by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

Every now and then you discover a book you want to tell the world about. Rabbi Yitzchak Zilber’s autobiography, To Remain A Jew (L’hishaer Yehudi in the Hebrew edition), is that kind of book. The author, who lived through the entire Stalinist period in Russia from the 1920′s to the 1950′s, recounts his heroic (and successful) efforts to remain a believing and practicing Jew despite relentless persecution. Rabbi Zilber was eventually permitted to leave Russia and settled in Israel, where he became a leading emigrant figure.

During these days betwen Purim and Pesach, I happened to be reading the chapter describing his two years in a prison camp. Rabbi Zilber tells of how, in the winter of 1953, Stalin had planned his own “final solution” for Russian Jewry. The bogus trial of the Jewish doctors (most of the doctors falsely accused of killing military and political leaders were Jewish), was set to culminate with their execution, and serve as a pretext for liquidation of the “disloyal” Jews. Elaborate plans had been made for “spontaneous” anti-Semitic attacks and the precipitous forced exile of hundreds of thousands to Siberia, where they were to be left literally to freeze and starve to death. The trains to carry them to their fate were already assembled and waiting at the great population centers, Moscow, Tashkent, and elsewhere.

As Purim approached, Rabbi Zilber tried to inspire his fellow Jewish prisoners with the story of how the Jews of ancient Persia had been miraculously saved from the genocidal plans of Haman and Achashverush. They too could be saved from their oppressors, he told them.

It wasn’t an easy sell, as you could imagine. As one of the Jewish prisoners argued, Stalin had already murdered millions of his own people and no power could stop him. Rabbi Zilber replied that the fate of any human being could not be known, even from one half-hour to the next. The Russian dictator was no exception, he said, and he and his plans might yet come to nothing. Still, for most of them the logic of despair seemed irrefutable.

That was the night of the 28th of February. The next day, word came that the all-powerful Josef Stalin, self-proclaimed “Sun of the Nations,” had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, from which he was to die three days later. As it turned out, Stalin was stricken at 8:33 P.M. Rabbi Zilber’s remarks about mortality had been uttered at about 8:00 that same night.

The doctors were exonerated, and plans for the mass exile canceled. A month later, after Pesach, Stalin’s successors granted a general amnesty, and Rabbi Zilber and thousands of others were released.

In Jewish tradition the link between Purim and Pesach is more than that of nearness on the calendar. In leap years, when there is a second month of Adar, Purim is always celebrated on the 14th (in Jerusalem the 15th) of Adar II, just prior to the month of Nisan, in which Pesach is observed. The Sages decreed it so, in order to “juxtapose one salvation to the other” (Talmud Megillah 6b).

At first, the two events, separated by centuries, seem to have little in common. The nation-forming experience of the Exodus chronicled in the Torah was attended by great, open miracles; whereas the story of Esther and Mordechai took place in exile between the First and Second Temples, and was marked by no comparable Divine intervention.

Yet, Rabbi Chaim Friedlander (Sifsei Chaim) explains the parallels. In both cases, the Jews believed that their safe passage through a hostile exile would be assured by accomodating themselves to the host cultures. In Egypt, tradition tells us that they played down circumcision, hoping thereby to avoid being targets of Egyptian xenophobia. Likewise, the Jews of Shushan reasoned that Mordechai’s exhortations to boycott the feast of the king to which they had been invited would be an insult that the latter might not readily forgive, and so they went.

Both times they were mistaken. Their efforts to efface their Jewish identity, as signified by circumcision, elicited the opposite of the reaction they had expected. It was only then that what had been a relatively mild subjugation turned into the bitter, back-breaking enslavement we recall in eating the bitter herbs at the Seder. As for their participation in Achashverush’s feast, that turned out to be a major cause of their near-destruction at the hands of Haman (Megillah 12a).

On the other hand, those very acts which were thought to be incitements to hatred against the Jews, turned out quite differently from what was expected. The Egyptians willingly lent their gold and silver possessions to the Jews, and Moses’ reputation—his approval rating—reached its highest point at the end of the year of the ten plagues, just when one would have thought (Exodus 11:2) the Egyptian frustration and anger at their tormentors would have been most intense. In Shushan, too, Mordechai’s popularity rating zoomed upward after the revenge taken by the Jews on their enemies, in spite of the resentment one would have expected (Esther 9:3).

Time and again in Jewish history, the logic of despair has been disproved. And the strategies of assimilation and apologetics have been revealed as false gods. Only by remaining loyal to our traditions can we hope for God’s help in prevailing over our enemies. Then and now.

Related posts:

1. Faith and Reality, or Notes From a Dark Tunnel
2. Pesach Misconceptions