, they are gorgeous and beautiful and I love them. Are they the most beautiful in the entire world? They're not, but they mean much to me because, you know, they come from her.

Rabbi Fohrman: So isn't that interesting? In a way, what you're saying is, if the kid doesn't ever express gratitude, if the kid just plays with it all the time and never even gives you a sideways glance, you kind of worry that the kid's forgetting about you and kind of is succumbing to this illusion that his room just comes with Lego sets.

You don't want that. The point of the gratitude is, while the kid is playing with the gift, you want the kid to understand that it's a gift that came from you. And I love the way you phrase that, not because it's selfish, but because the relationship is important between us. I want the kid to understand that I love them, and in a way, it only enhances the gift more.

So in a way, God is doing something very elegant by putting one tree off limits. He’s not saying, “I need you to say thank you.” The words “thank you” aren't important. It's just, when you enjoy the gift, remember that it's coming from Me. How do I do that? 

You can't touch God. You can't feel him, can't see him. So it's very easy to just forget about him. So how does the God who cannot be seen and cannot be felt make His presence known?

Every time Adam eats from the trees while avoiding the one tree, in consciousness of the fact that God said, “Please don't eat from it, that's My tree,” every time I do that, I'm eating the trees with the consciousness that I'm a guest in the garden, and that there's a Master of the garden, the One who gave me all these trees.

Because the gift isn't just the material deliciousness of the kiwi. It's the material deliciousness of the kiwi together with the head-spinning idea that the Master of the universe loved me enough to make a kiwi that's delicious for me and that I enjoy it and I feel His love every time I take a bite.

Imu: That's really cool. What a cool way of thinking about kiwis and about the universe.

Rabbi Fohrman: I mean, it's like that sentimental gift. A siddur is nice, but Dad’s siddur, that Dad gave to me? I mean, that's everything. A kiwi's nice, but a kiwi that God made for me? That's head-spinning. What a gift that is. And hence, the gift is complete.

Imu: What a beautiful image, to imagine Adam eyeing the Tree of Knowledge not as this temptation or tease, but a reminder of God's presence, so that every  bite into permitted fruit is made sweeter with gratitude and love for God. And how cool that this huge 180° shift in perspective emerges out of the Sages’ little nudge to pay attention to that one detail, how God commands Adam to eat from all the trees except for one.

Alright let's get back to the Megillah, yes? Actually no, not yet. We're not done with our exploration into Eden. Because, come on, you can't see everything we just saw, you can't buy into this theory that God putting the tree of limits is really loving and giving, and not have a question bugging you.

If that was God's intention, if it was so loving, why didn't it work? Why would Adam reject this wonderful invitation to connect to God with every delicious bite? The Megillah would have to wait a little bit longer.

Rabbi Fohrman: Given this picture, the notion that staying away from the one tree is your way of understanding that you're a guest in the garden, what now becomes the yetzer hara? What now becomes the nature of the temptation to violate the command and eat from the one remaining tree? What am I trying to do?

Imu: Well, one thing that popped to my mind when you were talking about the kiwis - recognizing that kiwis aren't just kiwis, that they were formed for you to enjoy - that felt really beautiful and also a little bit stressful at the same time.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, and why was that stressful?

Imu: Because the way we think of the world, we really don't think about everything as being designed for me. Like, sometimes there's just a kiwi. It doesn't come along with obligations or recognition. I can decide how I want to eat this kiwi. I can decide what I want to do with the kiwi.

Rabbi Fohrman: I can decide about everything. I don't have to listen to some command not to eat from that last remaining tree. I can decide.

Imu: Yeah, there might be a part of you that chafes at the idea that you're under someone else's thumb, or that you don't have the ultimate control over your sustenance, your destiny. 

Rabbi Fohrman: And what would you say is the ultimate control, someone who had the ultimate control? What is the most ultimate thing they get to define? 

Imu: The ultimate thing that a person with ultimate control gets to define?

Rabbi Fohrman: The most important thing they have that could express all of their power? They get to define what's good and what's bad. They get to make the Rules, capital “R.”

Imu: Hmm.

Rabbi Fohrman: So part of me says, you know, it's so stressful, the gratitude. I just wanted a kiwi, I just don't need all these rules. Then that part of you is like, I want to be the rulemaker. But who's the rulemaker? God's the Rulemaker. Isn't it fascinating that the words for good and evil, at least one of them, is the word that God uses over and over again when he creates the world? וַיַּרְא אֱלֹקים כִּי־טוֹב, וַיַּרְא אֱלֹקים כִּי־טוֹב — He sees it and it was good, He sees it and it was good, and He decides to keep it.

It's the word that God uses when He says, “I'm the Creator. I like this. I'm having it, and if I don't like it, I'm not having it.” And that is the greatest expression of power that you could possibly imagine. What if I could have that power? What if I was the one who got to make the rules?

Imu: I was a little thrown when Rabbi Fohrman started asking about ultimate control, but as soon as he started talking about good and evil, I saw what he was doing. See, if the tree put off limits was just meant to be a placeholder to remind Adam that God was the source of all his gifts, any random fruit could have done the trick; a pear or a kiwi. (We're really obsessed with kiwis today.) So the question isn’t just why does Adam shrug off God and eat the forbidden fruit. The question is also, why is the forbidden fruit the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Why is the tree set up to either help Adam recognize God or tempt him so intensely to disobey? In fact, you'd think God would want us to eat from this tree, that He’d want us to know the difference between good and evil. 

So, Rabbi Fohrman was turning to the text for help. In the early chapters of Genesis, the word טוֹב, “good,” is used repeatedly in the very famous and specific context of God evaluating his creations and declaring כִּי־טוֹב, “It was good”. So maybe when it comes to the tree, two chapters later, this is the “good” it’s referring to. God’s not just knowledge but power to declare something good, to say what should be and what shouldn't be. And maybe that’s what Adam wanted for himself.

But as high as a human can reach, such divine power is always off limits, and not without reason. Which brings us to another layer of meaning in God’s restriction. Maybe it isn't random that this is the tree left at a distance to remind us of God. Maybe it’s because this tree is uniquely representative of the difference between humanity and God.

Rabbi Fohrman: Defining good and evil basically means setting up the rules for creation; what the right thing is, what the not-right thing is, and we trust the Creator to make those rules.

The analogy I often give for this is the Monopoly game, where the creator is Parker, and Parker Brothers, the creators of Monopoly, get to make the rules. Little Hat and Little Shoe, the two icons that go around on the board, they don't get to make the rules. Because if Little Shoe could decide what the rules are every time he rolled the dice, and landed on Jail, he'd say, “Guess what Jail is? Jail is a free parking place, and you get $500 from the bank every time you land on Jail.” The rules would just become ultimately chaotic. 

Imu: It sounds like they would serve Little Shoe, but they may not serve the Little Dog.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly, and this gets to this really slippery part of the words “good” and “evil,” right? Good and evil are really slippery words. They have two sorts of meanings to them. Imu, if I would say, define “good” for me, give me an understanding of the word “good.”

Imu: That which is right, that which is proper.

Rabbi Fohrman: That which is right and that which is proper, “good” in the moral sense of the world. But interestingly enough, “good” doesn't just have a moral connotation, it has an aesthetic connotation too. When we like things, we say, “Hey, that's really good. That's really good music. I love that music.”

Imu: Right. “This mac and cheese is so good!” You would never say, “This mac and cheese is right and proper.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Right. It's actually not so right and proper. It's awful for you. It's laden with oil and highly processed carbohydrates. So it's actually not good in an objective sense, but it's very good in an aesthetic sense. So there's this widening gap often between the moral right and good and what I just want, even though the word “good” can be used for both.

Imu: Yeah, “good” can be used for yummy.

Rabbi Fohrman: “Good” can be used for yummy.

Imu: You have to be very careful about a word that simultaneously could go towards the meaning of life, and describes the height of a person's achievement and purpose in the world, but also means yummy.

Rabbi Fohrman: And that's really God's point, the two meanings of “good.” When it comes to God, those two meanings come together in a way they don't come together for humans. If you're God, you live outside the game. You don't live on the Monopoly board. You don't live in the world. You're the Creator. So for You, Your desires may well reflect the way the world should work. “I made the world, I want it to work a certain way. People can trust Me that if I'm the Maker of the world, I have the best interests of the world in mind.”

So the right and the moral and the good and God's desire come together in a way that's appropriate. But humans, you should probably stay away from this for a while, right? It's a dangerous tree for you because those two meanings of “good,” there's a big gap between them for you. And if you eat from the tree and get to think that you are the great arbiter of good and evil, you get to make the rules, what's to stop you making the rules in line with your particular parochial desires? Which are Imu's desires, but don't work very well for everybody else in the world or all the fish or all the beasts or all the plants.

Imu: Like, a different person is a better example. I think that I would be a phenomenal, benevolent dictator. I say this all the time. But your point is well taken.

Rabbi Fohrman: So in a way, if we come back to this question, why would Adam want to eat from the tree? Well, there are some advantages to feeling like you're the ultimate arbiter of good and evil.

In other words, for me to lie to myself and say, “The God that I cannot touch, that I can't feel, is out of the system. I am God, and hence I get to make all the rules,” is a pretty privileged position to be in.

Imu: We'd come full circle back to Adam's desire for the one thing he couldn’t have. Only now, we could see a much darker meta-level to Adam’s disobedience. He didn’t just crave a single fruit that was off limits to him. He craved singular control, to have no limitations at all.

But what really struck me in all this was how Adam’s lust for power was entangled with the word טוֹב, good. The problem Adam exemplified wasn’t just desire run amok, or lust for power run amok, but an even more chilling danger - the danger of confusing your desire with divine right, to think that your will should be elevated to universal law, that your good is objectively good. That’s when you’re really playing God.

Alright, Rabbi Fohrman was finally ready to take us back to the Megillah. Remember, this whole deeper reading of Gan Eden was prompted by  the nudge from the midrash that Adam is Haman-like. So now that we had this much richer reading of Adam, we had to wonder what more that could reveal to us about Haman as well.

Rabbi Fohrman: So right now, what we've done is we've said, hmm, this comparison between Haman and Adam, it really helps us understand the story of the garden. But it doesn't just help us understand the story of the garden, it also now helps us understand Haman. Because the Sages, by saying, “You know who Haman was? He was Adam trying to eat from that tree,” is helping you understand something about why Haman was so upset that one guy didn't bow to him when he had everybody bowing to him. It seems inexplicable. Here he is, talking about how he's got all this stuff, and he wants this stupid thing that doesn't even matter.

Imu: Yeah, he's so caught up with Mordechai not bowing to him that it gets him this upset. It gets him this upset in the beginning of the Megillah, he makes decrees about people having to bow to him. He decides to perpetrate a genocide because the guy's not bowing to him. And then, at this point, this is the point you took us to, he sends for all of his friends to come over so he can tell them a story about how wealthy he is and how it's not worth it to him because Mordechai doesn’t bow.

So all that makes no sense from a literary perspective, unless you have some more of this backstory. And I think now we're in a much better position to understand why this person who is so concerned with consolidating his power would see great offense to somebody who dares, you know, I guess, stand in his way.

Rabbi Fohrman: That person who stands in his way is really the only thing that stands between Haman imagining that he's not Haman, but that he's the one who has everything; not “everything but the one thing,” but everything. But who's the only one who has everything? Only one who's got everything is the king.

Imu: Wait, so then, to me, what would make sense then is not just that Haman would be after Mordechai. It seems like he'd be after the king himself.

Rabbi Fohrman: An interesting possibility. And then the question is, is he after the king? So, Imu, there's a couple different ways you can be after the king. The most overt way you can be after the king is you can poison the king; you know, Bigtan and Teresh style. That's one thing you could do. But there's subtle ways you can be after the king. 

Let's say I'm Adam in the garden and I want to be after God. It's not so easy to get rid of God, but one of the best ways I can get rid of God is by ignoring Him, by pretending He doesn't exist, by operating as if there is no God and God is therefore not there for me. By eating from that one tree, you are creating the illusion that there is no Master. You're not actually becoming God. 

If Haman can operate as if there is no king, there might, in fact, be a king but it's irrelevant for Haman. I've got everything. In essence, I am the king.

Imu: Now that you're pointing this out, the king we're dealing with seems to be really happy, almost, to let Haman operate as if Haman is the king. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yup, that's right.

Imu: He just, you know, hands over the ring. The only thing left was bowing. It was really just, like, how is Persia going to treat him? Are they going to treat him like the viceroy? Are they going to treat him like the king?

Turning our new and improved Adam lens on Haman was bringing out two important nuances in Haman's motivation. Perhaps, like Adam, Haman was also driven by a lust for absolute power. Even more thought-provoking, perhaps also like Adam, Haman's method for coping with this intense longing was to immerse himself in a lie.

In both stories, power and delusion go hand in hand. That's a theme we'll get even deeper into later in the season. But for now, here’s the magical thing. If you follow through on reading Haman as Adam, you quickly discover that Haman and Adam aren't the only characters matching up with each other in these stories.

If Haman is Adam and Adam wants to be God, the one with actual control in the garden, Achashverosh is our “God” character in the Megillah, the one who gives Haman nearly everything but kingship itself. And once Rabbi Fohrman pointed this out, it got me thinking about the implications of this connection. You can imagine, just like God expected gratitude from Adam, Achashverosh probably expected loyalty from Haman. So, what a backstabber to go around asking everyone to bow to him just like he were king.

And thinking about that led me right where Rabbi Fohrman wanted to go next - teasing out our third set of parallel characters, though I didn't realize I was stumbling onto this path. I was just reminded of a course Rabbi Fohrman made years ago about Mordechai.

Imu: It just struck me that this theory really validates the “Why Didn't Mordechai Bow?” theory.

Rabbi Fohrman: Absolutely.

Imu: The suggestion that Mordechai didn't bow to Haman, not because of avodah zara but because he was actually really being loyal to the king. It seems like Mordechai knew and understood this really deep down. He understood that, actually, Haman was making a power grab and trying to be king. And once Haman demands that everybody treats him like the king, Mordechai is not willing to do that out of loyalty to the real king.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, and for the benefit of our listeners, Imu is referring here to a different course in Aleph Beta. It's not called “Why Didn't Mordechai Bow?” I think we called it “The Viceroy,” if I'm not sure, which is a great name. I actually love that title.

Imu: I think we renamed it behind your back to “Why Didn’t Mordechai Bow?”

Rabbi Fohrman: Oh no, I really like that title.

Imu: See, no one gets everything they want. But to avoid any god complexes around here, we actually changed it to, “The Viceroy: Why Didn’t Mordechai Bow?” There's a link to it in the shownotes. You can check it out and if you do, you'll see Rabbi Fohrman has a bunch of independent evidence for saying that Mordechai doesn't bow to haman out of loyalty to the king.

But the truth is, what originally sparked this idea in Rabbi Fohrman was our Gan Eden connection. Way back when “The Viceroy” (a.k.a. “Why Didn't Mordechai Bow?” a.k.a. “The Viceroy: Why Didn't Mordechai Bow?”) was made, Rabbi Fohrman hadn't worked out as robust a reading of this connection as he's sharing in this season, but he had seen the core of it. And it suggests a curious, almost comical role for Mordechai, but also insightful.

Rabbi Fohrman: If I recall correctly, the impetus that started me thinking on why didn't Mordechai bow possibly being for the reason that nobody suspects, out of loyalty to the king, was the work we had done on the Tree of Knowledge. In other words, if you extend the paradigm of the Tree of Knowledge, it emerges then that Mordechai is the one thing that separates Haman from the king, just like the Tree of Knowledge.

Now, you look around at the garden and Adam's the master, but he's only the earthly master. The fact that something's off limits for him suggests that there's a master above him. So, too, in the Megillah, the fact that something is off limits, there's one person who won't bow to Haman, suggests that he's not the king.

To me, that started me thinking, one second, holy smokes. Could it be that the reason why Mordechai doesn't bow is because, like if the forbidden fruit were sentient and the forbidden fruit didn't want to be eaten, why would the forbidden fruit not want to be eaten? Because that's the last remaining thing that stands in the way of the person who would eat it understanding that they're not God.

Imu: In other words, Mordechai is the forbidden fruit. He's the one thing meant to remind Haman, our Adam, of the king's generosity, and the one thing Haman tries to take control over instead. But in the Megillah, unlike in the garden, the fruit gets to talk back. It's so wild.

And with that in place, our cast of characters was almost complete, but there was still one more to go; one star of the Eden story whom we'd been ignoring up to now but who was about to make a cameo in the Megillah, right where we had left off reading.

Remember how Haman makes this bizarre rant to his family about how he has everything but the one thing he really wants? Well, take a look at what happens next.

Rabbi Fohrman: So here is Haman. He's told all his family about his sorry position, how, nebach, he's got everything, but there's one thing he doesn't have. He doesn't have poor Mordechai. And he tells his wife this, he tells Zeresh this, and at this point Zeresh speaks up.

And now Imu, before we get to what Zeresh says, I'd like to ask you, what if I put you in Zeresh's shoes right now? Imagine you are Zeresh, and, you know, you want to be a good, loving, faithful wife, and your husband comes home, and says, “You know, I can't believe what happened at work,” and tells you this whole mess and starts talking obsessively. He's got all this stuff, he's got everything, and then he says these words that are painful to hear: וְכׇל־זֶה אֵינֶנּוּ שֹׁוֶה לִי — None of it, everything I have, nothing matters a whit as long as there's this one thing I don't have (Esther 5:13). If you were Haman's wife, what could you possibly tell him in that moment?

Imu: I would say, you know, I was just chatting with my friends and Nancy is recommending this phenomenal therapist, and I think it's for her and Bob. And I really think you should give it a shot.

Rabbi Fohrman: But now you're actually avoiding the question, right? You're saying, let the therapist answer the question.

Imu: I would say, “Haman, sweetie, you could give the exact same speech as your crowning achievement moment, on your deathbed, and you'd just have pride and happiness. Because look at what you just said. Look at how much wealth you have. Look at all the wonderful things you've done for the kingdom. You're this amazing viceroy, and our kids and the grandkids, right? Like, you’ve got to be happy with this.”

Rabbi Fohrman: In other words, if I want Haman to understand the meaning of the word “enough;” וְכׇל־זֶה אֵינֶנּוּ שֹׁוֶה לִי, it's not enough; what he has to understand is that it is enough. What you have is enough.

Imu: Yeah, the operative word, I think, is “enough,” and I think that the person who loves him most can maybe convince him by saying, “Haman, you're enough for me, and I'll give you a little secret. Like, you were enough for me even before all of this.”

Rabbi Fohrman: “Yes, you're enough for me. I'm so proud of you for what you have, for what you've done, for what you've achieved.” That's what can allow him to let go, and that's one thing she could say to him. 

Imu: It's not just her, the way. Like, the people who are there and the people who say this are Zeresh וְכׇל־אֹהֲבָיו. The “lovers” of Haman.

Rabbi Fohrman: Isn’t it interesting, “all the ones who love him.” Like, what a strange word. If you really loved him, what would you say?

Imu: It’s the only thing love can ever really say; “You're enough.” 

Rabbi Fohrman: But there's a mistake that you can make in love. You can have a different vision of love.

If my husband comes and says, “Nothing's ever enough. I have all this stuff. I have this bank account. I have a kid. I have everything. But there's this one thing that eludes my grasp. If only I had that, then I could be happy.” What's the other vision I could tell myself of what a good wife is?

Imu: Listen, Nancy told me her therapist said that, you know, you’ve got to help. You’ve got to always encourage and be encouraging.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right.

Imu: My husband says this is what he needs to be happy, then by gosh, we are going to figure out a way to get him what he wants. The random guy, Mordechai, bowing to him is something that's exciting to him today. Well, I have a strategy. I've got a plan.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. You say you want this, you're having a hard time getting it? My job is to fulfill your desires.  And that's what Zeresh does. Zeresh says, “Mordechai? We can fix that.”

And look at what she says: וַתֹּאמֶר לוֹ זֶרֶשׁ אִשְׁתּוֹ וְכׇל־אֹהֲבָיו — Zeresh, together with all the other lovers, they all say it, יַעֲשׂוּ־עֵץ — Make this tree 50 amos high, and then the morning you'll ask the king, you'll hang Mordechai.

And she blithely talks about this act of murder as if it's nothing, like taking Tylenol. וּבֹא־עִם־הַמֶּלֶךְ אֶל־הַמִּשְׁתֶּה שָׂמֵחַ — That way, you'll come to tomorrow's banquet happy. You know, just take these two Tylenol, you'll feel better in the morning. Just hang Mordechai. It's just for your own mental health.

Rabbi Fohrman: Which leads to something fascinating, because think about the comparison the Sages are making. If Haman is playing Adam in the Tree of Knowledge story, who do you think Zeresh is playing?

Imu: She's not God…Chava?

Rabbi Fohrman: Think about it. Here, Zeresh is saying, “There's something that's off limits to you? There's one thing that's forbidden to you? Here, why don't you have that one thing?” Well, what happened back in the story of Eden? Who gives the one thing to Adam, the one thing he can’t have?

Imu: Chava.

Rabbi Fohrman: Eve. Chava, Eve. She's Eve.

Imu: I was right the first time. 

Rabbi Fohrman: You were right the first time, Eve offering the forbidden fruit to Adam. And by the way, isn't it interesting? Where does forbidden fruit hang? On a tree. What does Zeresh suggest that should happen to Mordechai?

Imu: That he's hung on an עֵץ. It's the exact same word.

Rabbi Fohrman: Who is Mordechai? Mordechai is the forbidden fruit, the one thing that Adam-slash-Haman can't have. But Zeresh-slash-Chava is saying, “Why don't you have it anyway? It can fill your illusion that you're king.”

Imu: Up to this point, we'd sidelined Eve. The whole time we were talking about the garden, we were just focused on Adam, I think because he's the one God gives the commands to, and he's the one whom God directly addresses when He says הֲמִן־הָעֵץ, “Did you really eat from that tree?”

But Chava was there. She played a big part in the story and it was intriguing to see her pop up in the Megillah. Actually, really fascinating. Because what makes her Zeresh-like isn't how she ate the fruit originally, but how she gave the fruit to Adam.

And it makes you wonder. The way Zeresh encourages Haman makes it so easy to see what she alternatively might have done that would have been truly supportive. The person who loves Haman most might be able to see beneath his desire to be God, a painful kind of self-loathing. To want to be God means you don’t want to be human. You fundamentally don’t want to be you. And the person who loves Haman most might be able to soothe that cancerous part of self through her love. By letting Haman know, hey, you’re enough for me. 

So if that’s true for Zeresh, if the opposite of feeding her husband forbidden fruit might have been helping her husband see he didn’t the fruit, he didn’t need to be the all powerful arbiter of good and evil, to be good in her eyes, was that true for Chava too? I’ll just leave that for you to think of that. We’ll get back to that in a later episode. But for now, our cast of characters was complete. And we can see just how expansive our original Haman-Adam connection was. Went way beyond a single-character quirk. Haman and Adam’s whole drama seemed to mirror each other and they had a similar temptation in the form of being tempted by the forbidden fruit, or Mordechai.  And a similar nudge to go down that wrong path from their spouses, Zeresh, or Chava.

And when they go down that path, well, the parallels continue. That's exactly what Rabbi Fohrman wanted to show me next. So we kept reading in the Megillah. The last thing that happened is Zeresh tells Haman to hang Mordechai, and now look what happens.

Rabbi Fohrman: What happens is, Haman thinks it's a good idea. Look at the words for Haman thinking it's a good idea: וַיִּיטַב הַדָּבָר לִפְנֵי הָמָן וַיַּעַשׂ הָעֵץ — And it was good in the eyes of Haman, and so he made the tree, and it was good. Which kind of “good?”

Imu: In the pleasure sense, not in the moral sense.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. Not in the moral sense. But in Haman's mind, there's no distinction anymore, because Haman's starting to think that he's God. He's starting to think that what he wants, is. And therefore, if you looked at Haman, and tried to give him a mussar schmuz, and say, “Haman, it's not right,” he would get offended. “But I want it! If I want it, how could you tell me it's wrong?” He's not seeing a difference between that which he wants and that which is right.

And now, let's go to the very next sentence: בַּלַּיְלָה הַהוּא נָדְדָה שְׁנַת הַמֶּלֶךְ — That night, the king was asleep. Now we get to that next scene, that crazy scene when Haman goes to him in the middle of the night. Interesting that it's the middle of the night, because when did Zeresh say you should go to the king?

Imu: בַבֹּקֶר, in the morning.

Rabbi Fohrman: In the morning. He listens to her plan, but is so obsessed with it, he can't wait till the morning. So he goes in the middle of the night to the king, and he's literally, at 2:30 in the morning, throwing pebbles at the window. That's crazy! You're going to get your head chopped off. But the king calls him in, and it happens that the king was reading about Mordechai's heroism and loyalty and saving him from assassins. 

And before Haman can get out a word about permission to hang Mordechai, the king says, “What do you think we should do for the man the king wants to honor?” And then you've got those famous words Haman says in his heart: וַיֹּאמֶר הָמָן בְּלִבּוֹ לְמִי יַחְפֹּץ הַמֶּלֶךְ לַעֲשׂוֹת יְקָר יוֹתֵר מִמֶּנִּי — How could he possibly want to honor someone other than me (Esther 6:6)?

And then what does he say to the king? He says, “I have an idea. Here's how we're going to honor the guy. We're going to dress him up in the king's clothes, put the king's crown on his head, ride him on the king's horse, and we're going to put him through the streets saying, ‘This is what we do to the man the king wants to honor!’” Well, what does a guy like that look like to everybody watching from the balconies? He looks like the king, right?

And so, I mean, if you are the king, what are you thinking?

Imu: Somebody really badly wants my job.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. And therefore, isn't it interesting that right at this moment, the king takes him down a step? “Oh, why don't you dress Mordechai up in that and you lead him through the streets?” Why does he have his vice president lead Mordechai through the streets?

Imu: He's playing with him. He's saying, like, “You clearly wanted it so badly. Then you're going to be the guy who facilitates it for someone else.”

Rabbi Fohrman: Haman has reached for the forbidden fruit, the one thing that separates the Master of the garden from human beings, and what does God say happens to someone who eats forbidden fruit? “Don't eat forbidden fruit because on the day that you eat from it, you'll become mortal.”

Imu: “You shall surely die.”

Rabbi Fohrman: “You shall surely die.” This is the beginning of Haman's death sentence. This is the beginning of the end for him.

Imu: Hmm.

So from beginning to end, Haman's whole trajectory in the Megillah traces Adam's. As if here, in the final pages of Tanach, Adam reappears and re-experiences the same conflict, the same hubris, and the same downfall.

It makes you wonder, what is the Torah trying to tell us by essentially bookending all of Tanach with two iterations of a single story? That still wasn't clear to me. But at least, we'd uncovered the meaning behind one of our three midrashim. And I took this opportunity to politely remind Rabbi Fohrman that we still had two more to go.

So I feel like you answered the really important question about where the Sages get this Haman-הֲמִן־הָעֵץ theory, and I feel like we're in a great position to answer the Charvona as Eliyahu HaNavi, the Elijah the Prophet angel-being question, right?  Like that feels obvious to all of our listeners now, right?

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, and the angels in the king's garden, right, and all of that. But the truth is, Imu, we are in a perfect position to answer those questions. All we need to do is take the paradigm we've seen thus far and extend it just a little bit more. 

Imu: Apparently our cast of characters wasn’t complete after all. There were even more connections to see between Eden and Esther, more threads to pull on this epic tapestry the Sages had left us.

But that’s the fun part, right? You know, listening back to the progression of this episode, it reminds me of a picture book I used to love, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. In the book, a boy gives his mouse friend a cookie, but then the mouse wants a glass of milk. And once he has the milk, he wants a mirror to see if he has a milk mustache. And then, seeing his reflection, he wants to trim his hair. And so it goes, one thing leading to another.

What's wonderful about the book is how each new request the mouse makes follows logically and yet unexpectedly from the last, giving the sense that the smallest thing, like eating a cookie, can open up worlds of possibilities. Our learning felt a lot like that. We started from one little textual connection, Haman and הֲמִן, but logically and yet unexpectedly, look at the worlds it opened up. A new reading of the garden, and then finding that garden story in the Megillah. 

And next episode, we'll continue to expand those worlds until we bump into angels. Maybe we'll call this season If You Give A Rabbi A Midrash - but don't count on it. Rabbi Fohrman’ probably just going to change the name behind my back.

Oh, sweet revenge.