Post date: Mar 01, 2012 5:11:53 AM
מיום ליום ומחודש לחודש
Miyom l’yom u’meichodesh la’chodesh
(3:7)
Haman drew a lot to determine which day would be the most auspicious day to raise his hand against the Jews. The Pasuk tells us that the lot was cast “from day to day, and from month to month.”
There is a story told of the Avnei Neizer being in Cracow one year as Adar began. Many people came to visit the Avnei Neizer including the town drunkard—and in nothing less than his usual inebriated state! The Avnei Neizer asked him why he had started his observance of “bisumei” two weeks early. The Shikur responded that not only did he begin from Rosh Chodesh, but he extended his “hidur mitzvah” through the end of the month!
In justification of this, he posited to the Avnei Neizer, “Why did Haman decide to limit himself to a singular day on which to wipe out the Jews? If he wanted to do a complete job, wouldn’t it make more sense to increase the timeframe to a week, or perhaps a month? Surely there would be people who would try to hide from their attackers. If there was only one day on which they were allowed to hunt down the Jews, many would escape fatality by simply disappearing for the day.”
The Shikur continued, “It must be that Haman had an inkling that he might not succeed. If that would play out, the time when the Jews were threatened would be turned into a time of national celebration. Haman couldn’t fathom the prospect of the Jews celebrating for any significant length of time, so a month long celebration had to be avoided at all costs. He decided that his day of destruction against the Jews would have to be limited to just one day in order to reduce any rejoicing that might result from his failure. But in theory, having the luxury of an entire month would have been preferable.”
At this point, the Shikur turned to the Avnei Neizer and asked, “Am I to limit my drinking to a singular day in Adar simply because Haman was so inconsiderate as to not want Klal Yisrael to have an entire month to rejoice?”
The Avnei Neizer is said to have accepted his explanation, and told it over many times in the name of the Cracow Shikur.
Since Haman decided that he would focus on a singular day, maybe this explains why in our Pasuk, the phrase “day to day” comes before “month to month. Since he ultimately decided on one particular day, that was the primary focus of that section of the Pasuk. However, we also shouldn’t forget that really the entire month is one of redemption, as we say later in the Megilah “V’hachodesh asher nepach lohem miyagon l’simcha u’mei’eivel l’yom tov” (9:22).
[Zvi Fleisher @ shemayisrael.com]