21 May FATEFUL FLIGHT AND WINGS OF RETRIBUTION: WAS IT AN ACCIDENT OR A STRATEGIC MOVE?

It’s hard to avoid
seeing the
similarity between
what is happening
recently in Iran and
the holiday of Purim,
which both took place in Persia. At that
time, the Jews were persecuted by Haman,
who was second to the king and wanted to
kill all the Jews in one day. The result was
that Haman was killed. Similarly, in our
time, the second in command in Iran who
tirelessly tried to kill all the Jews in one day
with unconventional weapons was also
killed.
We also learn from the story of Esther that
things happen in steps: first, Hashem
elevates the Jews, and then He eliminates
the wicked, as Zeresh told her husband
Haman:”If Mordechai, before whom you
have begun to fall, is of Jewish descent, you
will not prevail against him but will
continue to fall before him.” The nature of
the way Hashem operates is that when He
starts turning the tables on the enemies of
Am Yisrael, the tables are turned completely.
Since we are beginning to see the downfall
of the Iranians, it should continue to be so
until we are completely elevated.
But why do things happen this way, with the
downfall occurring in stages rather than all
at once? The Vilna Gaon explains that
Hashem’s way is to first elevate us before
He defeats our enemies, so that people
around the world, especially our enemies,
will see that Hashem is the one in control
and that he favors Am Israel. He writes:
“When Hashem saves His people Israel
from their oppressors who stand against
them, He first redeems them and does good
to them. Afterwards, He avenges their
vengeance against the enemies, as in Egypt,
where He first redeemed them and then
destroyed the Egyptians in the Sea of Reeds.
Similarly, with Haman, He first did elevated
Mordechai, and then He brought down
Haman and hanged him, so that he himself
would see the greatness of Israel and
recognize that the Hashem is God
throughout the earth.
And when He does good to the righteous,
then the whole city rejoices but they still do
not yet sing praises to Him. However,
afterwards, when He takes vengeance on
those who stand against them, then they
sing praises.”
This important pattern should guide us
today as our nation is fighting a war and BH
defeating our vicious enemy. The enemy
will be vanquished, completing the victory
that expresses Kiddush Hashem.

Going back to the recent event:
whether the helicopter accident with
the president of Iran in it was an
accident or the clean work of the
Israeli Mossad, this week the world is
a better place than last week with the
absence of the wicked, evil butcher.
But on second thought, since the
wicked regime is still ruled by the
Ayatollah, nothing might really
change, and it could be business as
usual. That might all be true when
viewing things from a physical
outlook, but when viewing from a
spiritual outlook, we get a totally
different picture.
There are various places where Chazal
explain to us that wicked people cause
Hashem to be angry at the world. For
example, at the end of Gemara
Sanhedrin(ב ,קיג דף (, Chazal say that
as long as the wicked exist in the
world, there is wrath and rage in the
world. On the opposite, when they are
eliminated, good comes to the world.
That is the reason King Shlomo says,
“When the wicked perish there is joy”
.(משלי יא, י)
The words the Gemara keeps on
repeating are “אף חרון. “If we try to
look for other sources in the Torah
that use this term, we will get a clear
picture of what happens when a
wicked person dwells in this world.
When Hashem approaches Moshe
Rabbeinu and asks him to become the
messenger to speak to Pharaoh,
Moshe refuses again and again until
Hashem becomes angry. The words in the
pasuk are במשה‘ ה אף ויחר. But what happens
when Hashem gets angry? Rashi tells us, in
the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha,
that Hashem’s anger carries a punishment.
This can be explained with another place
where Hashem got angry and the Torah uses
the same אף חרון again. After the sin of the
Golden Calf, Hashem was very angry and
decided to destroy the entire nation. Moshe
Rabbeinu then tells Him אפך מחרון שוב—to
relent from His anger.
Another instance of Hashem having אף חרון
was when Aharon and Miriam spoke about
Moshe. Hashem rebuked them, got angry,
and immediately left them. The result of
Hashem leaving was that they were afflicted
with tzaraat. This is because Hashem
doesn’t need to actively punish; rather,
when He withdraws His providence from
us, all the bad things come.
When Chazal tell us that as long as there are
wicked people in the world there is אף חרון

in the world, it is because the people in the
world allow such people to exist and their
cruel ideology to flourish. Thus, the people
of the world are partially responsible for
this cruelty. Therefore, Hashem can’t dwell
in such a world and He simply leaves, just
as He left Miriam and Aharon when they
spoke about Moshe, and then disasters
come to the world. Thus, when the evil
Haman of Persia of our generation is
eliminated, the entire world benefits since
Hashem’s presence comes back. When
Hashem comes back, good comes to the
world, as the Gemara mentions(סנהדרין סוף (
.
Rabbi Yosi mentions another approach to
what happens when Hashem gets angry.
When Moshe didn’t accept Hashem’s
mission to go to Pharaoh, Hashem got
angry, which led Him to punish Moshe by
changing the leadership roles. Instead of
Moshe being the Kohen and Aharon being
the Levi, the roles were reversed, with
Aharon becoming the Kohen and Moshe
becoming the Levi. When we read those

words, we might not fully understand the
significance of who should be Kohen or
Levi, and moreover, why it’s a punishment
for Moshe, who was totally uninterested in
any role and was doing all he could to avoid
it. But since it’s a punishment, we must
understand that it has negative implications,
and that Klal Yisrael would have benefited
much more if Moshe had been the Kohen.
Taking this idea to our time, we can
conclude that according to Rabbi Yosi’s
opinion, when Hashem is angry, He changes
leadership in the world. Having the wrong
leader can have catastrophic implications,
such as open borders, a bad economy, a rise
in antisemitism, and wars in Israel and
around the world. That is all part of the חרון
אף. But when the wicked person is killed,
then good comes to the world, and in this
context, it can very likely be a change in
leadership for the better.
Let’s pray and hope that we’ll soon
experience what Zeresh said: when the
enemies of Israel start to be defeated, then
they are completely defeated.