Tetzaveh and Zachor: Self-Esteem, Jewish Pride, Purim and…Amalek

This column is a product of my experience with two of my mentors, one who passed away relatively recently and the other who passed away long before I was born.

The first was Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, a psychiatrist of international renown and the epitome of a pious Chassidic Jew.

The other was Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, a leader and shaper of the Mussar Movement, who was popularly known as the “Alter of Kelm,” the senior sage of the great yeshiva in the small Lithuanian town of Kelm.

Rabbi Dr. Twerski taught me of the importance of self-esteem in the personal development of all human beings and its role as a measure of mental health. He was a prolific writer and wrote close to a hundred books. But he often remarked, “I only wrote one book. It was about the importance of self-esteem. Only, I wrote it in a hundred different ways.”

The Alter of Kelm also wrote about self-esteem, although he used a different terminology. He called it kavod, the Hebrew word which connotes honor, dignity, prestige, and pride. 

It was the latter who taught me about the spiritual sources of pride and the role that such pride has for every Jew. It is the pride that every Jew possesses deep within himself or herself but must strive to attain and to preserve.

Rabbi Dr Twerski, with whom I was fortunate to have had a close friendship, insisted that I refer to him by his nickname Shea, short for Yehoshua. When I protested that I felt that I couldn’t compromise his dignity by using his nickname, he asked me what I would prefer to call him. We eventually agreed that I would call him “Reb Shea,” and he consented.

Similarly, biographers of the Alter of Kelm generally refer to him as “Reb Simcha Zissel.”

Whereas both Reb Shea and Reb Simcha Zissel stress the importance of healthy self-esteem, they both recognized its fragility. There are many factors within one’s personality as well as from external sources which threaten to undermine one’s self-esteem.

One such factor is allowing one’s self-esteem to depend upon the attitudes or remarks of others. To maintain self-esteem, one must not depend upon the compliments or assessments of others. One cannot allow the praises heaped upon him from others to build his self-esteem. Such praise can lead to swell-headedness and even arrogance.

But nor can one allow insults and humiliation at the hands of another to diminish his self-esteem. One must not be overly sensitive to criticism but must retain sufficient self-confidence to retain appropriate self-esteem.

Reb Shea utilized this concept in his book A Shame Born in Silence. In this work, he exposed the shameful prevalence of domestic violence in the Jewish community. He portrays the erosion of one spouse’s self-esteem because of the other spouse’s abusive behaviors, physical or emotional. His focus was on the field of community mental health. 

Reb Simcha Zissel had a very different focus. It was the need for the Jew to maintain self-esteem in the face of antisemitism, to stem the efforts of zarim, strangers and foes, to dehumanize us.

He expresses it in an essay of his entitled The Strength of Israel Depends Upon Its Lofty Soul. I paraphrase his contention: “One must consider himself fortunate to be a Jew, and very fortunate to be a learned and loyal Jew. He must not allow his honor, or her kavod, to be demeaned by zarim, by strangers or foes. He must hold himself high and withstand the efforts of those who attempt to belittle him, mock him, or shame him.”

He offers the above advice to his children in honor of the upcoming holiday of Purim. The customary treat for this holiday is a three-cornered pastry, which supposedly resembles the three-cornered headpiece worn by our vile enemy, Haman. It is known as a hamantash. Reb Simcha Zissel points out that this pastry must be well-baked so that it can be crunched and crushed as one chews it into pieces. So too must we “crunch and crush” the attempts to be shamed and humiliated, the efforts to defame us and do us in.

So too did the Jews in the ancient city of Shushan have to deal with the insults and nasty accusations which Haman used to convince King Achashverosh to accept his plot to eradicate the Jews, “men, women, and children in one day.”

He tried to literally dis-courage Jews by shaming us into cowardice, by making us feel puny, helpless, and hopeless, without courage. “But Mordechai did not bend and did not bow.” He retained his self-esteem, he modeled his Jewish pride, and remained resolute, self-assured, and ultimately invincible.

Reb Simcha uses the occasion of the supplemental reading for this Shabbat. It is Parshat Zachor, when we read of the attack launched by Amalek against the wandering Jews.

He asks: What motivated Amalek? He surely wasn’t seeking territory because the Jews had no land yet. Their wealth was trivial, trinkets taken from Egypt. Their food supply was minimal, and their water was supplied miraculously. What was Amalek’s goal?

He responds: “Amalek motivation was envy, plain and simple. The Children of Israel left Egypt in glory, triumphantly. No other foe dared to attack them. They felt protected by the Almighty, and they cherished their security. Their “souls were lofty.” When Moses “lifted his hands,” they felt powerful. Their self-esteem was based upon their leadership and their faith. They were impervious to the attacks, verbal or military, upon them by zarim, strangers and foes.

And so it is, concludes Reb Simcha Zissel, with every generation. There are the Amaleks who wish to deflate our just pride in our identity as Jews. They wish to subdue our “lofty souls.” But we refuse to yield. We chew the hamantash. Or, alternatively, we have the “Haman,” the archenemy, in our tash, in our pocket. (Tash is Yiddish for pocke”.)

The eternal enemy is the external enemy who wishes to “cool us off,” to erode our faith, to stifle our enthusiasm, to sabotage our confidence and courage. The way to fight Amalek is by asserting our pride in our nation and in its people. It is by retaining and reviving our enthusiasm and morale, by stimulating our confidence, and by expanding our courage.

This is the story of Amalek. This is the story of Purim and the reason why we are told by our Sages that the festival of Purim will be celebrated for all time and eternity.

The hitromemut hanefesh, the “lofty soul” of the Jewish people, will help us experience “light and joy, happiness and honor.”

May it be so for us, in our time.